Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested/Archive 18

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Common vandalism: Among us??

See also: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents § Vandalism across various articles
  • Task: Log/tag/warn/disallow (whichever is the most appropriate) this kind of pure vandalism.
  • Reason: [1] [2] ... The key text appears to be "Sus" and possibly "Among us" in the edit summary... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:57, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
    @RandomCanadian: Stumbled across one of these by chance. Testing in 1014 (hist · log) (combined with 69/420 test). Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:55, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
Suffusion of Yellow Seems it caught this, but that may be due to other things in that edit too... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 15:27, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
Suffusion of Yellow Caught by 1111, but not by 1014: [3] RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 00:45, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
@RandomCanadian: Thanks! Seems I forgot to switch from rlike to irlike when I added a non-numeric test. Facepalm Facepalm Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 02:28, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
FP here (that's the 69 filter); and although this was proper vandalism, it probably needs to be investigated further because it's possible there will be actual FPs with phrases like "is suspect[ed]" or things like that. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 03:42, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
@RandomCanadian, GPinkerton, and Malcolmxl5: See 1124 (hist · log) (warn+tag for a little while at least). I had wanted to put this in 614, but I'm still concerned about FPs getting lost in the log. This has many, many "creative" variants so the filter will never catch everything. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:18, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
Set to disallow. Will have to remove plain "among us" (with the space) at some point; it's too common. But right now it's mostly vandalism. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 16:53, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
Glad to see this - there seems to have been a spike in this silliness recently. I imagine some TikTokker or YouTuber or other spurred it... ƒirefly ( t · c ) 17:52, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
And it's already caught its first fish. Top work Suffusion of Yellow! ƒirefly ( t · c ) 18:33, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
Good work, Suffusion of Yellow. I periodically search the wiki for 'Sussus’, 'Amongus -Fungus' and ‘Sus imposter' and have seen nothing for days. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 13:37, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
Apparently we're now having AC users doing this kind of BS too... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 22:13, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
Most (but not all) other edits look good. Maybe they were drunk? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:42, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
It may be worth checking for impost[eo]r, as this case uses the O spelling (caught due to sus). Certes (talk) 22:41, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
Added. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:42, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
  • Picked up a couple: 'sus' and 'imposter' from the helpfully named User:Amogusimposters. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 08:59, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
  • [moved from section below --SoY] This character: ඞ should be added to the filter as it looks like an Among Us character. It is used by some IP vandals. NASCARfan0548 ↗ 19:43, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
  • The symbol ඞ has been added to various articles with 'Sus' in the title or article; see Special:Contributions/109.42.114.78. Seems to have some relevance in the 'Among us' world. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 21:23, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
  • It looks (if you squint a bit and zoom in / enlarge the character) like one of the Among Us spacemen. I’d say add it to the filter but only when it’s surrounded by word boundaries to limit false positives. ƒirefly ( t · c ) 21:34, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
  • @NASCARfan0548 and Malcolmxl5: Doing a quick check in 1014 (hist · log) first; not sure how common legit uses of that character are. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:36, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
    Few articles legitimately contain "ඞ", and almost all of them also mention Sinhala or Sinhalese. Certes (talk) 22:06, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
    Added, with word boundaries. Not checking for Sinhala/Sinhalese unless there are FPs; at some point I'd like to merge this into 614 (hist · log). Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:18, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
    @Suffusion of Yellow, another issue is that ᘳ is now being used in the Chuck/Sneed vandalism. See this. aeschyIus (talk) 03:46, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
    @AeschyIus: That one surprisingly turned out to be (mostly) not only an LTA, but the sort of LTA who reads this page. So no more public discussion about this, unfortunately. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 16:57, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Could be worth checking page title, per stuff like this. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:49, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Could the filter be modified to catch the phrase "when the imposter is sus"? [4], [5]. Pahunkat (talk) 15:26, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
    The phrase does match the filter; I believe those two edits were ignored due to their edit_delta being over 500. @Suffusion of Yellow: is 1000 safe without resulting in many more FPs? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:18, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
    There were some FPs when I was first testing, e.g. Special:AbuseLog/29084352. Maybe I'll check edit_delta only for plain "among us", which is the source of most FPs. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 17:53, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
    Facepalm Facepalm - should have spotted that, thanks ProcrastinatingReader. Pahunkat (talk) 18:48, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
    And  Done. edit_delta check only applies to "among us" now. Also other nonsense should be stopped on page titles containing "among us". Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 18:54, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
  • [6]... (repetition did not disallow that? or is that another mainspace-only filter?). @Suffusion of Yellow: If you can do something about this. The more radical solution would be semi-protecting this talk page, but usual practice is to shy away from that if it's relatively low volume like here so not sure. Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 13:30, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
  • @Suffusion of Yellow: [7] "Sussy" should have been caught (it's not in the filter log AFAICS)... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 15:02, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
    @RandomCanadian: Added to 1124. And yes, the "repeating characters" filter only applies mainspace, for better or worse. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 19:26, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Here is a message for it. It looks like you added sus to a page. We have revoked your autoconfirmed status.2601:246:CA01:31C0:9083:E369:A827:B9A3 (talk) 23:33, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Sheesh

Add the word "sheesh" to the list of vandal meme phrases. It is often used in vandalism and has very few good users. aeschylus (talk) 17:49, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

"eat kack" LTA

  • Task: All pages, any addition of "kack", which isn't a commonly used word and should have few false positives, should be disallowed by a filter. Perhaps include the ! at the end of kack in the filter.
  • Reason: A bunch of different IP addresses come along and simply add "eat kack!" with no variation to articles until blocked.
  • Diffs: [8], also every contribution by that IP. There's older ones too on other IPs.

