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Adding images to featured content

We're going to need a filter to prevent IPs and new accounts from adding images to featured content. Over the last week or so, a serial-vandal keeps using what seem to be proxies to upload a horrendously explicit photo to Commons and add it to our featured article. The exact kind of stuff we need to put a stop to. I've spent probably the last hour and a half watching the new image feed on Common playing whack-a-mole, overwriting the file as it gets uploaded over and over. Home Lander (talk) 17:49, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

  • So far I've not seen any hits to the pattern. If it is still going on, let me know so I can see why the filter isn't firing on the current regex. I want to make sure the pattern hits before adding further constraints. As to the priority, I've been reacting as well (q.v. 871) so I'm definitely aware of the impact. CrowCaw 21:28, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

@Crow: For what it's worth, here are the filter logs for some of these vandals: [1] and [2]. A registered account, [3], never seems to have tripped the filter. Without looking through the full log, here is one instance where your filter properly flagged one of these edits. Home Lander (talk) 23:11, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

  • Filter tuned and so far the only hits have been this charlie. I would like to get a slightly larger consensus, even if just among EFMs, before potentially affecting untold numbers of GF editors. CrowCaw 16:34, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

MA and Crow: Might want to create an exception based on the page title for 926; see Special:AbuseLog/21681207. Think that's an FP, don't wish to look myself. Home Lander (talk) 20:24, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Raghu Vir Acharya vandal

  • Task: Disallowing mainspace edits made by IPs in 174.255.0.0/20 range that include the terms "Raghu" or "Acharya" (or, their obvious variants, if possible)
  • Reason: See this ANI report about a IP-shifting vandal who has been active for roughly three years. Abecedare (talk) 23:38, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
  • Added the base form to 871. As the ANI rightly noted, there are many variants that are legitimate uses, so keeping it tight for the moment. CrowCaw 16:50, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. If I'm reading it right, the new filtering rule is checking for additions like "raghu vir acharya" by any unconfirmed user in mainspace. Is there a reason not to narrow the filter rule to the IP range 174.255.0.0/20 (as in say, filter 862)? That way we could check for addition of either "raghu" or "acharya", decreasing the missed detections (eg this edit), without unduly increasing the false positives. Is it a computational cost or testing issue? Abecedare (talk) 17:33, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
  • 871 covers a lot of name-droppers, so for now I've just put in the patterns given. Locking it down to an Ip range could be done but would add another case to the filter, as we'd obviously not want to lock down all the vandals covered there. If he gets too adaptive then its own filter would probably be called for, at which time the IP can be added as a condition. CrowCaw 17:50, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
That's fine. The current arrangement should catch most of their edits. I asked mainly out of curiosity, and a new filter need be created only if the user changes their pattern. Abecedare (talk) 18:01, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Empty edit requests

A little background. If you cannot edit a page then the "Edit" tab says "View source" instead and has a button to submit an edit request. Saving an empty request is only three clicks away from viewing a protected page: "View source", "Submit an edit request", "Publish changes". I think the majority of all edit requests are empty, coming from users who just try links with no intention to actually make a request. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:26, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
Different templates are called for different protection levels but they all preload {{Submit an edit request/preload}}. Examples of clicking "View source" and "Submit an edit request" while logged out: semi-protected, fully-protected, extended-protected, template-protected. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:48, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
  • Testing on 861. Looks like empty edit requests add between 200-250 bytes, so using that as a base check for the moment. I'd prefer not to check the pre-subst version as that gets a bit expensive to run on every talk page edit. CrowCaw 16:59, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

John Cena vandalism

  • Task: Catch instances of users disruptively adding John Cena references to articles.
  • Reason: This is a common theme I've seen in vandalism, mostly because of memes associated with John Cena. I see this as a similar case to the Harambe or Bee Movie script filters. Aspening (talk) 02:44, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Cutler vandal revisited

I had requested a filter to help deal with a fairly prolific proponent of conspiracy theories, full of the usual nonsense and BLP violations. Crow put together a filter that significantly reduced his rants on Wikipedia, but he's on a new wave with some different material. Some of his more recent target pages have been Robson Green and Amber Tamblyn. Would someone mind seeing if they can tweak the filter to catch some of this newer stuff? Prolog has been doing some impressive work to slow this guy down, but it's pure whack-a-mole with reverts and semi-protection. I have to use a pretty broad IP search (107.77.2*) which is a really busy range, and even then they will sometimes post from outside that range so a block isn't really an option. Appreciate any help on this! Ravensfire (talk) 14:13, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

LTA filter 58?

I'll just add it as a condition to my filter (51)... ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 18:30, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
Added and tested as working. All set. ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 18:32, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Set filter 869 to warn

Based on discussion here and previous discussion here, there is now consensus to set this filter to warn. Not sure how this works with templates and stuff, so someone with more experience please have a look. Pinging @PinkAmpersand who created the warning template draft (User:PinkAmpersand/Daily Mail template). Regards SoWhy 19:09, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

@SoWhy: According the notice at the top of the page, it should be requested here: WP:Edit filter/Requested - MrX 🖋 19:14, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
@MrX: You are right of course. Somehow, I thought I was on that page. I'll just move this whole section, so don't be confused by this ping. Regards SoWhy 19:32, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
The filter seems to only be on living persons; seems to be remnant of having The Sun and the Daily Star too, and should probably be changed.. Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:19, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
Yes, the filter should be broadened to include all article edits.- MrX 🖋 18:47, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
Anyone? @MusikAnimal: as the last editor of the filter. Galobtter (pingó mió) 09:24, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
@SoWhy, PinkAmpersand, and Galobtter: I copy edited the proposed warning. If you're okay with it, I'll create the MediaWiki message and set the filter to show it. Is this rule (if you want to call it that) described on any policy/guideline pages? Ideally we'd link to something other than that giant RfC. — MusikAnimal talk 20:20, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
@MusikAnimal: AFAICT the only mention of it in policy is footnote 10 of WP:RS. Perhaps we could create a short information page that just quotes the closing statement in that RfC, and maybe gives a brief summary of the points raised in favor and against? — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 20:33, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
The sentence that the 10th footnote supports, reads: Beware of sources that sound reliable but do not have the reputation for fact-checking and accuracy that WP:RS requires. Below that maybe have a bulleted list of commonly sourced outlets that are generally prohibited as sources (in our case Daily Mail, The Sun and Dailystar). Each entry should abbreviate the reasons why the source isn't allowed. At the end of each bulleted list item, there'd be a footnote containing the link to the relevant RfC for those wanting the full story. Going this route, we have a nice section of a guideline page explaining everything you need to know. The filter notice would link to it, meanwhile it will be more discoverable by unrelated readers of the guidelines. You get the idea :) How does that sound? — MusikAnimal talk 06:22, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
Afaict there is no DAILYMAIL-style consensus to ban The Sun or The Daily Star, is there? So while an information notice makes sense in general (and we probably at one time collect all such sources in a central location akin to WP:VG/RS), the edit filter should only reflect the consensus in the discussion I mentioned, i.e. warn about adding the Daily Mail. Having another filter that logs all questionable sources makes sense as well though (e.g. Sun and Daily Star). Regards SoWhy 16:47, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
Yes I believe you're right. We have a separate filter for The Sun and The Daily Star, currently log-only. I wasn't sure if there was some consensus around at least discouraging use of those sources, specifically, aside from the normal WP:QUESTIONABLE guideline. I still think this rule against using Daily Mail should be documented there (which I'd prefer to leave to those involved with the RfC). I don't want to send new users to the RfC. Even the closing statement is hard to process. And again if this gets mentioned in WP:RS people will find out about it through their reading of the guideline, instead of finding out via the filter.

