New guidance for all GitLab users on Visibility settings

Posted: 2026-09-29 11:51:36   Expiration: 2026-10-30 11:51:36

The DoIT GitLab service (git.doit.wisc.edu) is increasing account protections by reducing the number of publicly visible projects and groups. This change is in response to multiple periods of slowdown and instability that occurred in August 2026, which were caused by aggressive web scraping activity that overwhelmed legitimate requests from UW-Madison users.

Currently, any GitLab user with sufficient privileges can set a group or project to Public Visibility, making it accessible to anyone on the internet. The Shared Tools team may contact you in the coming weeks about existing public groups and projects that could be switched to GitLab's Internal Visibility setting instead. Additionally, we are asking all users to create new projects and groups with Internal or Private Visibility unless there is a strong reason to make them Public.

Projects with Internal Visibility remain accessible to all UW-Madison users after they authenticate with their NetID, while preventing access from unauthenticated external traffic. This added protection helps reduce the impact of automated scraping and improves service reliability for the UW-Madison community.

For additional information about GitLab visibility options, see GitLab's documentation on Project and Group Visibility Settings. 

What you need to do

Account owners can make this change themselves by updating their group or project's visibility setting to Internal or Private. If you are a faculty member using GitLab for course instruction, please update any group projects used as part of student coursework to Internal Visibility.

If changing a project to Internal Visibility would conflict with its intended purpose, please contact the DoIT Shared Tools team WPSSharedTools@office365.wisc.edu to discuss options.

-- Shared Tools: Benjamin Sousa