Gatemansgc (TɅ̊LK) 21:57, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

  • @Gatemansgc: They were the "eat cack" LTA until I added that to a filter a few weeks back. They became the "eak kack" LTA about five minutes after that. I might try some other tricks, but I won't be discussing them here. Thanks. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:00, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
    @Suffusion of Yellow: Good luck with whatever secret filter you're doing the work on! Though I enjoy racking up edits by spam-refreshing the contributions page of a fast vandal, I enjoy more knowing vandals are being stopped in their tracks! Is there a LTA page for them or are they WP:DENY'd? Gatemansgc (TɅ̊LK) 06:11, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
    Definitely WP:DENY. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:41, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
    LTA pages are only made when there is a reason to know them. For example, serious harassment, long-term spam/advertising of a certain person, making certain types of sleepers, good-faith accounts, and other. This is just like any other vandal - we don't need to give them attention, as there is nothing useful to know about them. aeschylus (talk) 23:11, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Disallow large swathe of romanized Hindi in articles

  • Task: Disallow addition of large swathe of romanized Hindi to article space by an IP hopping editor geolocating to Odisha, India.
  • Reason: I’ve noticed since February, swathe of text written in what may be romanized Hindi appearing in articles, often BLPs. The text appear to have no meaning and appears to be straight up vandalism. Today’s effort resulted in this. Ullu is another that suffered badly earlier this month. Perhaps there’s a few common phrases that can be added to an appropriate filter?
  • Sample diffs: [9][10][11]][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]

Malcolmxl5 (talk) 11:19, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

@Malcolmxl5, the text also seems to be offensive. It appears for contain obscenities in Hindi, though I'm no expert. I've seen this maybe once. @ProcrastinatingReader, any ideas? aeschylus (talk) 02:05, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
The text appear to have no meaning This is not true. The text is offensive, and extremely so. One of the sentences translates to "I'll rape all the women in your house" and that's like one of the milder parts. All offensive words have been altered with diacritics, presumably to bypass existing filters. – SD0001 (talk) 03:23, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
And probably to foil anyone's attempts to simply paste into google translate, so that people will think it's simple vandalism not horrible vandalism? Gatemansgc (TɅ̊LK) 06:08, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
@Malcolmxl5 and @Gatemansgc, this can easily be bypassed. Press "Swap text" twice on Google translate. aeschylus (talk) 12:09, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
Oh dear, all the more reason to stop this. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 11:06, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Could Filter 1022 be used for this? --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 13:49, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
    @Malcolmxl5, I don't think so, as the Dalit LTA had some specific numbers and places that could be filtered. This user just places highly offensive text with no personal info and floods it into articles. Maybe we could make Special:AbuseFilter/965 antispoof? The user appears to spoof the profanity in order to let it pass. aeschylus (talk) 14:06, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
    Yes, Filter 965 looks a better bet. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 14:11, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
    965 looks accurate, as it seems like that's what's being bypassed with the accents. Testing a quick version in 1. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:22, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
    And some of them are bypassed due to length. Added a check for that too. Will see what it picks up I suppose. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:39, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
    Bingo! --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 22:36, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
    Merged changes into disallow filter (965) owing to the high volume nature of the vandal and nature of the abuse, and the fact that there's no FPs in the day I ran it in filter 1. Will monitor for any FPs that arise. Some tweaks for performance may be necessary, since the diff delta check was dropped. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:20, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
    Performance seems fine. Out of interest, Suffusion of Yellow, the same code as in filter 965 ATM (taking 0.2ms to run) but with a & check below it (to make sure it didn't match the then-existing 965 filter) seemed to take 1.5ms on average to run (at the time I disabled it). Why would this be? Surely this filter matches a minority of actions in the first place, and even on the ones it does match the extra check (at best) should add another 0.2ms run time? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:34, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
    @ProcrastinatingReader, how many ms is too much? aeschylus (talk) 19:37, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
    @ProcrastinatingReader: Filters are run in order. The first filter to look at any lazy-loaded variables (e.g. user_groups and added_lines), gets "blamed" for the time taken to compute those variables. And function results are cached, so your filter was also blamed for the ccnorm(added_lines) call, too, both in condition count and runtime. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:04, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Looks like they are changing tactics a little[31], maybe? --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 02:05, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
    I can't see that revision, can you email it @Malcolmxl5:? ProcSock (talk) 02:14, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
    Or maybe it's similar to this? That's pretty weird if so, it looks like maybe ccnorm isn't sanitising the Ü (as it seems the filter should be matching that diff if that letter is changed to U)? As an aside, it seems the vandal is technically sophisticated to some degree, and a good chance that they're reading this. ProcSock (talk) 02:21, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
    Yes, similiar. Just one line. I’ve undone the rev del for now so you can all see. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 02:31, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
    Ah, I see. Oshwah this is T27619. Any ideas on workarounds? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 02:33, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
  • @Malcolmxl5, maybe a range block is in order. They are obviously abusing proxies and other shared IP addresses. aeschylus (talk) 16:28, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
    They are hopping between IPs and ISPs in the Odisha region, always mobile web edits using the visual editor. I’ve done a lot of rev del in the last day or so and can go back over my logs to compile a comprehensive list of IPs to look for ranges. I did notice a rangeblock in in the 117.x.x.x area (which I can’t find now). --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 16:37, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Changes made to filter to address some of those. Also making the filter private, for the usual reasons. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:28, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
    @ProcrastinatingReader, is there any way to make edit filters cooperate with recent changes feeds like Huggle? That would greatly help track this user. aeschylus (talk) 22:55, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
    I'm not sure but it's a good question (one I've wondered before). Also I think Huggle has IRC functionality, and MusikAnimal has a bot that can listen to certain filters and post changes into an IRC channel, so that could be a possible way too. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:01, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
    @ProcrastinatingReader, where can I start further discussion on this? aeschylus (talk) 21:04, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
    Ah, I missed this. Try WT:HUGGLE or the task of the maintainers? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:25, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
  • And they’re back[32]. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 13:13, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
    Can we just prevent additions which consist of the same sentence (broadly construed) repeated multiple times, whether in Hindi, English or gibberish? Certes (talk) 17:20, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
  • And again[33] (already rev del, can email). Have blocked 59.92.74.0/24 for three months, virtually every edit this year is this stuff. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 13:27, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Friendly reminder this is not the ideal venue to discuss how to stop long-term abuse, as the vandal may very well be watching and will adapt accordingly. I recommend moving this discussion to the mailing list. — MusikAnimal talk 18:31, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Large typo edit

  • Task: Tag edits with "typo" in the edit summary that change >100 bytes. This would most likely have some false positives and may catch good-faith edits so tagging would be appropriate, maybe also exclude auto- or extended-confirmed?
  • Reason: Large edits that claim to just fix typos are occasionally (but not always) done to avoid getting spotted, and are regardless an inaccurate edit summary.
  • Diffs: 1 2 3 4

◎ | melecie | t 13:07, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Seconded, but we should probably limit it to summaries consisting only of "typo", "Fixed typos" and similar. (/^ *([Ff]ix(ed|ing)?)? *[Tt]ypos? *$/ would be my first stab). There's nothing wrong with adding 5000 bytes with "Add history; fix typos", though it might have been better split over two edits. We could also include other canned or common summaries such as "Fixed grammar", "Added content" when the page has shrunk, etc. See also Special:AbuseFilter/633. Certes (talk) 14:14, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
I think in the past these have not really been monitored? eg 697 ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:23, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Change otrs-member group name in #642