Re - something akin to WP:VG/RS#Unreliable sources - this is what I had in mind when I tried to revamp Wikipedia:Zimdars' fake news list into a generalized, community-ran list of unreliable sources, but that idea was shot down. — MusikAnimal talk 20:15, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

  • @MusikAnimal: Has this been implemented yet? The filter is triggered and logged correctly, but there is no warning. Would you mind checking it?. Thank you.- MrX 🖋 01:44, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
    @MrX: Have we settled on what the warning should say? I think User:PinkAmpersand/Daily Mail template is fine, except that it links to WP:DAILYMAIL. That DAILYMAIL shortcut needs a new target, something other than a giant RfC that's hard for anyone to process. As I suggested above, if a source is "generally prohibited", I shouldn't have to find out about it from the edit filter -- after I've went through the trouble of crafting a substantial contribution. It should be clearly documented in WP:RS or the like, and we can make WP:DAILYMAIL redirect to that. That's my opinion, anyway :) If everyone else thinks things are fine as-is, then we can certainly proceed — MusikAnimal talk 18:25, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
@MusikAnimal: There has been no discussion about incorporating the Daily Mail prohibition into WP:RS as far as I know, but anyone can proceed with that if they like. I think linking to the RfC is just fine, since the closing statement neatly summarizes the consensus with respect to that source. Moreover, this version of the template warning is what has achieved consensus, so it just needs to be implemented unless I'm missing something. - MrX 🖋 18:55, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
I politely disagree that the RfC neatly summarizes the consensus, but that's not my main concern anyway. My main concern is that Daily Mail is "generally prohibited" as a source, but we don't document that except in a tiny footnote at WP:RS and an undiscoverable RfC. Just doesn't seem fair, is my thinking. AbuseFilter should not be the means to find out about this rule. I can update WP:RS myself but I was hoping someone more involved with the RfC would take this on. The warning template is otherwise fine, and indeed just needs to be copied to the MediaWiki namespace, then have the filter use it. — MusikAnimal talk 19:12, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
OK, I have no objection to you or anyone else adding something to WP:RS, although that should not delay implementing the filter change in my opinion. I'm sure there is some text that can be taken right from the RfC close. I just don't want us to be be overly bureaucratic, as it's already taken more than six months to get to this point. Pinging PinkAmpersand and SoWhy to see if they have any further thoughts on this. - MrX 🖋 19:40, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
Basically what the project probably needs is a site-wide list similar to what some WikiProjects keep, for example WP:VG/RS, where we collect consensus about the reliability of sources (from RFCs or RSN discussions). This sounds like a discussion for WP:VPPR though and might need some preparation (I think I'll float the idea to see initial reaction). That said, I suggest we use the current wording and target, enable the filter and take care of where the warning points to in step two. Regards SoWhy 20:04, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 25#Establishing a directory of unreliable sources for easier reference if anyone is interested. Regards SoWhy 20:12, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
Yes, I agree strongly with this. Of course it doesn't need to get in the way of implementing this filter warning.- MrX 🖋 20:37, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
Now that you created WP:RS/P, there is a place to link to. @MusikAnimal: Can the warning be called with parameters like templates or is it static? Because if it's the former, I would create a warning that can be used for multiple filters and sites. Regards SoWhy 13:13, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Indeed, and it's anchored. I will boldly redirect WP:DAILYMAIL there.- MrX 🖋 13:18, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
(←) Thanks so much! I really like WP:RS/P, this is loads better than the list I attempted to create many months ago. The filter is now set to warn, using MediaWiki:Abusefilter-warning-dailymail — MusikAnimal talk 14:52, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
And it's already proven itself effective :D See Special:AbuseLog/21686397 versus Special:Diff/852664875. — MusikAnimal talk 14:55, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
I tried to link to the new list at WP:RS, and it was reverted by Peter Gulutzan. Not saying I disagree, but again, since the Daily Mail is "generally prohibited", this rule needs to be discoverable by something other than AbuseFilter. I will not remove the warning, since we're at least not linking to that giant RfC anymore, but we should do something. — MusikAnimal talk 15:32, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
I reverted it back. One person objects for unclear reasons and three people seem to favor the redirect. Also, the RfC is prominent linked at WP:RS/P.- MrX 🖋 15:43, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
...and than you MusikAnimal for implementing the filter change.- MrX 🖋 15:44, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
MrX quickly restored your change with the claim that there was a discussion on the talk page (possibly a reference to a thread with the label Casual musing). I'll wait to see whether anyone else objects to MrX's actions. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 16:02, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
It's not clear to me why anyone would object at all. If you look at the RfC, other sources were mentioned. If you look at now three discussions (including this one), there is support for contextualizing the prohibition on using the Daily Mail and there is support for listing summaries of other reliable source discussions that continue to be brought up. We have more than 250 pages of reliable source discussions that are not indexed. Making this information easy to get to is of benefit to everyone.- MrX 🖋 16:11, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Julian Williams from Lake Charles

Another IP showed up doing the same stuff: Special:Contributions/2605:6001:EA8E:9400:3C36:F062:685D:B2B, which is a continuation of disruption from the range Special:Contributions/2605:6001:EA8E:9400:0:0:0:0/64 listed above. Binksternet (talk) 18:30, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Jeffman filter

A series of IPs have been vandalizing many articles lately. There seems to be little pattern with their edits, other than their edit summaries: they all mention "Jeffman12345". This is the username of a blocked user. I think there should be an edit filter to disallow all edits with an edit summary mentioning this user. funplussmart (talk) 01:51, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

  • The phrase "Jeffman" without the numbers as well. Please assist ASAP, this user is wildly IP-hopping and causing a great deal of disruption in a wide variety of areas. Swarm ♠ 14:11, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Raul RAZ Zeballos

We need to stop somebody from Florida who keeps adding "Raul RAZ Zeballos" to various articles. It would be great to see the name added to the general name-dropper filter. Examples of disruption listed below. Note that in October 2017 there were curly quotes around "RAZ", but that practice ceased. Binksternet (talk) 06:41, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Article alerts

  • Task: What is the filter supposed to do? To what pages and editors does it apply?

