Talk:AbuseFilter

Fcuk the Abuse Filter[edit]

This filter, which prevent anons from editing user pages, incorrectly claims that the anon is blanking the page. 81.227.149.200 01:49, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You're right, filter 37 is doing that, and it's not the filter's stated purpose. I've refined it to make it try and catch only blanking, instead of any edit by an anon to a page in the User: namespace. Courcelles 03:09, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Abuse[edit]

There's been some talk about it but not any action: AbuseFilter is greatly abused on some wikis, mainly because users don't know what they're doing, someone should check all wikis to note the worst cases and warn the local community, which will usually be completely unaware of what the very few users "knowing" the tool are doing. In the past I've reported some strange filters on zh.wiki which have been changed or disabled; hi:special:abusefilter is an example of outright abuse. Nemo 00:02, 10 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Monitoring[edit]

The need has emerged in the past to list all filters created by SWMT members to avoid forgetting them; moreover, general usage of filters should be monitored to prevent abuse. I've opened a request to create a tool which will help with both; in the meanwhile, here's some stats: [1] [2]. Nemo 10:25, 10 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here some examples of big or small possible problems I found, and reported to the local wiki. Many filters are left alone and nobody looks at them because the users who created them are now inactive. See: zh-yue.wiki, tr.wiki, ar.wiki (lots of hits and most of them disallowing), fi.wiki (not sure), fa.wikt (nothing smells here, but still worth checking given the number of hits; same on fa.wiki), en.source (only inefficiency). A while ago I reported some weirdness to the zh.wiki community and they changed some things; the hit rate seems still high but I haven't checked the current situation, anyway it was very mild compared to what I see on other wikis. Nemo 15:23, 10 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Mistake[edit]

I have made a mistake by not knowing that the move was set in userspace. To take away my confirmed status is irrational, and because the Abuse filter is not a person it makes mistakes. So I propose that the abuse filter give warnings first, and my confirmed status be regiven.--Seonookim (talk) 04:33, 18 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

w:es:Especial:FiltroAntiAbusos out of control[edit]

The use of AbuseFilter on the Spanish Wikipedia is intolerable.[3] Stats speak on their own: «Of the last 8,649 actions, 2,872 (33.21%) have reached the condition limit of 1,000, and 906 (10.48%) have matched one of the filters currently enabled.» 10 %!! (The limit used to be 5, how comes this is even allowed by software? Ah, it's 5 % for each filter.)

Of the 6 most frequently hit filters, 4 are set to "disallow" and alone have been hit 1,648,171 times. This combines with a restricted autoconfirmed permission and some nasty bugs, producing an explosive mix. After seeing the stats there is no doubt that action is needed, but I didn't explore the false positives rate in detail; I just know that, with an unprivileged account, I was disallowed (or greatly hindered in doing) several legitimate edits today. Of course I left this for the local sysops to act on, I hope they will: [4].

Once again, in such cases the first thing is making filters public. A filter with almost a million hits must not be private; making filters private means it's almost impossible to review their mistakes, even the first link I gave above won't work for most people. --Nemo 16:02, 6 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Filters 71 and 96 at de-WB[edit]

Hi, our local abuse filter 5 prevented the following edits: log 7517 (07:08, 9. Jan. 2016 CET) and log 7514 (22:12, 6. Jan. 2016 CET). On the other side, neither global filter 96 nor filter 71 alerted. Can someone explain why not? -- Juetho (talk) 09:35, 9 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

They've different conditions. Why would you expect it to trigger the global filters? --Glaisher (talk) 17:20, 9 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

log 7517 contains:

edit_delta: -2627
user_editcount: empty
added_links: 5 items rlike "cialis"

filter 71 contains edit_delta < -1000 & user_editcount <3 & added_links

I expect alarm because "empty" is less than 3. Filter 96 and log 7514 have similar reasons. Am I wrong to expect global alarm? -- Juetho (talk) 14:46, 10 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Filter 96 didn't match because old_size didn't match. Now that I actually looked into the variables on that edit, it should have actually matched filter 71. But then I have observed it several times where some abuse filters are not triggered even if the conditions do actually match. I don't know why it happens but there are probably several reasons and it might be worthwhile for someone to investigate this bug. --Glaisher (talk) 17:24, 10 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for checking. We'll wait for further matches.

-- Juetho (talk) 10:00, 11 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Help with translation[edit]

Hello! :)

Please, someone, take a look here and here. See the users without a user page (the red links). Those are global accounts coming from here, right? Can someone explain to me why SqWiki has 2 of them and SqQuote has 1? Do those accounts only serve to block users or also do other things? Can you also tell me where their name is configured? In SqWiki the name is "Filtër keqpërdorimi", which is good but could be better; In SqQuote the name is "Abuse filtër" which is terrible because it is half English, half Albanian. I wanted to create a page for them, notifying other users that those are automatic users but I wanted to make sure first the name was correct because I suspected I wouldn't be able to change it anymore after creating it. I also wanted to know well what their purpose is and what they can fully do, so I knew what information to put in there. Can someone help me with this information? - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:18, 21 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The username is defined in MediaWiki:Abusefilter-blocker. On translatewiki.net, someone put "Abuse filtër", so that's the standard you get on sqwikiquote. There is a custom definition at sq:MediaWiki:Abusefilter-blocker (last changed by you), so that's why there are two differently named pseudo-accounts on sqwiki. I think stewards can probably remove the sysop rights of the old one, which is not used anymore. For a description, you can maybe take inspiration from User:Abuse filter (though I don't know if the comment about "it occasionally makes maintenance edits to filters" is actually true. The main purpose is certainly blocking). --MF-W 13:01, 22 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@MF-Warburg: Thank you! I'll translate from User:Abuse filter for the description and change the subpage at Translatewiki. I also went along and deleted the custom definition at SqWiki. Can you tell me which actually is "the old one"?