Hello, please change otrs-member group name in special:AbuseFilter/642 to vrt-permissions, which is the new technical group name (see phab:T280615). Thanks, Martin Urbanec (talk) 10:23, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Done, thanks. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:36, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Randomly changing "Israel" to "Palestine"

I have noted a series of IP addresses indiscriminately change "Israel" to "Palestine". Is anything possible for that? aeschylus (talk) 23:13, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

  • The problem would be that if we had someone incorrectly changing "Palestine" to "Israel" (it has happened in the past) then the filter would prevent reverting it. If such a filter is to exist it should prevent both switches. Black Kite (talk) 00:19, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
  • @Black Kite, is this some LTA, or is it a bunch IPs that are pushing a POV? aeschylus (talk) 01:09, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
  • I've been noticing these too over the past weeks while fixing links to disambiguation pages. It seems to be just a bunch of unrelated IPs. A good thing is that since Palestine is a disambiguation page, new links there will always be noticed. But that doesn't help when links are not involved, of course, and it is indeed worrying that some of the changes wouldn't have been noticed if they hadn't involved a new link to a disambiguation page. Lennart97 (talk) 13:40, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
    @Aeschylus, Black Kite, and Lennart97: Testing at 1014 (hist · log). Galobtter tried something a while back, but I guess it never went anywhere. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:34, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
    @Suffusion of Yellow, when will the filter be ready to be moved to it's own one? aeschylus (talk) 12:48, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
    @Aeschylus, Black Kite, and Lennart97: See 1154 (hist · log). I called it "Possible ARBPIA issue" which I don't really like but at least it's vague and doesn't accuse the editor of anything. IMO warning might just inflame the situation, and disallowing almost certainly will. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:47, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
    @Suffusion of Yellow, how does warning and/or disallowing inflame the situation? aeschylus (talk) 23:27, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
    @Aeschylus: I suspect it will be perceived as the filter attempting to enforce a POV. No one is going to check that the filter warns on both I->P and P->I. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:35, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
    @Suffusion of Yellow, what about tagging with "Possible ARBPIA issue"? This will draw more attention to the edits without outright blocking them. aeschylus (talk) 16:51, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Tag for unexplained numerical changes, with some exceptions

  • Task: Detect when numbers/figures in an article are slightly changed without explanation (with the exception of sports and TV articles, which seem to change frequently)
  • Reason: I'm seeing a lot of hard-to-detect vandalism in which numbers in an article are changed. It would be nice to have some sort of flag or tag so these are easier to spot and vet. I should mention that I recently made an idiot of myself on ANI about this because I thought some numerical updates were vandalism that weren't since people sometimes legitimately update sports scores, numbers of TV episodes aired, and so on.
  • Diffs: [34][35][36]

Cheerful Squirrel (talk) 13:21, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

@Drmies: I'm pinging you since you had some strong feelings about this and I don't want you to think I'm making an end-run around you. Cheerful Squirrel (talk) 13:24, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
See also Number change, 420 and Large number vandalism. Certes (talk) 14:48, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

GiantSnowman, a lot of this kind of stuff happens on your turf, so maybe you have some thoughts. Personally I strongly dislike those unexplained updates (if that's what they are--it's hard to tell unless you're watching the match or whatever), but we're probably talking about thousands of edits per week, if not per day. Drmies (talk) 15:46, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Yeah it's a real chore sorting through unexplained stats updates on soccer players, working out which are AGF (but possibly incomplete i.e. game is updated but not date, or a player scores without playing etc.) and which are vandalism. GiantSnowman 16:43, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
Is it misguided to think about a policy change for not storing sports scores on Wikipedia for this reason? Cheerful Squirrel (talk) 17:05, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
Banning sports stats? Unthinkable. GiantSnowman 17:23, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
Thank you for the feedback! I'll drop that notion then. Cheerful Squirrel (talk) 17:27, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
@Cheerful Squirrel, however, there are good number filters. For example, we can filter changing the birth date to the future or over 150 years ago (100% used in vandalism). You can also filter the numbers 69 and 420 as a tag (possible vandalism) which will allow good faith edits to stay and vandals to get reverted faster. @GiantSnowman and @Drmies, any thoughts? aeschylus (talk) 18:23, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
Definitely. GiantSnowman 18:25, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
Future birth dates are 99.99% vandalism. Certes (talk) 19:30, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

You also get edits like this - what does this mean? Are you saying he has left the current club? If so, has he signed for a new club? or is it just vandalism/test? GiantSnowman 10:50, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Jake Reeves has just left (or at least arranged to leave) Notts County,[37] though it would be nice if the article and/or edit summary said so. Certes (talk) 11:32, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
More generally, sports articles are unusual in that Wikipedia seems to have become a news feed. There are few other areas where people add statistics expecting to update them weekly – maybe just TV episode lists and ongoing news such as COVID numbers. Certes (talk) 11:37, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Deba Dakaj

Binksternet (talk) 18:55, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Press TV has been deprecated. I'm requesting an edit filter/warning for users who attempt to newly use it in articles.

I'm aware that there's a warning that pops up when people try to add references in-text to The Daily Mail. I'm wondering if we'd be able to also add one to the use of Press TV, a recently deprecated source that publishes Holocaust denial, provided that this is something we typically do for deprecated sources. I know that only administrators have the ability to add edit notices, so I am making a request here that a similar filter be put in place for Press TV, which has 673 articles using its .com TLD and 1219 articles using its .ir TLD at this time. I'm not sure if this is typical of all deprecated sources, though if it isn't then please feel free to take this with a grain of salt.— Mikehawk10 (talk) 02:58, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Mikehawk10 Requesting an edit filter are done @WP:EFR. Jerm (talk) 03:09, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
@Jerm: Thank you! I'll move this there. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 03:16, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Proposed Filter

  • Task: All non-userspace pages, any addition of "presstv.ir", "presstv.tv", "presstv.co.uk", and/or "presstv.com" should be met with a warning, similar to what happens when we use The Daily Mail. This should be enough to catch the use of the URLs for Press TV while remaining narrowly tailored enough to avoid tagging edits involving other entities that are similarly named.
  • Reason: As I note above, Press TV has been deprecated. The site's ".com" ending and ".ir" ending are cited in an approximate 2000 articles currently, indicating that a warning may be useful in assisting editors in not using the deprecated source.
  • Diffs: closure of RfC.