I want an edit filter to simply block moves of WP:AALERTS-related pages the first time they are attempted, regardless of user rights, with a big notice saying

BEFORE MOVING THIS PAGE, MAKE SURE TO UPDATE WP:AALERTS/LIST. ASK FOR HELP AT WT:AALERTS.

This should be triggered

  1. In the Wikipedia: namespace
  2. During a move action (first attempt only)
  3. Where the page title includes "Article (A|a)lerts"
  4. Applying to EVERYONE, admins, bureaucrats, Jimbo, or The Most Interesting Man in the World, included. If per-user exclusions can be made, User:Headbomb/User:Hellknowz should be allowed to not trigger the filter.
No bot is (or should be) doing these page moves AFAICT. It's always some person moving things following a "Hey, let's move "WikiProject Foobar" to "WikiProject Barfoo/Foobar" type of decision or some such. And the reason why myself/Hellknowz could be exempted is we're the one running/maintaining the Alerts, and so if we move something, we know if things will break or not, and we won't forgot to update things that need to be updated. But if we're not, it's not that big a deal, since the edit filter (as requested) would just block the first attempt. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:38, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
@Headbomb: ok, no need to "exclude" bots then - one thing I'm concerned with is that this is going to have a spectacular failure condition. That is because I doubt anyone is trying to "only" move this page, they are probably using the "Move subpages (up to 100)" and "Move associated talk page" options on the base page; I'm guessing you would want to stop the entire move here - not just the move of that one page right? — xaosflux Talk 14:57, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
Holding up a mass move to display the warning to update WP:AALERTS/LIST would make sense. It seems a bit overkill, but that really shouldn't happen all that often, if it ever did happen. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:02, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
We can try a test of this, I think it may do the entire move, and just have a problem on that one page - not really sure, needs testing. — xaosflux Talk 15:36, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

tech support scam again

Per the previous thread above, this is a task for filter 793. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:47, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

Filter improper self-closed tags

  • Task: Warn editors that are using improper self-closed tags (any html tag of the form <.../> other than void elements and extension tags such as <ref /> and <references />)
  • Reason: These errors are usually caused by mistake (for example, editors typing <s>...<s/> instead of <s>...</s>). This leads to the page generating two linter errors: one for the unclosed opening tag and one for the improperly self-closed tag. --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE    ) 17:58, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Ligma vandalism

  • Task: Catch users adding disruptive references to ligma to articles.
  • Reason: Another type of meme-related vandalism that I am seeing relatively frequently while on patrol. Most references to "ligma" are disruptive, and the ones that are not are generally listed on the Ligma disambiguation page. Aspening (talk) 04:21, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Bertrand101 usernames

  • Task: Alert established users and admins whenever this long-term abuser comes up with new sockpuppets so that said accounts could be blocked immediately. Username pattern is largely predictable, usually DXYZ-AM 1337, 1337 AM (Town, Province) or some other variation. See SPI page for references.
  • Reason: He has been relentlessly causing disruption on all of the sites that he frequents, most notably here on enwiki where he would come up with bizarre or patently false claims about radio and television stations in the Philippines. I doubt that this would put a complete halt to his decade-long pattern of vandalism (which, if you ask me, is quite absurd and surprising considering that most trolls and vandals tend to lay low after a while), but given the potential damage and inconvenience to admins he is (unwittingly) causing, something needs to be done to slow this vandal down. Blake Gripling (talk) 12:31, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Noticeboard disruption

Task: Filter disruptive edits from new accounts and/or IPs to noticeboards and possibly user talk pages.

Reason: Long-term abuse. Please contact me via email for specifics. Home Lander (talk) 01:45, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

Disallow page indexing by new users

  • I checked the last 50 recent hits on the tagging filter. Almost all were autobiographies or companies that would likely be A7s in mainspace. 1 or 2 could likely become legit articles but having them indexed in userspace is still probably not a good idea, as it suggests that further development might not be forthcoming. I can put a filter together for this; should a custom notification be created? Or is the default link to EFFP enough? CrowCaw 15:52, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
    @Crow: I think a custom notification should be created. I'm not sure if we'd need a link to WP:EFFP, as I'm not sure if a new user would ever index a page in the user namespace (and possibly the Draft namespace, I'm not sure if you'd want to make the filter cover that) for purposes other than boosting search rankings. SemiHypercube ✎ 17:26, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

Anti-Putin vandalism

  • Task: to any edits with the summary which contains ПУТИН - БОТОКСНОЕ СУЩЕСТВО
  • Reason: I already raised this question earlier, received no response, but the problem is still there. An IP hopper vandalises random articles related to Russian Government. A typical act of vandalism includes always the same summary (which starts with ПУТИН - БОТОКСНОЕ СУЩЕСТВО and contains other accusations, for example, that Putin is a pedophile), and also introduces vandalism to the body of the articles, typically adding that a certain polytician is a moron or an asshole otr whatever, in English or in Russian. It is already going on for several months and will apparently continue. The most recent incarnation was 188.114.50.92 (talk · contribs · WHOIS). The edits need to be revision-deleted, and it should be easier to prevent them by an edit filter.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:03, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
Next portion todsy: [7]--Ymblanter (talk) 15:09, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
@Ymblanter: I've re-enabled Filter 52, currently log-only for a short while. -- zzuuzz (talk) 15:36, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
Great, thanks a lot.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:41, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
Zzuuzz, I just dropped a rangeblock after learning a few more cuss words in Russian. Ymblanter, PhilKnight, I revdeleted a bit more of the edits you two already looked at. Drmies (talk) 15:57, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
Shoot: I failed to notice that the newest edits were from July. If y'all think this means the block is unnecessary or overblown, please adapt or unblock. Thanks. Drmies (talk) 16:02, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for revision-deleting the edits, I somehow missed them. I do not have an opinion on the range block--Ymblanter (talk) 16:09, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

