Last modified: 2014-11-20 17:49:22 UTC
"Whenever I try to add an interwiki link by following the "Add link" link in the "Languages" section, the following error message pops up: "You need to be logged in. You need to be logged in on this wiki and in the central data repository to use this feature." However, if I visit Wikidata it seems I am already logged in there with my global login. This problem occurs not just with English Wikipedia but with other Wikipedias. Is this a known issue? Regardless, this error message is supremely unhelpful; it doesn't provide any indication as to what the "central data repository" is or how to log in there. —Psychonaut (talk) 17:43, 11 May 2013 (UTC)" (Reported at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#.22You_need_to_be_logged_in.22_error_when_trying_to_add_interwiki_links)
Related URL: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/63393 (Gerrit Change Iae53b39dd20342f5719fd5c67d2891284f1b39bf)
I experience this problem with Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:20.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/20.0 SeaMonkey/2.17. I have a few add-ons installed but will try again with them removed and post the results.
The problem also occurs in safe mode (i.e., with all add-ons disabled). It occurs when I'm logged into and accesing Wikipedia via either HTTP or HTTPS. However, some further experimentation shows that the error message is triggered only sometimes. Other times following the "Add link" gives me the "Link with page" popup as expected.
(In reply to comment #2) > I experience this problem with Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:20.0) > Gecko/20100101 Firefox/20.0 SeaMonkey/2.17. I have a few add-ons installed > but > will try again with them removed and post the results. Then the above patch probably wont solve (or moreover avoid) the mentioned problem. I can't reproduce this problem with neither Firefox 20 nor Seamonkey 2.17 on Fedora. The only possible cause I can think of right now is that you are logged in via https on Wikidata.org while only being logged in via http on enwiki for some reason (different non-global accounts maybe?).
Tristan: Can you answer Marius' last question please?
No, I'm logged in via my global account on both wikis via https. Here's the exact series of steps which reproduces this problem: 0. Assume at the beginning I have just started my browser and am logged in on neither wikipedia-en nor wikidata. 1. I visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:UserLogin. According to the top of the page I am not yet logged in. 2. I enter my username and password and click on "Log in". I get logged in and redirected to the main page. 3. I visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smriti_Irani or any other article which doesn't have any interwiki links. 4. I click on "Add links" in the "Languages" section of the left bar. A dialog appears which says "You need to be logged in. You need to be logged in on this wiki and in the central data repository to use this feature". 5. I click on "central data repository" which takes me to a login page at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:UserLogin. According to the top of the page I am not yet logged in. 6. I enter my username and password and click on "Log in". I get logged in and redirected to the main page. 7. I visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smriti_Irani again and click on "Add links" in the "Languages" section of the left bar. A dialog appears which says "You need to be logged in. You need to be logged in on this wiki and in the central data repository to use this feature". 8. I click on "central data repository" which takes me to a login page at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:UserLogin. This time according to the top of the page I am already logged in. So it seems that the "Add links" function *always* tells me I am not logged in, whether or not I really am logged in.
(In reply to comment #6) > So it seems that the "Add links" function *always* tells me I am not logged > in, > whether or not I really am logged in. Do you have any uncommon settings regarding cookies? In theory you shouldn't even have to do 5). The fact that you also have to manually log in on wikidata seems strange to me and it would be great to get more details about what exactly is going on here. @Lydia: Do we often get such reports (how big is the impact of this)? CCed Chris Steipp because of the SUL login issues mentioned above (point 5).
There are a few reports - definitely enough to make me think something is very fishy here.
This can certainly happen if the user has 3rd-party cookies disabled. In that case, they won't be logged into any of the other projects when the login. Since they're not logged into wikidata when they visit wikidata directly, that does sounds like they're not being logged in properly. It will be hard to track down without capturing the headers when they visit the site though. You might be able to fix this feature by using a centralauth token from the local wiki, before making the call to wikidata.
Yes, I've got third-party cookies disabled, though I'd hardly call this an "unusual" configuration. It's useful and common enough that Mozilla is considering making it the default setting for its browsers. If accepting third-party cookies is required to add interwiki links now, then if/when Mozilla makes the switch, it's going to stop working for some 20% of all Wikimedia users. In the meantime, if third-party cookies are required, please update the "You need to be logged in" message to say so.
The "real" solution for this would be OAuth, right?
(In reply to comment #11) > The "real" solution for this would be OAuth, right? No. OAuth could be a solution for third party client wikis, but not for Wikimedia ones (we have CentralAuth for this purpose). The issue over here essentially comes down to a CentralAuth shortcoming (see my mail).
For me it seems fine now. Is there anything else we can do on this bug?
I'm still experiencing the problem. If it's been established definitively that this is due to the user's browser blocking third-party cookies, could a message to this effect please be added to the error message?