— Mikehawk10 (talk) 03:26, 25 June 2021 (UTC)


It's probably just as well to note that, on Tuesday 22 June, 33 sites including PressTV.com were seized by the US government, meaning that their content cannot be accessed at their original domain names any longer. See this Slate article: "PressTV was the best known of 33 websites whose domains were seized by U.S. authorities on Tuesday. According to the Justice Department’s statement, 30 of these sites were controlled by the Iranian Islamic Radio and Television Union, which is under the control of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the powerful military force that exudes significant control over Iran’s foreign policy and economy. Others sites seized included Al-Masirah, the news service of the Iran-backed Houthi rebel movement; and Palestine Today, a pro-Hamas news outlet. The U.S. also seized three websites linked to Kataib Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite militia group that has been blamed for attacking U.S. troops in Iraq. The legal basis for the IRTVU seizures came from a 2018 Donald Trump executive order, which authorizes sanctions against foreign entities involved in interference in U.S. elections. The U.S. has seized Iranian sites accused of spreading disinformation before, but none as prominent as PressTV, the country’s flagship international broadcaster launched in 2007."     ←   ZScarpia   16:28, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Before I saw this request, I put presstv.com and presstv.ir in the filter anyway! presstv.co.uk doesn't work, and presstv.tv has been grabbed by a domain squatter; neither have any article hits - David Gerard (talk) 11:01, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Filter to block image removal by a sock

{{resolved}}

  • Task: Block edits removing "svg" files (or any file in general) from Talking Tom & Friends (TV series) by non-autoconfirmed editors
  • Reason: There is a sockpuppeteer who keeps on removing all images from the article. He does it only once every 2 or so weeks but it's now annoying and it would be better to block those edits altogether.
  • Diffs: [40], [41], [42], [43], [44], [45] and [46]

Tube·of·Light 07:10, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Consider requesting PC or semi protection at WP:RFPP. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 08:33, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
I did consider that but he is a once-in-a-fortnight vandal so I don't know if protection is warranted. Besides there are still some other IPs and new editors who are productive (besides, if we protect the article, inexperienced editors may not know that they can help by creating an edit request, though I do concede that non-productive edits by newcomers amd IPs outnumber productive ones). Tube·of·Light 10:14, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
PS - never mind. I realised just now that PCP won't stop new editors from making positive contributions. I'll go to WP:RfPP. Tube·of·Light 11:08, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Ghanaian phone number spam

  • Task: Block edits with the phone number "0240961557", "0240042887" or similar
  • Reason: A spammer or a group of spammers from Ghana are spamming said numbers into articles especially those pertaining to Ghanaian food and beverage products. Perhaps a regex of these would at least deter them from attempting to slip them again into articles, based on this number scheme.
  • Diffs: See this one, this one or this one for details.

Blake Gripling (talk) 01:54, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

@Blakegripling ph, I concur. I just saw this and Special:Contributions/154.160.0.0/19. @Suffusion of Yellow, can you please make a filter? aeschylus (talk) 00:05, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
Tracking. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:55, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
The year-long edit war over the phone number of Guinness Ghana Breweries provides other examples. Certes (talk) 10:04, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
@ProcrastinatingReader, can you please add 0240040324 per Special:Diff/1021826598 and 0551434002 per Special:Diff/1021911622? These two numbers are being used for spamming. aeschylus (talk) 00:43, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
Noting 793 for the record. I think I tracked this for a while but was either missing too much or had too many FPs and didn't get around to narrowing it down; may look again if nobody beats me to it. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:37, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
I've been checking irregularly for certain patterns and haven't spotted any for the last month. Certes (talk) 16:33, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Perennial addition of "Jew" or "Jewish" to articles

Was informed about 982. (non-admin closure)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


dudhhrContribs 07:23, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Long-term addition of nonsense pages

  • Task: Prevent repetitive spamming of "word salad" pages that has been going on for years.
  • Reason: Someone, for years, has been repeatedly re-creating the same nonsense pages and spamming them across Wikipedia and other user-editable sites. The content is always the same copied and pasted strings; someone took the time to list them here. For history, see [50] and [51]. It was suggested here that an edit filter be given a shot.
  • Diffs: [52], [53], various deleted pages including [54], [55], [56], [57], [58], and many more.

Home Lander (talk) 19:43, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Adding Wikilinks to common words

  • Task: Catch issues with overlinking, catch test edits in article space, catch edits where common words are liked to unexpected targets.
  • Reason: There are a number of very common short words in the English language which should not ordinarily be linked in articles. I suggested this filter in response to an ANI post I made (here) where an IP range had been vandalising by adding inappropriate links to articles, some of which included things like linking the word "The" to the article on the holocaust, or linking the word "In" to the article on India. Certes Then followed up by saying that they monitor incoming links to a number of pages on common words like "A" as adding links to them is a common test edit for newcomers. Checking for links added to these type of common words could also spot issues related to overlinking, especially the worst kind of overlinking where every word in a sentence is converted to a wikilink. In other cases an editor may have added a legitimate link to an article, but have done it in such a way that it is attached to a common word that is likely to surprise readers when they click it.
I propose that a filter should look for additions which match the forms [[foo]] or |foo]] where "foo" matches one of the common words that should not ordinarily be linked. Checking for strings beginning with both double brackets and a pipe is necessary to catch piped links.
Not sure on the exact list of words to check, but a good starting point would probably be something like: "a, an, and, as, at, be, by, if, in, it, its, of, on, or, so, the, to". This will of course require some experimentation, words that generate a large amount of false hits should be removed, and there may be other words that are worth adding.

192.76.8.91 (talk) 19:11, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

The first few 10 or 20 common words should catch most cases. New editors occasionally add good new links to the letter A but it's rarer than testing and vandalism. Certes (talk) 20:04, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

"Julian Williams" LTA

S0091 (talk) 20:46, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

User:DeepNikita

This needs to be some sort of filter that does not disallow. Rather, it silently logs it and can only be patrolled by helpers. This is an LTA that targets the pages BS, Konjac, 74, and similar. They make subtle changes that are hard to decipher unless you are familiar with them (ask Zzuuzz). The summaries often ask wierd questions and the edits often mention Michelle Enrile, who died of choking on konjac, Kristoffer Hebert (often shortened to "Kris"). An LTA page may be useful, as this user is hard to spot and the edits are not blatantly vandalism. aeschylus (talk) 01:42, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Difficult to do anything without diffs, but I suggest sending this into the mailing list. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:48, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Prevent non-admins from adding block templates

  • Task: This filter should prevent the addition of such misleading templates. I see some of them are already tracked via Z numbers (see the list at Template:Z1#List of assigned z number templates) - I'm not sure if that includes everything, but it's a good start.
  • Reason: There's no reason for anybody besides admins to be adding block templates, and this should be rather easy to implement by checking for Z numbers (or the unsubstituted templates, which usually contain "block" at some point).
  • Diffs: [68]

RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 12:35, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Sure. Tracking 1. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:46, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Addition of bad words

This edit slipped through after the IP triggered 384 with a previous effort. Please can we prevent similar additions? Certes (talk) 15:26, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

"Twat" is filtered in 189. I don't know if there's a particular reason why it's not filtered outside of BLPs. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:01, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
A quick check found no other inappropriate use of the word, so this problem may not be significant. Certes (talk) 16:16, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Filter for edits with edit summary "typo", but which are actually extensive

Task: Flag edits with edit summary if typo/fixed typo that where more than a couple-few characters are added or subtracted.