"Yeet" vandalism

  • Task: Tag additions or replacements of existing words with "yeet" (including endings with -ing/-ed/-er) (case insensitive) from new/unregistered users as possible vandalism except if it is added to articles whose title already contains the word.
  • Reason: "Yeet" is an English pop culture phrase/meme which I have seen used to commit subtle vandalism. From my quick research, it occasionally refers to a name or word in a non-English language, so not all additions of it are vandalism. The article title exemption should filter out some false positives. Here are a couple examples which I recently found: Special:Diff/857495358, Special:Diff/860324816, Special:Diff/860259205, Special:Diff/783482607. One of them was up for a year. I apologize if this is already incorporated in a filter; I looked and couldn't find one. EclipseDude (talk) 22:48, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Disallow making empty edit request

  • Task: To disallow submitting empty edit request on talkpages. Display warning to user to either add meaningful request or choose to discard the entire edit.
  • Reason: It's really annoying. Sometimes edit request category will accumulates scores of page but you'll find a large number of them are empty and they require editors to be going and responding to meaningless requests so as to depopulate the category. Once a request contains only the template, the software shouldn't allow saving. I think there's discussion about this in the past but cannot locate it.–Ammarpad (talk) 08:37, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Detroit area Bird/Zombie vandalism

The last two weekends there have been blitz vandalism attacks focusing on various settlement and school articles in the Metro Detroit area: [8] and [9] are just a couple of diffs out of the hundreds of reverted edits. Numerous articles have been protected and many socks blocked. These guys have a fair level of sophistication, as when they use IPs they are generally proxies. I'm wondering if y'all could craft and launch a word key filter of some sort prior to Friday evening, US time? Perhaps zombies, bird, 00, and en-dash? Ping me please on response. thanks. John from Idegon (talk) 00:18, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Well apparently they are keying on me...see this. This gives me an idea.
  • That would be sweet. They've been doing this for a while. I think there's an SPI but I forgot the master's name--these children are all the same. Drmies (talk) 02:47, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Various metal/prog webzines

Ang Alamat ni Prinsipe Alucard

Could we look into a filter for this? I've blocked at least 4 IPs/accounts myself, and others have blocked more. They do mass blankings with the phrase in the section and a link to a facebook page. Has been going on for a couple weeks. Example. They also do disruptive page moves which is a pain to clean up.-- ferret (talk) 01:05, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

  • The facebook link is for a Sean somebody. If there is an existing LTA page, I am not familiar with which. I cannot remember seeing this LTA in my general editing area before a month or two ago, when they started moving or blanking large game articles like Dota 2 and League of Legends. Superstar Gaming Motherboard may have been the first one that I spotted. Edit oops: Yeah, that one is blocked as My Royal Young-- ferret (talk) 11:44, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Just another set, from last night... 130.105.131.163 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) 122.3.169.240 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) 195.222.107.89 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) 124.6.136.234 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) 146.48.63.251 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) -- ferret (talk) 16:09, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

Testing at Special:AbuseFilter/637. We might want to use email for further discussion — MusikAnimal talk 18:04, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
Filter created — MusikAnimal talk 21:04, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Qwertywander

Template: space File: linking

@PaleoNeonate: There's already a disabled filter for it. Dat GuyTalkContribs 08:15, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
@DatGuy: Ah? That's good to know; I suspect that it either wasn't ready, or bogus? Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 08:43, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Adding "Breitbart" to articles

  • Task: The filter should have a warning for an edit that adds a link to www.breitbart.com. This should apply to all users (except bots). Example warning:

Yeah, I just copied MediaWiki:Abusefilter-warning-dailymail but changed "the Daily Mail" to "Breitbart News". I don't think it matters if the wording is the exact same.

  • No Reason. The RfC discussion didn't suggest that an edit filter is necessary, and the words of the RfC closing are nothing at all like the above, they are: "There is a very clear consensus here that yes, Breitbart should be deprecated in the same way as the Daily Mail. This does not mean Breitbart can no longer be used, but it should not be used, ever, as a reference for facts, due to its unreliability. It can still be used as a source when attributing opinion/viewpoint/commentary." Peter Gulutzan (talk) 22:43, 26 September 2018 (UTC)
    @Peter Gulutzan: It can still be used as a source when attributing opinion/viewpoint/commentary. Which is why it would only be "warn", similar to the Daily Mail. Read the second-to-last sentence in the warning. SemiHypercube ✎ 00:03, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
I see three options so far. (1) Do nothing. (2) Add an edit filter that says what the RfC closer says. (3) Add an edit filter that says what SemiHyperCube says. Any third opinions about those or other options? Peter Gulutzan (talk) 13:45, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
  • If Brietbart can be used to attribute opinions/viewpoint/commentary, then it seems more likely that such items might only be found therein, right? The warning box would then tend to prohibit that addition. CrowCaw 20:17, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
    That is a point, and I believe similar things could be done with the Daily Mail for including opinions. I'd probably add a sentence to the warning saying that Breitbart would be allowed if one is providing an opinion. SemiHypercube ✎ 22:46, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
  • I support such a filter similar to 869 for the reasons outlined by SemiHypercube. In fact, I think it would be best if 869 was modified to catch all such additions of links that are listed at Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources/Perennial sources. On a side note, breitbart.com is currently blacklisted because of heavy sock abuse, maybe an edit filter can be written to only stop non-AC/EC users from adding it so it can be removed from the blacklist. Regards SoWhy 14:55, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Re: "It can still be used as a source when attributing opinion/viewpoint/commentary." Per Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 220#Daily Mail RfC there is no such exception for The Daily Mail, and with good reason. We have multiple documented cases where TDM has fabricated opinions -- saying things that the cited source never said -- and multiple documented cases where TDM has plagiarized an opinion piece from another source (often with a few details changed to make it more salacious) and added their own fake byline. So no, The Daily Mail may not be used as a source when attributing opinion/viewpoint/commentary. The high probability of a copyright violation is enough to disallow this use. If anyone has evidence that Breitbart News has done the same sort of things as opposed to simply making stuff up, I would like to see it. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:00, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
  • "The Mail's editorial model depends on little more than dishonesty, theft of copyrighted material, and sensationalism so absurd that it crosses into fabrication. Yes, most outlets regularly aggregate other publications' work in the quest for readership and material, and yes, papers throughout history have strived for the grabbiest headlines facts will allow. But what DailyMail.com does goes beyond anything practiced by anything else calling itself a newspaper. In a little more than a year of working in the Mail's New York newsroom, I saw basic journalism standards and ethics casually and routinely ignored. I saw other publications' work lifted wholesale. I watched editors at the most highly trafficked English-language online newspaper in the world publish information they knew to be inaccurate." ---Source: My Year Ripping Off the Web With the Daily Mail Online --Guy Macon (talk) 21:31, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Discogs, LastFm, and RateYourMusic