@Martin Urbanec: Can you take a look at this problem as a steward? - Klein Muçi (talk) 16:13, 22 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Since you put "Filtër redaktimesh" into TWN now and at the sqwiki page, that should be the current account. --MF-W 16:36, 22 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Opt-out for Global-filter 110?[edit]

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T45761

Hi @1234qwer1234qwer4 and Billinghurst:,

Is that possible to opt-out fr-wp only for Abusefilter 110? We are handling emotes more broadly on local filters (mainly 378, and the 133 for two emotes that are always vandalism). See fr:Wikipédia:Bulletin_du_filtrage#filtre_378_?

Best, — Jules* ^talk 10:34, 23 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Jules* can you explain a bit more why this is needed? It is possible, but not ideal to add a per-project condition check on global filters - so it should only be done if there is a conflict. Compare to Special:AbuseFilter/214 for example - that filter has a disallow action, so bypassing that is needed as it is impacting to editors; 110 does not disallow or warn editors, so it shouldn't be stopping anything. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:58, 23 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, you are right. This doesn't seem needed afterall (ping @Supertoff:). — Jules* ^talk 15:16, 23 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. It is not needed now but, if one day a global AF decide to modify this filter (add disallow or warning action, add some emotes...) we will have two filters in potential conflict. Before writing the "fr" filter 378, I suggested to add more emotes on global filter 110 but my colleagues (@LD and Jules*:) prefered to have our own filter to manage it ourselves. As we are few french AF to have global-filter viewer rights, it's easier for us and if there is conflit, it's not sure we will have an AF to resolve it. In fact, in my opinion, have 2 filters for the same result is not needed. You can except frwiki and explain it, for example wiki_name != "frwiki" /* frwiki manage emotes with local filter # 378 */ Supertoff (talk) 16:00, 23 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the ping.

+1 @Supertoff

'110 does not disallow or warn editors, so it shouldn't be stopping anything.'

@Xaosflux 110 is logging and tagging, both on meta and frwiki: there are no obvious reasons to keep those actions from AF while wiki_name is a quick parsed database based variable that can be checked right after the first line (or even at first, doesn't really matter that much here). Why isn't it ideal? Imo that's just avoiding useless triggers and DB entries. There's also another consequential mitigation: API calls won't include those useless abuselogs anymore. LD (talk) 17:37, 23 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't ideal that projects want to be in the global filters set, then want individual conditions on filters to remove them, with the large number of projects in the set that could quickly get out of hand; a log or tag doesn't impact those contributing content. Now, I'm not saying this should be a hard line, just that the design should careful. I wonder if a project-local globalabusefilter whitelist would be a good idea; then a local project can just put in all the gaf id's they don't want. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:57, 23 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like possibly phab:T45761. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:58, 23 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Xaosflux: you wrote "with the large number of projects" but frwiki is one of the most important wiki project and one with the most AF available : the locals filters are managed. Some of the most important projects can be exceptions I think (if whitelist isn't possible of course). But whitelist is the best way. Supertoff (talk) 18:18, 23 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Supertoff hoping to get a little more input from others above before proceeding. For what it is worth, I would have first added a manual exception promptly if this filter had a response action that would block edits. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:28, 23 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I doubt this filter will ever be set do warn or disallow, since there is a separate emoji-related filter for that, Special:AbuseFilter/150. I wonder whether frwiki would like to be excluded from that one? ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 19:34, 23 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comment If a wiki cogently asks for an exclusion from a filter, then I would pretty much automatically just do it. We should be writing global filters that do not have solely local issues, and would always try to do that first. The reason that I asked for the ability to differentiate based on wikis was so we could exclude, and it is easy to put as a top line, or further down the filter when we have a smaller condition. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:44, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Billinghurst I certainly don't want to get to a situation where there are some large number of but not this one projects on a global filter, do you see a problem with the direction T45761 would take this? — xaosflux ^Talk 15:44, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Done @Jules*: I've exempted frwiki from this filter; we probably should continue to explore the best way to handle these in the future. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:45, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks @Xaosflux:. phab ticket 45761 seems a good idea in order to keep global filters clean. — Jules* ^talk 16:13, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My PoV is already noted on that phab ticket. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:53, 25 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Multiple Abusefilter sysops on a single wiki[edit]

Hi, we currently have two abuse filter users with the sysop right on the French Wiktionary (one of them seems like a rename), and I don't think both are in use. Can we get rid of one of them, at least remove them the sysop right? Automatik (talk) 16:08, 29 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Automatik this happens when you rename it, it doesn't hurt anything, but if you want it desysoped list at SRP. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:46, 29 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

RfC in progress[edit]

Hi,

As tradition dictates, I am communicating here a question that may concern you, or even interest you. I would be happy to have your feedback.

Requests for comment/New global filter for "bot"

Good continuation ;) ―Eihel (talk) 01:36, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]