Reason: "fixed typo" and "typo" are common edit summaries (I think one of them is a listed choice). There's essentially never a good reason for an edit with that summary to have +- character count of more than a few characters. If so, it's usually vandalism, and if not that then multiple changes of "color" to "colour" and that sort of thing, or at any rate a mendacious or at least misleading edit summary. There're verrry few cases where "fixed typo" and (say) the addition or subtraction of 15 characters go together.

Dif: [69] (It was a couple sentences of libelous nonsense which was in place for over a month.)

Thanking you for your consideration, Herostratus (talk) 14:20, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

633 and 970 are similar. It might be better to tighten it if there are too many hits and nobody is reviewing it. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:59, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
See also archives 7, 17, 18. Certes (talk) 15:04, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
OK. Well there was a very similar one just last June. OK canned edit summaries are flagged (I don't know where or to whom, but I'm assuming that works). But this is a little different than that, it'd be tagging just one canned summary -- "fixed typos" --, and then if and only if the actual edit added or subtracted n characters -- like say eight. (Obviously this excludes a lot of misuse of "fixed typo", but at least it'll flag some, and perhaps the worst ones). I'm sure other canned summaries are compatible with large character-number changes, so I'm just concerned with "fixed typo" (and any others incompatible with large character-number changes, if any).
There's no action item from the June request -- no checkmark or X or whatever you guys use (if you do). It's unclear where it stands (I'm not familiar with the process). But I trust you guys, I'll leave it to, and if it doesn't seem worthwhile that's fine. Also thanks for your work on these filters, they rule. Herostratus (talk) 17:54, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Warning for attitude -> altitude

  • Task: Warn people who want to "fix" attitude to altitude - with any meaning, but it's probably most common in aerospace articles because altitude looks like a plausible option there. This is typically a good faith edit from users who don't know attitude is a word and it's wrong with ~100% probability. A warning would avoid these edits.
  • Reason: If the edit goes unnoticed we get an error in the articles that's hard to spot.
  • Diffs: Most recent example here, I have seen multiple other edits like that in the past.

Don't know if it's common enough to warrant a filter rule. If there is another way to find these edits that's fine, too. mfb (talk) 00:20, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Edit filters for requested articles pages

Moved to WP:BOTREQ

RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:42, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Blank RfPP requests

  • Task: Warn editors when they submit blank RfPP requests
  • Reason: Ever since the new system was implemented, there have been an uptick of default requests, particularly on the /Decrease section
  • Diffs: * [70]

lomrjyo(talk•contrib) 02:01, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

This may or may not have something to do with WT:Twinkle#RPP bug. Certes (talk) 08:47, 31 July 2021 (UTC)
I think not, at least directly. Most if not all are from new users who won't be using Twinkle. If you go to RFPP and click the button, you're presented with the pre-fill text, including Example Article Name, which is what many of these requests are (eg Special:PermaLink/1036169926). For the /Edit subpage, you get Name of page you are requesting an edit to, as seen in Special:PermaLink/1035915138. I think we've already tried to tweak the messaging; I'm in favour of a filter for this, along the lines of 987 (hist · log). We just need a suitable error message. (courtesy ping) -- zzuuzz (talk) 09:08, 31 July 2021 (UTC)
We can probably re-use MediaWiki:Abusefilter-warning-empty-edit-request for the /Edit requests, but for the /Decrease section we're going to need something different. I haven't noticed a problem with /Increase yet - probably because people are not going to be automatically guided there. -- zzuuzz (talk) 10:01, 31 July 2021 (UTC)
(duplicate post from WT:RPP) I have quite boldly implemented a new JavaScript form for the "Increase" side. If it looks OK, could we use it for the Decrease and Edit workflows, too? Enterprisey (talk!) 09:44, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
@Enterprisey: Might as well improve the "Submit an edit request" form too (here in incognito, for example). The amount of times blank or malformed requests are submitted... ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:30, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
Sounds like a plan. It looks to me like people are successfully using the new form (example), so later today I'll roll it out to all three workflows (Decrease, Edit, and the "submit edit request" button). Enterprisey (talk!) 00:47, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
@Enterprisey: BTW this happens if you submit an empty form. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:54, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Changes of pronoun

  • Task: Flag changes of pronoun on BLPs
  • Reason: I was surprised that changes of pronoun on BLPs doesn't even show up in my watchlist highlighted as likely problematic
  • Diffs: Special:Diff/1040974518/1041027351

—valereee (talk) 12:50, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Single-character file names

A single-character file name would likely either be too generic, or just be absurdly annoying (e.g. "⌬.svg" for a diagram of a benzene molecule). Create protecting every title seems like it'd be really difficult, so I'd think it'd be better to just use an edit filter. InvalidOStalk 17:26, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

@InvalidOS: Do you have any evidence of this being a problem? Edit filters have finite resources so we tend not to use them speculatively. Additionally, since this would impact good faith edits, I think it warrants consensus to implement, per WP:EF. Has this been discussed anywhere? Sam Walton (talk) 17:28, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
@Samwalton9: No to both. So...yeah. Probably best to let it be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. If a filename like that came up, we can deal with it then. InvalidOStalk 23:37, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Emojis associated with profanity

  • Task: This edit filter would prevent users, or at least non-autoconfirmed users, from inserting emojis associated with profanity into any page on Wikipedia.
  • Reason: Edit filters already exist to prevent editors from inserting profanity into articles. This filter would be similar, as it is unlikely that an edit adding these emojis would be constructive. Though, honestly, it seems there are few valid reasons for adding an emoji outside of one's own userspace, signatures, and articles about emojis. A couple diffs are provided below, but this page gives a few more examples of the sorts of emojis in question. TornadoLGS (talk) 20:44, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Diffs: 1, 2

TornadoLGS (talk) 20:44, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Persistent LTA