  • Task: The filter should have a warning for an edit that adds a link to discogs.com, last.fm, or rateyourmusic.com. This should apply to all users (except bots). Example warning:
Needs wider discussion I personally don't oppose a warn-only filter, but I think we need more input. The linked discussions are rather old and don't mention the use of a filter. Maybe bring this up at WT:IRS? From WP:NOTRSMUSIC it seems the unreliability of these sites is well-established, so I wonder if they should be added to WP:RSP. — MusikAnimal talk 18:26, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
Hi Ilovetopaint, it would be great if you could bring this up at the reliable sources noticeboard and specifically mention implementing an edit filter. You might also want to make this new discussion a request for comment to get input from more editors. I see that you've already added Rate Your Music to WP:RSN, but the entry is only supported by one previous discussion, and having a new discussion would clarify the consensus on these sites. Thanks. — Newslinger talk 05:10, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

Kumioko

Ref desk abuse

Indian film widespread vandalism

  • Task: Disallow edits from IPs with a certain pattern
  • Reason: Persistent vandalism on various Indian films - apparently a "Wikipedia war" between fans of two different actors
  • Disallow, if performed by an IP in article space;
  • Any edit that removes the word "Mohanlal" or adds a pipe to that link (i.e. [16])
  • Any edit that removes the word "Mammootty" and ditto on the piping

Thanks, Black Kite (talk) 15:18, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Audiovisual Communicators

  • Task: Flag or disallow edits containing the phrase "Audiovisual Communicators", "Raven Broadcasting Corporation" or similar
  • Reason: Said networks are a recurring subject by Bertrand101, a serial hoaxer with a decade worth of habitual disruption. Since most of his edits mention the companies in question, flagging them would al least slow this guy down. Blake Gripling (talk) 11:56, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Adding Cyrillic to User:Jimbo Wales

Seems reasonable to me. Wait for MusikAmimal. Dragon of Shanghai 🐉 21:07, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
Correct me if I am wrong, but Jimbo normally doesn't want people prohibited from editing his page for long periods of time, which is why his page is normally only protected for a few hours at a time, so I don't think he would like a filter. Nonetheless, we normally do not have filters for single pages, as other methods are better, such as the protection I mentioned earlier. Nihlus 21:12, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
@Nihlus: Keep in mind that a filter would still let other edits through, but not the kind mentioned. That, and this would save editors the tedious work of reverting the edits, protecting the page preventing others from editing, etc. If it concerns you that much you could say something on his talkpage. SemiHypercube ✎ 01:38, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
Filters should be carefully selected as they can disrupt the time it takes to edit something. A single page edit filter is not worth it. Nihlus 01:55, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Phone spam (new number for 793)

  • Task: Please add "1-855-479-2999" to the existing filter against phone spam (793), if it's technically possible.
  • Reason: Increased recent phone spam. See contributions of User:Sabnampayal. GermanJoe (talk) 21:35, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
I would like to second this request. Lindabilliams (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) was spamming this phone number today. -- Ed (Edgar181) 14:49, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Move review/discuss with closer warning

  • Task: Warn an editor to attempt to discuss an RM result with the closer of that RM prior to filing a move review
  • Reason: We've had a recent discussion about this matter at Wikipedia talk:Move review, and I thought an edit filter might be a potential solution. Basically, the idea is that when one uses Template:Move review list to file a move review, and one doesn't fill in the closer/closer_section parameters, the filter should be triggered, warning the user to the effect that they should attempt to discuss the closure with the closer before filing an MR, per the MR procedure. Is something like this possible? RGloucester — ☎ 18:29, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
    I believe filters are generally not made for issues like that which are neither disruption and not made compulsory by policy. There's already a similar message displayed atop edit pane when anyone tries to edit Wikipedia:Move review or any of its subages. I think that suffices, and its wording can be tweaked. –Ammarpad (talk) 16:31, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
    Well, such alerts are used for DS, which I guess means they are prescribed by policy...? However, such edits do result in disruption...is there any policy or guideline that prohibits using the technical tools we have available to minimise headaches? This really seems like a common sense solution to me...the alternatives are undesirable, and the edit notice has had no effect. RGloucester — ☎ 16:34, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
    Well, I know it's technically possible but that does not invalidate my point above that we don't make a single-page filter for things that are neither disruption and not made compulsory by policy. DS is quite not good example here, because it's a special case mandated by ARBCOM and made compulsory by policy. Mere failure to fill |closer= in {{Move review list}} is not disruption as it seems you're suggesting, and an editor can decides to ignore the template but gives discussion link with the closer in his statement and that's perfectly OK. There's no policy that prohibits using technical tools to minimize disruption, but there's a guideline on what level of disruption needs deployment of that tool. And, in this case there's not even a disruption to start with. –Ammarpad (talk) 16:59, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
There is indeed disruption...we have tens of thousands of bytes of text at move review that could've been avoided if the complainant followed the procedure to speak to the closer. That's the definition of disruption, in my view. My proposal was simply, have this edit filter, and just like the DS edit filter, allow the editor to continue with their edit after they've read the warning brought up by the filter, even if they don't fill in the parameter. It would not stop them editing, just make them aware of the nature of the situation, and potentially prevent needless move reviews, which are a huge bureaucratic waste of editors' time. But, that's fine. No need to look for solutions, let's just have more problems... RGloucester — ☎ 17:07, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
If an edit filter is not the way to go, we do at least have the |closer= and |closer_section= parameters, and in addition, the edit notice's wording and emphasis have been tweaked this date. Paine Ellsworth, ed.  put'r there  15:21, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Switching text from Israel to Palestine or Indian to Pakistan

Task Add a tag when text is switched between Israel to Palestine (or vv) or India to Pakistan (or vv). This would apply to article space only (and not to article talk pages). A separate filter for each would be best as the ARBPIA filter could also block IPs from doing this.

Reason These switches are a very common low level breach of ARBPIA and ARBIP and not easy to spot. This would aid editors to spot possible breaches and of course to advise new editors of the sanctions. Doug Weller talk 17:03, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: Something like this?
!("confirmed" in user_groups) &
article_namespace == 0 &
added_lines irlike "\bPalestine\b" &
old_wikitext irlike "\bIsreal\b"
Haven't done edit filters before, but have been trying to learn about them. zchrykng (talk) 01:41, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
Copied and tweaked from the Nazism filter. zchrykng (talk) 01:42, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
@Zchrykng: Thanks, I'm pretty clueless though. It might work. Doug Weller talk 19:41, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
Doug Weller, okay, so that pattern was wrong, but this one works on the test wiki. Can someone else review and see if it is worth including here?
!("confirmed" in user_groups) &
article_namespace == 0 &
"Palestine" in added_lines &
"Israel" in old_wikitext
zchrykng (talk) 01:46, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
Actually looks like this is a better option. 
!("confirmed" in user_groups) &
article_namespace == 0 &
"Palestine" in added_lines &
!("Palestine" in old_wikitext) &
"Israel" in old_wikitext
Just need someone with the right perms to look and see if this is good. Maybe just as a warning. zchrykng (talk) 02:54, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Anyone? Doug Weller talk 20:41, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Ligma again

  • Task: Prevent new users from adding "ligma" to articles
  • Reason: This was requested by Aspening a while back, and nothing came of it. The vandalism is still ongoing, see 1 2 3. There seem to be few legitimate uses of this word. This could be added to an existing general vandalism filter, e.g. 260. Note that the match will probably need to be on \bligma\b or similar, or there will be FPs from Seligmann and other words. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:39, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Taslimson spam

  1. Task: Prevent addition of "Taslimson" into articles
  2. Reason: Someone with multiple IPs have added a non-notable name to articles (usually Indonesian Americans [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] but also other articles e.g. here and here. The edits are straight-up spamming an unimportant name and a non-existent "foundation" all over the place, and is quite an annoyance at this point. At this point, there are absolutely no use (or media coverage outside blogs, see here) of the name in other contexts within Wikipedia beyond complaints about this vandal. Note that this filter has been requested six months ago, and at least four ANI notices [22] [23] [24] [25]. Juxlos (talk) 15:55, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Transmania hoax

Added to 260. No valid occurrences of the term appearing as of this time. CrowCaw 20:39, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
@Crow:, thanks! Jauerbackdude?/dude. 21:13, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Update "ntsamr"-pattern spambot filter

Update Filter description: "ntsamr"-pattern spambot filter to disallow as there is no purpouse for edits to be allowed as it is pure spam Abote2 (talk) 12:42, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Template:American politics AE

  • Task: Prevent non-admins from adding or removing {{American politics AE}} from Article Talk namespace.
  • Reason: {{American politics AE}} is a frequently used template for placing discretionary sanctions on articles, and should only be placed by uninvolved admins. Because it is so common regular editors have taken to placing it on the talkpages of politics articles together with other templates, and it has even been placed by IP editors. [34] I tracked down and removed 47 of these inappropriate placements today. I don't know what capabilities you have with edit filters, but is there some attribute we could add to similar DS templates to make them trigger the filter as well, or do we have to make individual filters for each template? If you can't block the edits, could you at least flag them so they can be reverted easily without needing to delve into the talk history? ~Awilley (talk) 19:31, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
@Awilley: No need for logging like DS. Since only admins are allowed to legitimately place it on talkpages, it's possible to disallow any non sysop from adding it. Template {{Unlocked userpage}} uses same mechanism on userpages. –Ammarpad (talk) 05:24, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. Where do I sign? ~Awilley (talk) 20:14, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
I think you're at the right place. Just wait for a willing edit filter manager to take over the work. –Ammarpad (talk) 18:44, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
@Ammarpad: this template does need to be logged when added, see Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions#Logging - they are logged at Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log. Doug Weller talk 14:58, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment--See this; action needs to be changed.∯WBGconverse 13:09, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment Certainly doable, but I'd like to see a custom warning template created first, as a perfectly good-faith attempt to add this would otherwise be met with "Your edit is unconstructive...". Probably a general message that only admins should apply DS templates, please find a friendly admin to help, or report to AE, etc... CrowCaw 20:45, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
  • There's an issue before that... @Doug Weller: I know their addition must be logged, but I didn't express myself clearly. I meant we should only disallow its addition and leave logging because that's not as simple as it appears. There are two issues: 1. If it's logged, the log will become redundant to Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log which still needs to be filled by admins since it's the only logging-page recognized by ArbCom. 2. If we want the auto-log to supplant Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log page, then that will require may be ArbCom motion beforehand, I don't know how easy is that, but it appears better option to me. What do you think. –Ammarpad (talk) 07:51, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Large removal of content by new user

Tag large amount of content removed by a new user (>1000 bytes?) Would be useful for recentchanges patrollers. 15:34, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

@Username Needed: Filter 30 (hist · log) already does that. Also fix your signature. –Ammarpad (talk) 16:48, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Far-right/far-left

One of the current memes of the extreme right is that certain organizations and ideologies which are universally considered by reliable sources to be on the far right, are actually on the far left. This most usually happens in connection with Fascism, Nazism, and neo-Nazism, but I just undid a change to Ku Klux Klan. Because of this, it seems to me that an edit filter which stops the direct replacement of "far-right" or "far right" to "far-left" or "far left" might be a good idea. (I'd ask for the opposite as well, but I've literally never seen a case of it; I would have no objection if the filter covered this as well.)

  • this seems like a reasonable request.... I would suggest we go even further and get an edit filter notice for when any political ideology positions changing in an info box.--Moxy (talk) 15:51, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
  • This seems like an unreasonable request -- if someone who is being called X is actually Y, that's up to the editors concerned with the article to decide. So if you have trouble with your Ku Klux Klan edit, try to resolve it on the Ku Klux Klan talk page. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 18:31, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
  • There's nothing to "resolve", the change is as incorrect as describing the Klan as an immigrants' rights organization.
    The problem is that this occurs across a large number of pages, and, furthermore, it's clearly motivated by personal political philosophy and flies in the face of what reliable sources say. (There's no chance that all of a sudden historians and political scientists are going to change their minds and start saying that Nazis, for instance, are far-left.) Many of the changes are made by IPs or new accounts, but it's not reasonable to semi-protect all the articles potentially involved. There are many editors who look out for these kinds of edits and revert on sight, but if one slips through, we're presenting manifestly inaccurate information to the public. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:00, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
If your statement below (that logging "would be OK") means that you abandon your original proposal, further argument about it is unnecessary. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 16:11, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
My statement below simply means that if the consensus here is for logging instead of preventing, then I'm fine with that, it doesn't mean that preventing isn't still, in my opinion, the better option. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:45, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Agree that it is an unreasonable request. Let the editors of each page evaluate each claim on its own merits. What's next, pre-determined filters to guarantee any future Wikipedia entry adhere to Newspeak only? It is not wise to pre-legislate outcomes in an encyclopedia. XavierItzm (talk) 12:34, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

  • I'm concerned that due to the way the Filter does things, this may result in a lot of false-positives. So, since more information always helps make wise decisions, for the moment I have it logging on filter 861 to see what rate of FPs there are, and if you see edits that the filter didn't catch, pop me a note or an email with the article. The results of the test filter will help determine if it would be "ruling on content" which we don't want, or "stopping vandalism" which we do. CrowCaw 18:58, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Sorry, my test filter was set private from a prior test. I've opened it up now. CrowCaw 22:26, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Of note, of the 8 times this filter has now fired, only one was for this exact pattern (oddly, several were other types of vandalism). This is due to the way the filter operates, what it considers a "removal" and what it considers an "addition". Not sure how Beansy further explanation might be so email me if you'd like to discuss further. CrowCaw 17:06, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