I'm being deliberately vague here, but (a) how easy would it be to create a filter which would block a certain IP range from editing any article which started with a particular string? (i.e. block 999.999.0.0/16 from blocking any article that started with the digit 1?) and (b) could this be done for a wider reach than a /16? Black Kite (talk) 22:22, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@Black Kite: (a) Pretty easy; (b) yes, can be done for any CIDR. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:19, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
ProcrastinatingReader Sorry, I missed your reply - thanks. The issue has gone away somewhat in the last couple of weeks, but good to bear in mind. Black Kite (talk) 20:22, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
ProcrastinatingReader OK, it's back again. What we are looking at is blocking 190.236.0.0/16 from any recent year article (i.e. any article with the format 19NN or 20NN). Thx, Black Kite (talk) 11:01, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
@Black Kite: Got some sample edits? I ask since I know we have 1074 as well, so just want to see if we can deal with it more holistically. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:22, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
ProcrastinatingReader The edits themselves are very random (some are actually OK) but here's a typical one, (persistently) re-adding people to a year page where it has been decided they shouldn't be despite multiple warnings (at previous IP addresses). Having said that, the content of the edits aren't an issue anyway, as it's simple block evasion (every time one IP in the range is blocked, they simply switch to another). Black Kite (talk) 16:04, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
I see. Maybe something like:
user_age == 0 &
page_title irlike "^(?:19|20)\d{2}$" &
/* maybe slightly cheaper */
user_name rlike "^\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+$" &
ip_in_range(user_name, "190.236.0.0/16")
But since it's kinda like enforcing a block via filter, it'd be better if you (or another admin) created & set it to disallow. Probably worth notifying EFN in advance too, to ensure there are no objections. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:46, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
ProcrastinatingReader Thanks for your help! Black Kite (talk) 23:33, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi / Hello vandalism

Vandalism involving the words "hi" or "hello" seem to be somewhat common. Diffs:

InvalidOStalk 11:55, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Another diff: Special:Diff/1048683382 InvalidOStalk 11:56, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Tag addition of tel: links

  • Task: Tag addition of links to tel: URIs
  • Reason: See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 191#tel URI. Although usage of these is sometimes around an actual phone number (e.g. at List of suicide crisis lines), when using VisualEditor some browsers are mistakenly adding these links around other numbers including date ranges and ISBNs. It seems like there has been an increase in frequency of these recently. An edit filter to at tag them would help with fixing individual mistakes, and determining whether further technical action should be taken.
  • Diffs: [71] [72] [73]

the wub "?!" 11:20, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

I believe this is being fixed upstream. See: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/core/+/615294 ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:47, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
@ProcrastinatingReader It appears the upstream fix didn't work, see phab:T256758. Mind taking another look at this? the wub "?!" 19:27, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
Sure -- see 1169 ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:39, 8 October 2021 (UTC)
I have restored this thread from the archive. The problem is ongoing and possibly getting worse. See this VPT thread. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:52, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
Some examples of incorrect use of [tel:...] that I have fixed recently
Examples of incorrect edits
Date Diff link String Context Notes
29 September 2021 Special:Diff/1047127154 800–1900
66688–66735		 Year range
Unicode range
29 September 2021 Special:Diff/1047197014 1670/71–1689 Year range?
30 September 2021 Special:Diff/1047295342 184/185 – 253 Page numbers
30 September 2021 Special:Diff/1047335736 1507/08–1585 Year range
2 October 2021 Special:Diff/1047716248 0972-6373 ISSN
2 October 2021 Special:Diff/1047736964 620/30/194 Document ID
3 October 2021 Special:Diff/1047753065 (4) 1971–72
(3) 1974–75
(2) 2014–15
(1) 2012–13		 Number of instances; season
3 October 2021 Special:Diff/1047810369 88697-40775-2 Catalogue number
3 October 2021 Special:Diff/1047855982 315 1986 Quantity and year
3 October 2021 Special:Diff/1047887382 1492–1825/1898 Year range
3 October 2021 Special:Diff/1047902009 2427–2435 Page numbers
3 October 2021 Special:Diff/1047971091 2001–2004–2007
2010–2013–2016
2010–2013–2016
2010–2013–2016		 Years
3 October 2021 Special:Diff/1048027556 0890–1686 ISSN
4 October 2021 Special:Diff/1048073542 992-1005 Page numbers
4 October 2021 Special:Diff/1048127342 2020-27-05 Access date of ref Malformed as CCYY-DD-MM
4 October 2021 Special:Diff/1048146391 2700–2200
101-132/1000
50-60/1000
28-30/1000		 Year range (1)
Statistics (3)
4 October 2021 Special:Diff/1048147841 763–577–38
774–596–42
492–409–11
566–677–33		 Gridiron football statistics
4 October 2021 Special:Diff/1048155558 925-1036 925 Column numbers
4 October 2021 Special:Diff/1048171935 104.0425 Calculated value One example only: more than 30 instances
4 October 2021 Special:Diff/1048188189 500-1000 Altitude range
As may be seen, very few of them fit the 999-9999 pattern that the Phab ticket refers to. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:23, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
We currently have 343 links, though only 62 are in articles. A few seem to be actual telephone numbers, but it's still debatable whether they should use the tel: syntax or be included at all. Certes (talk) 23:47, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

CounterPunch is Deprecated

Per the result of the RfC, please add "counterpunch.org" to Edit Filter 869. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 23:16, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Done. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:25, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Blacklist this Holocaust denial website: renegade tribune dot com

Orange Mike | Talk 00:30, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Deferred to MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist; to meta:Talk:Spam blacklist if it is a cross-wiki problem @Orangemike:. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 02:56, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

X's "daddy" or "owner" vandalism

Around sporting events, when one player or team bests another, vandals often go to their pages to say that Player X "owned" Team Y, or Player A is Player B's "daddy". I'm adding a few diffs here for you to see: [74][75][76]. Is there a way that a filter can be written to prevent some of this overdone pattern of vandalism? – Muboshgu (talk) 18:32, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

@Muboshgu: Probably preventing strings such as "adopted", "owner", "daddy", "son", "father", and other such strings from being added to BLPs. This could probably be added to 189, which already covers BLP vandalism. InvalidOStalk 11:36, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
"\badopt(ed|er|or)\b|\bdad(dy)?\b") seems reasonable to add. I've realized it'd be really hard to cover every case without causing a lot of false positives. This might not work well, and I'd definitely recommend testing first. InvalidOStalk 13:16, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
Perhaps setting the filter to Tag instead of Warn or Disallow could help. dudhhrContribs 13:22, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
189 is already set to tag-only. Then again, a separate filter might be better, as 189 seems to be for more libelous edits. I haven't really worked with edit filters that much, and don't even have EFH, so I'm not really too experienced here. InvalidOStalk 14:10, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
Here's a "part-owner" and a "minority owner vandalism example.—Bagumba (talk) 09:39, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
My initial thinking is that this is too disparate to disallow via filter, and even logging would end up spammy and probably not be monitored. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:09, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Inaccurate edit descriptions such as typo