WorldNetDaily

  • Task: Provide a warning for any editor attempting to add links to WorldNetDaily to Wikipedia, similar to the existing Daily Mail filter (#869).
  • Reason: Based on a project-wide RfC and WP:RS/N discussion here, there is a clear consensus that WorldNetDaily is a highly unreliable source and that an edit filter is warranted to notify editors to avoid it. Per the explicit RfC question, the edit filter in question should resemble #869 (the existing filter for links to the Daily Mail). This is a request to implement that filter per community consensus. Thank you for your time and efforts. MastCell Talk 19:16, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Cutler vandal

Our lovely LTA Cutler has tweaked their phrasing and is avoiding the edit filter that's trying to block them (909). Would someone mind reviewing some of his more recent rants (see [35] and recent history of Ryan Speedo Green, although those have been redeleted). The tone is up in hostily to the point many are being revdeleted for BLP violation. Thank you! Ravensfire (talk) 15:53, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

"PewDiePie vs T-series" vandalism

I have not seen a lot of this (mostly as I'm not doing a lot of anti-vandalism work), but I expect that there has been a lot of this recently because of this whole "pewdiepie vs t-series" thing. It should be relatively easy to catch with a filter, and catching it would certainly lighten the load on the vandal-fighters. [Username Needed] 15:40, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

I just came here to request that additions of "PewDiePie" be logged, since I've seen a lot while reverting vandalism. I'm not sure what Username Needed is asking for, but since it would likely be related, I'm posting this here rather than as its own request. --DannyS712 (talk) 02:55, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
I am requesting the blocking of "PewDiePie" and "T-series" when used by non-auto users on places which are not their respective pages. [Username Needed] 09:44, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
T-series seems too have far too many legitimate uses, but I'm logging new additions of "pewdiepie" at Special:AbuseFilter/912 and will set it as warn and tag assuming it is almost all vandalism as I expect it to be. Galobtter (pingó mió) 09:51, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Filter for "subscribe to" war

  • Task: Either monitor / disallow / warn the "subscribe to" war.
  • Reason: This is the latest in an inordinate number of examples related to this.
  • Code:

user_editcount < 50 &

page_namespace == 0 & ( 

   added_lines irlike "subscribe to p(ew|u|ue|uw|oo)(di|de|dee|die)(pi|pie|py)" |
   added_lines irlike "subscribe to (t|te|tee)[\-]?series"

)

  • I've just slapped that together, something more advanced may be needed, but it's a start.
SITH (talk) 19:58, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
Special:Abusefilter/614 is pretty comprehensive regarding subscribe to pewdiepie with sub(?:scrib(?:e|es|ed|ing))?\s*(?:to|2)\s*pew; but I'll see about expanding that regex based on the above. Galobtter (pingó mió) 20:27, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
 Done Galobtter (pingó mió) 09:02, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
I believe you meant this? [Username Needed] 09:55, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
Username Needed, yep, sorry, I was multi-tab reverting and copied the wrong one. SITH (talk) 10:11, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Category:Political and cultural purges

  • Task: In regard to the problem outlined in this AN/I report, to prevent IP editors from removing this category or commenting it out.
  • Reason: An Indonesian IP-hopping editor has been removing or commenting out this category from multiple articles, and has not responded to multiple warnings and calls for discussion. My understanding is that it's not possible to protect the category in such a way that prevents it from being deleted from articles, so it would appear that either playing "whack-a-mole" with multiple IPs (5 at this point) or an edit filter are the only viable solutions. Beyond My Ken (talk) 13:48, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Yep was watching that and saw the blast of hits. You got it before I could. And THAT is why we don't go right to disallow! And yes the !add should be re-added. Was making sure my code optimize was still catching the hits first. CrowCaw 19:59, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Also I don't think the filter needs to be private, as it will be patently obvious what actions are being denied, and there's no potential for LTAs adapting to the regex, as the category names are fixed (e.g. we won't see attempts to remove cat:Poooolitical and cullltural purges, since there' isn't one). CrowCaw 20:25, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
    Crow, Beyond My Ken already mentioned the LTA commenting out the categories (which the IP appears to have done, despite even no filter), and I can think of more BEANSy ways to get around the filter that we could try combating - but if you think it should be public feel free to change the filter. Galobtter (pingó mió) 20:30, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
I just noticed this request after making one of my own for this vandal. @Crow and Galobtter: The edits that I've seen are all coming from the ranges 111.94.0.0/16 and 118.137.0.0/16. The anon has been removing the category by either deleting it altogether, or by placing html comment tags around it. —DoRD (talk)​ 13:58, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the note; @Crow, I think for this specific case, (despite my comment above :)) we may not actually want to check added_lines, because otherwise commenting out the categories doesn't get caught. Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:09, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
  • @Galobtter: We can try removing that test. It may end up that any edit to the cat section triggers it, if the EF thinks that it constitutes a removal. It's logging-only still, so certainly worth a shot. @DoRD: Should we combine filters? CrowCaw 18:36, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

CiteSeerX and Citation bot

  • Task: Block Citation bot from adding CiteSeerX links after refusal of developer to obey WP:ELNEVER and rapid-fire addition of bad links
  • Reason: See below.

Background: CiteSeerX is a web scraper for academic papers. It finds free copies of papers on the web, and links them to the metadata for (often non-free) published papers. In many cases the copies it scrapes were posted by the author directly or on a preprint server or institutional repository, or are free publisher copies. CiteSeerX's landing pages show the provenance of each copy. Our citation templates provide a parameter to link to these, and it is useful to do so because it has better persistence when links go down, can collect multiple links to a single paper, and can automatically convert files in old formats (mostly .ps) to more usable formats (.pdf). Because they show provenance to an author or publisher, these links are ok to keep and should not be blocked or removed.

However, a significant minority of CiteSeerX papers (maybe 10% at a rough guess) have only other sources, such as course reading lists put together by instructors who are not an author of the paper, collections of related research work by researchers who are not an author, or possibly even deliberately copyright-violating sites such as SciHub. (I have seen multiple instances of the first two, none clearly identifiable as the last.) These may be justifiable legally as fair use by the person uploading the paper (and in many cases these people are in other jurisdictions where US law does not apply) but they do not meet WP:ELNEVER, which requires us to avoid posting links to copyrighted works unless they have a clear provenance from the author or publisher or meet our own very strict requirements of fair use.

Enter Citation bot. Citation bot performs a generally-valuable service cleaning up the citation templates on our articles. It has occasional glitches where it makes some citations worse rather than better, but the developer is responsive to these and they are usually quickly fixed. One area that has not been quickly fixed is that Citation bot automatically adds CiteSeerX links, and (as a bot) is incapable of distinguishing the good ones from the bad ones. The developer has pushed back against changes in this feature, has suggested that because the link goes to a landing page rather than directly to a pdf file it's ok [36] (false), has suggested that because CiteSeerX has a takedown service it's ok (same link, false), has labeled this issue not a bug, and refused to fix it (same link). A recent bug report on the same topic [37] has yielded much discussion by others but the only response from the actual developer was "CiteSeerX does not appear to be violating copyright law in any way" (pointing as evidence to the earlier discussion which came to no such conclusion), which is irrelevant for whether links to CiteSeerX violate ELNEVER. The Citation bot edits in question are labeled as "User-activated" but no user other than Citation bot can be identified as responsible for the edit.

In order to stop this continued bad behavior without taking the more drastic steps of entirely blocking all Citation bot edits or all CiteSeerX links, I would like to propose that all edits from User:Citation bot that add a CiteSeerX link or parameter be blocked. If it becomes possible for Citation bot to make edits on behalf of actual human users, those edits are listed as being made by those users, and a human actually is given an opportunity to check whether the link is ok before saving, then those should not be blocked, but that does not describe the current situation.

Examples of the problematic edits:

  • Special:Diff/867705073: "The complexity of theorem-proving procedures" (Cook) is linked to a preprint from a non-author course web site
  • Special:Diff/882384271 "Efficient planarity testing" (Hopcroft/Tarjan) is linked to a web page of a non-author researcher, David P. Dobkin
  • Special:Diff/882429046 "Crossing numbers and hard Erdős problems in discrete geometry" (Székely) is linked to web pages of two non-author researchers (Micha Sharir and Bill Gasarch)
  • Special:Diff/882394979 "How to prove yourself: practical solutions to identification and signature problems" (Fiat and Shamir) is linked to a collection of cryptography papers at an institution in Taiwan, not associated with an author
  • Special:Diff/882473213 "The emergence of autobiographical memory: a social cultural developmental theory" (Nelson/Fivush) is sourced to a course web site by a non-author instructor
  • Special:Diff/882502016 "Solution of a large-scale traveling-salesman problem" (Dantzig/Fuller/Johnson) is sourced to sites by three different instructors or researchers, none of whom is an author
  • Special:Diff/882512449 "A scheduling model for reduced CPU energy" (Yao/Demers/Shenker) is sourced to four links by two different non-authors
  • Special:Diff/882513040 "Of Cheese and Crust: A Proof of the Pizza Conjecture and Other Tasty Results" (Mabry/Deiermann) is sourced to a non-author researcher, Bill Gasarch

There are many many more like these. I am seeing dozens of edits that add CiteSeerX links per day just on my watchlist, of which maybe 20% violate ELNEVER (bigger than the fraction of bad pages on CiteSeerX because many of these edits add multiple links). If we can't set up an edit filter for them, then my next step would be to push for a block (a human user making this kind of mess would have been blocked long ago) but I think the other constructive work of Citation bot is useful enough that blocking these edits by filter would be preferable, if possible.

All of the current spate of edits have both "citeseerx" and "user-activated" in the edit summary, so that would be an easy way to filter them for now. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:39, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

I support (block "citeseerx" + "user-activated") as a temporary stop-gap measure while the bug is being worked out. Additionally, any addition of |citeseerx=10.1.1.<whatever> or http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu could be tagged for review. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:50, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
How long should I expect to wait for something to happen here? Meanwhile, Citation bot continues to add these copyvio links [38]. Maybe we need a temporary indef-block until a proper filter can be set up? —David Eppstein (talk) 23:41, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
@David Eppstein and Headbomb: My opinion on this is that: This is (doable and) fine if it is a temporary measure (until the bot is fixed) but not as a permanent one, i.e if the issue is the operators refusing or are unwilling to fix an issue, I don't think we should be creating a precedence for using filters these way (each filter does have a cost, and I don't think there should be a precedence of that one can violate BOTPOL/ELNEVER or other policies/guidelines and other people should be sort of cleaning after that). Currently it seems to be more the latter so I'm pretty reluctant to use a filter here. I think the best way forward then would be a discussion at WP:BOTN or WP:AN leading to a consensus that the bot should be changed (or else be blocked).
Otherwise, it would be better if a hack or something was done to the bot so that it did not add cite seer x links until they can be attributed to an user (or even not at all, since most people expect automatically generated edits to be generally fine (and so don't check them much), and would expect additions that are problematic 20% of the time to not be done by a bot). One reason would be that people would be confused if they ran citation bot on a page but it did not make any edits. Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:00, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
@Galobtter:, there is consensus that the bot should be changed. The issue is that these changes are apparently complex, and take time to deploy. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:06, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
Headbomb I'm seeing two issues here. One is that the bot should show which user is activating it. On that it looks like work is being done. The other is that the bot should stop adding Citeseerx links. On that one, it looks like the operator is not willing to change how the bot works. So, does resolving issue one - showing what user is activating the bot - remove the need for this filter? If yes, then this would seem a temporary issue; if not, then it would seem a permanent issue. Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:16, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
@Galobtter: The major issue, IMO, is that the user who activates the bot isn't reported, and Citation's bot is designed so that the activator takes responsibility for activating the bot. In practice, this doesn't really cause any harm (the bot's actual edits are fine the vast majority of the time) most of the time. The issue is the some of the time part, because the bot's logic is designed with the "s/he who activates the bots reviews the bot's edits". The CiteSeerX stuff can be added when someone does review the edit, but right now whoever that someone is cannot be identified and educated at the moment when they fail to do so.
So two filters are possible. A wide-ranging filter "user-activated", since the bot's edits should be attributed when problematic edits are made. Or a more targeted "user-activated + CiteSeerX", since those are, in practice, the actual problematic edits. (I'm fine with either temporary filters, personally.)Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:25, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
Independently of that, there should be a 'CiteSeerX' tagging filter, since people may well add manual link to CiteSeerX not checking for copyrights issues. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:27, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
My position is that CiteSeerX links should only be added by a person who takes responsibility for checking that the links have an appropriate provenance to an author, author-uploaded preprint archive, or publisher. If the editor who activated the bot can be identified, that's a step towards that but still not the whole story. It also needs to be the case that the bot asks the editor to check the links before adding them rather than running off and doing things on its own once triggered. Otherwise we will get into a situation where some users get a bunch of bad edits, and blocked for adding copyvio links to Wikipedia, when really their only fault is that they used the bot. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:57, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
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