Further to EFR passim, we still get edits such as this where the page size change contradicts the edit summary. Is a tag or other action worth pursuing, or should I drop the stick? Certes (talk) 15:48, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

I mean no? I second the motion that there ought to be a filter for this -- why not? An edit summary of "typo" with like -300 characters is obviously a false edit summary. I think that false edit summaries are pernicious and I almost always roll back even good edits when the summary is mendacious. Whether there's a rule about this I don't know.
It ought be be easy to code, providing you restrict yourself to a list of default and common false edit summaries. It doesn't help with blank edit summaries. A blank edit summary with a change of like +800 characters is sus, but not illegal, as actually lying is or should be. It's going to generate some situation where the person was just being lazy tho. But so? A deceptive edit summary, whether on purpose or just not giving a rat's ass, is a pretty bad look. Herostratus (talk) 21:35, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
@Certes: I added plain "typo" and "typos" to 970 (hist · log). Don't know why I left that out; it matched on "fixed" and "fixed typo". Can you suggest a better tag than "possibly inaccurate edit summary"? That's kind of wordy, but I don't want to accuse the editor being intentionally misleading. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:45, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
Thank you! That seems to be working well. Checking the top entry at random shows a very unwelcome and possibly libellous edit (already reverted). A tag such as "summary mismatch" would be more concise but slightly cryptic; on balance it seems better to be clear than short. Certes (talk) 23:32, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
@Certes: Tagging now. Just went with "possibly inaccurate edit summary". As tempting as it would be to set the filter to warn, I don't think we should do that. There's only so much we can warn new users for before they just start ignoring everything. Plus there's Mediawiki:Mobile-frontend-editor-summary-placeholder which I suspect leaves some people with the impression that "Fixed typo" and "Added content" are the only allowable summaries. Or maybe they're just having a here have code moment. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 01:07, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
Thanks. I had another look at 970's log last night and reverted a few; most of the bad ones had already been caught. I'd forgotten about mobile (especially app) problems. Certes (talk) 11:50, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Request Blacklist

I am requesting a black list about this word "any body can get on wiki and type liesssssss Bye Barney b", the same wording has been spammed and used by an LTA to vandalize multiple articles for several months until now [77]. 220.100.66.173 (talk) 22:54, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Talk page refactoring by IPs

This isn't a formal request since I don't quite know what the most effective way to go ahead this would be. See for example the edits of Special:Contributions/36.80.242.214. I think having something to prevent refactoring of talk page comments by others would be helpful (for example: if the edit does not add a signature but alters a comment which contains a signature from a different user: I don't know if this is too hard to code for, or if any potential solution would lead to false positives or to it being easily circumvented), especially since most vandalism and hence vandalism patrol happens in mainspace (and it is through the sheer luck of having this on my watchlist that I noticed). Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:55, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

I think I played around with a similar idea in 1142 (hist · log) ("Possible impersonation") some time ago. Ran into too many FPs for it to be viable, and too many weird edits that made no sense but didn't seem to be intentional impersonation either (eg [78]). There were also FPs related to IPv6s that often seem to use a different signature on their /64 (perhaps maybe [79]); I presumed some write another signature manually so queries go to a single talk page. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:04, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Filter 869: Republic TV

  • Task: To warn users against the use of Republic TV. The url is "republicworld.com"
  • Reason: There is community consensus that Republic TV should be deprecated.
  • Diffs: RfC Close

Tayi Arajakate Talk 03:02, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

WP:U2 filter

Moved from WP:EF

I would like a new filter to be created, warning the user of creating a user page of a nonexistent user.
Example entries
16:21, May 4, 2024: Example (talk | contribs) triggered filter (whatever filter it's going to be), performing the action "edit" on User:Edit filter/Requested/Archive 18. Actions taken: none; Filter description: Creating user page of nonexistent user (details | examine)
16:20, May 4, 2024: Example (talk | contribs) triggered filter (whatever filter it's going to be), performing the action "edit" on User:Edit filter/Requested/Archive 18. Actions taken: Warn; Filter description: Creating user page of nonexistent user (details | examine)

The warning page used: MediaWiki:Abusefilter-warning-nonexistentuser, drafted at User:EthanGaming7640/MediaWiki:Abusefilter-warning-nonexistentuser,

User groups to not get the warning: "sysop", "bot". — EthanGaming7640, Counter-Vandalism Unit 22:32, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

@EthanGaming7640: I moved to this WP:EF/REQ for you. — xaosflux Talk 23:40, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
Can't do. There's no way to detect anything about the user whose page would be created, even their existence. -- zzuuzz (talk) 02:34, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
A variant of this request could be possible (creating the page of another user, which should be a rare enough occurrence as well). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:21, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
That's already covered by 733 (hist · log). More than half of the log was cluttered by student editor peer reviews, but I've excluded those. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:23, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Requesting a filter that warns users if they mention Eddy Chen in their edit on Absolute pitch and its talk page

  • Task: To warn or deny new/IP users from saving their edit request if it includes 'Eddy Chen' or 'TwoSet Violin' on their edit on Absolute pitch and Talk:Absolute pitch.
  • Reason: This has been an ongoing issue, with too many unregistered IP editors requesting to add Eddy Chen of TwoSet Violin onto the actual page using self-published sources. Many of the new/IP editors also are failing to read the warning on the talk page to not request any edits of Eddy Chen, as there are still requests about once every week or two, and we have been getting tired of having to continually deny such requests as they are unnecessary and clog up useful requests.
  • Diffs: Whole group of these requests, 16 July request, Edit request that uses unreliable sources (includes Medium!)

Jeuno (talk) (contribs) 03:37, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

@Jeuno: Is this disruption limited to only those two pages? Probably better just to go with protection, then. There are only a limited number of filters, and they generally aren't used for single-page issues. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:28, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
@Suffusion of Yellow: Sorry for the late reply, I was busy finishing off my final exams for the past week. The reason why I decided to request this edit filter was because the admin that responded to my RfPP request to have indefinite semi-protection had said that they will consider investigating into whether an edit filter might be a better option instead of having to renew the semi-protection every few months. They have just extended the protection for another 6 months while they investigate. Jeuno (talk) (contribs) 00:28, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
@Jeuno: It look like Ohnoitsjamie did indeed say that. Ohnoitsjamie, with only two pages affected, this doesn't seem like a good candidate for a filter. It's not something super-critical like WP:AIV that needs to stay unprotected, and it's long-term issue, so the filter will need to stay enabled indefinitely. Plus if the requests aren't all deliberate trolling, the filter will need a custom message, so there's no way to merge it another filter. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:02, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Please allow EBSCO Information Services links in Special:AbuseLog/31536074

Moved to WP:EFN
 – Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:10, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Filter personal attack in edit summary

SanAnMan (talk) 17:31, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

@SanAnMan: revdel can be requested at WP:AN. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:30, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Prevent manual addition of automatic mediawiki categories

  • Task: Prevent manual addition of categories listed at Special:TrackingCategories, which should only be automatically added by the mediawiki software.
  • Reason: These categories should never be manually added, as adding them manually clutters up tracking categories even after the issues with the page are resolved.
  • Diffs: One of those categories had to be removed Special:Diff/1063705433 here

--Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:55, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

BLP trolling/vandalism

  • Task: Deny BLP talkpage trolling
  • Reason: This should be an easy one: there are a lot of IPs making talkpage posts to Talk:Federal Bureau of Investigation, Talk:Alphabet Inc. and others with identical mentions of "Nathaniel meskimen". I've placed a /48 block, but they're getting around it. I've left the last IP unrevdel'd, the edits are all identical to this one. Can we make or modify a filter to deny these edits?
  • Diffs: [80] [81] [82]

Acroterion (talk) 16:35, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Tracking in 1125 (hist · log) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:09, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
Moved temporarily to disallow. Suspect it won't be necessary long term. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:10, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
Thanks. The joke should get old soon. Acroterion (talk) 00:48, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Removal of Counterpunch from Filter 869

  • Task: The urls being counterpunch.org and counterpunch.com
  • Reason: There are significant concerns regarding the validity of the previous RfC, which appears to have attracted at least 6-7 sockpuppets, found after its close. It has led to this discussion at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Rerun Counterpunch RFC?, seeking a new one and started by the closer of the RfC themselves. In the meantime, the filter is inappropriate for this site.

Tayi Arajakate Talk 14:56, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

I've opined in that discussion, but with the closer of the discussion (David Gerard) also feeling the discussion isn't robust due to sockpuppetry this seems fairly clear-cut I think. So  Done ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:19, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
David Gerard is now saying that the RfC is still valid so I guess undo? Tayi Arajakate Talk 19:37, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
I have no clue what's going on at this point. There seems to be an edit war ongoing at WP:RSP/WP:DEPS etc, and I don't want to have the dispute carry over to an edit filter's contents which would be quite disruptive, so I'm going to hold off on any further edits to the filter personally. I will say the situation is highly confusing at this point, with everyone seemingly agreeing the previous discussion is tainted, but not agreeing on whether to still class the source as deprecated, and now a new RfC is started re whether the source should be deprecated. I'd have suggested figuring out the status of the source at WP:AN, but with the new RfC I don't know if that's a suitable path anymore. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:11, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Userpage spam filter

There seems to be a bunch of userpage spammers going around. I am requesting an edit filter that disallows creation of these pages when there's enough links (e.g. 100 external links). – AssumeGoodWraith (talk | contribs) 11:18, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Since I have a list of examples, here you go:

-- zzuuzz (talk) 11:58, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

@Zzuuzz: And again. – AssumeGoodWraith (talk | contribs) 07:25, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
I've not seen any of this recently, and not much before this report, besides which, if I'm right about this, next time if you poke a checkuser I think you might get some results ;) -- zzuuzz (talk) 23:34, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

New users requesting edits on "Name of page you are requesting an edit to" at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection

Vitaium (talk) 03:57, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

We should probably link to the last discussion, Wikipedia:Edit_filter/Requested/Archive_18#Blank_RfPP_requests, which seems to mostly agree. The page would be Wikipedia:Requests for page protection/Edit. I tend to think that MediaWiki:Abusefilter-warning-empty-edit-request could be used, but I'm not sure if it needs some tweaking, or a new message, related to the fact that the request might not be empty (even if the title is). -- zzuuzz (talk) 23:44, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Addition of external links to body sections

{{u|Sdkb}} talk 22:14, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

(I'm not too familiar with edit filters, so this may have been brought up before; if so, apologies, and just give me a pointer.) One of the most common forms of inappropriate editing we see from new editors is the addition of hyperlinks within body text. Would it be possible to use an edit filter to track this and maybe someday help guide users to use a reference instead?

In technical terms, we would want this to tag all mainspace edits that introduce a URL to a non-Wikimedia site and that do not fall into one of these exception buckets:

  • Anything within a template (includes stuff like {{External media}} and infoboxes that link a website)
  • Anything within a table (see WP:ELLIST)
  • Anything within a reference
  • Anything within the last section of an article, or a section that contains any of "Reference", "Source", "Further", "Reading", "Work", "Publication", "Citation", "Cited", "External", "Link", or "Note"

Does that sound feasible? Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 22:14, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

@Sdkb: I don't think we should warn people for this. It's basically a formatting mistake to write Some fact.[https://some.ref] instead of Some fact.<ref>https://some.ref</ref>. We can't warn newbies for everything, or they'll just ignore everything we say, or worse give up and go to a more user-friendly site. As to creating a filter at all, even a log-only or tag-only filter, well I won't say "impossible", just "incredibly hacky if possible". If I can think of a clever way, I'll try something. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:21, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
@Suffusion of Yellow, thanks for the reply. Re We can't warn newbies for everything, yeah; I think the main issue is that our tools for warning are too blunt—all we can do is have them encounter a big notice when they try to publish, rather than having a friendly "want to turn this into a reference? We don't allow inline external links" prompt pop up in a box next to the paragraph as soon as someone tries to add an inline external link. See WP:Making editing easier 2021. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:29, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
You mean a Web worker constantly checking as you type, like what we already have for JS and CSS pages? That would be nifty. But a major project. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:49, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Akane Yamaguchi spam

These sockpuppets will spam the user talk of as many recently active editors they can find with requests to improve Akane Yamaguchi and the spam is getting to be quite disruptive. I just blocked Semwq, then immediately after that one Zasjd. Would it at all be possible to disallow new users from doing this rapid spam? I don't believe I've ever made a request here before so apologies in advance if this is not feasible or worth the time to create. Sro23 (talk) 07:09, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I've been spammed twice over the course of two years, very annoying. I was thinking about proposing this myself. The easiest way to implement this would be to create a filter for new users using the string "Akane Yamaguchi" (The spam for Maureen Wroblewitz seems to be historical and no longer relevant) that would either disallow the edit to be made or would be logged to alert admins. Hemiauchenia (talk) 08:58, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
@Sro23 and Hemiauchenia: See 1182 (hist · log). Log-only, but will set to disallow at some point.. If this user proves to be adaptable, I have another way I might go about this, but keeping it simple for now. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:04, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
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