Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested/Archive 5

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Completed requests

Addition of the word NAZI in all caps

• Task: This filter should catch the word Nazi in all caps.
• Reason: While the word Nazi may be used in good faith, in all capitals, it is mainly used for vandalism.

- Dipankan ^{In the woods?} 08:59, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

 Done Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:10, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Can you please specify which filter is it? Let me see here if it works: NAZI

I'm surprised, but I think it isn't working. I have absolutely no warning or tagging in my contribs. Dipankan ^{Meet me here!} 14:31, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

The filter will not trigger for established accounts like yours. If you want to see the filter trigger, log out and then type "NAZI". (Be aware that your IP will be recorded in the edit filter log, however.) Reaper Eternal (talk) 18:41, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

What is it's filter ID? Dipankan says.. ^{("Edit count do not matter")} 10:15, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Melissa Lynn Lewis

• Task: Disallow any edits that contain the string "Melissa Lynn Lewis". So far the edits have all occurred in userspace (User_talk:Melissa Lynn Lewis, User:Melissa Lynn Lewis , Lil Bit, Memory, User_talk:Melissa Lynn Lewis , Lil Bit, Memory and User:Carmas 4 U, all deleted under G10 and blocked).
• Reason: To prevent severe BLP violations and real life harassment. At this time the subject has repeatedly come across instances of the abuse and is reporting via OTRS, but we need to be able to stop the edits before they occur.

- Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 21:15, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

 Done. Added to filter 58. Sole Soul (talk) 23:41, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Div style vandalism

• Task: disallow all non-autoconfirmed users trying to pull stunts such as this one.
• Reason: lately a couple of vandals have been having fun this way (on two featured articles and on two high-visibility templates, at least).

- Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 17:31, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

• And more of the same... Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 10:37, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

  • I posted a new section before seeing this was here, oops. I think the easiest way to do this would be to block all overly large images, using a regexp like (as suggested by User:Billinghurst on irc) \[\[File:[^\]]+?\d{5}[pP][xX]\]. I second, in any case, the need for a filter. This vandal has a history of adding highly offensive content, and his technique has proved hard for some users to remove (though once the vandalized template is identified, typing an edit url directly should work). - Pakaran 23:23, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
    •  Done I've added some regex code to help stop this. I'm not going to give any more information per WP:BEANS, but anybody who wants to know can email me. Reaper Eternal (talk) 15:08, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Yet another warning before email addresses are posted at the help desks

• Task: Display a loud warning when a help desk post contains an email address
• Reason: Email addresses are frequently posted at WP:HD, WP:NCHQ and WP:EAR despite instructions at the top of the page and in the edit notice. Each post requires redaction and revdel/oversight. Requesting only a warning, since some uses are legitimate. See the discussion here. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:22, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment: How about adding this to the Refdesk pages too. Roger (talk) 10:38, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
  • I'm just going to add all Wikipedia-space pages to the filter, since there is no need for new users to be posting their emails anywhere else for that matter. Reaper Eternal (talk) 18:02, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
    •  Done Reaper Eternal (talk) 18:05, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Awesome@awesome.com! fredgandt 23:04, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm guessing the filter only triggers for IPs? fredgandt 23:05, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Yup! Nice big warning. Very informative. Good job Reaper. fredgandt 23:15, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Prevent BLP vandalism by repeat offender

• Task: Prevent introduction of the terms "Angelique Carrington" and "Tamara Harrington" on Wikipedia.
• Reason: Long term abuse by an anonymous vandal with a wide range of rotating IPs. See Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Need_help_with_a_BLP_violator.

causa sui (talk) 22:19, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

• • Agree: A serial vandal — who keeps invading the privacy of a woman named Angelique Carrignton by linking to her Facebook page from Wikipedia articles, and who repeatedly posts Nazi symbolism and racist comments on users' pages, among other issues — jumps from IP to IP, as noted at the above Noticeboard link. He has been relentless over the course of months, generally making the same edits to a few pages. He has been repeatedly blocked by admnins, but his IP-jumping has so far stymied all efforts to end his obsessive vandalizing behavior. --Tenebrae (talk) 23:35, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
    • Thanks for the background. Posting of Nazi symbolism could be remedied by adding the images to MediaWiki:Bad_image_list, especially if you're aware that he has any favorites. Racist comments should be picked up and tagged by other abuse filters and Hugglers can follow WP:RBI, not to mention Cluebot NG. If they aren't, please point them out and maybe we can tweak other filters. Do you think it's worth considering using the edit filter to prevent linking to Facebook, or if not the whole site, just that one profile? causa sui (talk) 17:52, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Agree. We can (and have) semiprotect the articles in question, but the vandal has moved from them to the talk pages and it would be best if we could avoid semiprotecting those. An edit filter seems like a more precisely targeted solution. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:05, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
•  Filter created at filter 449. Reaper Eternal (talk) 18:07, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Localized TV station slogans

• Task: This filter would stop IP editors from adding any adding any edit containing the phrase "localized version of" or "local version of" to any page in Category:Television stations (and subcategories). If edit filters can't work only on certain categories, then it could specifically look for "localized version of ABC", "localized version of CBS", "localized version of NBC" (and same three for other phrase).
• Reason: An editor using multiple IPs has, over the last half a year or so, been adding information of this type to dozens and dozens TV station pages. See User:Anna Frodesiak/Black sandbox for most current list of offenders, although that list may not include all of them. Editor has never once responded to any comments on any of xyr talk pages (possibly, user doesn't even know that such pages exist, and isn't understanding what the big orange box means). Given the very wide range of IP addresses, it seems unlikely that there is any possible rangeblock or set of rangeblocks. Admin HelloAnnyong recommended an EF (see User Talk:HelloAnnyong#TV station vandal - Guidance needed or SPI. Since an edit filter would stop the editor entirely while causing no collateral damage, it seems like a better approach. This problem has been dealt with by a number of editors, including Neutralhomer, Deconstructhis, Anna Frodesiak, Mrschimpf, and some others. While each individual instance takes only a few minutes to deal with, we do this at least daily, if not several times a day.

- Qwyrxian (talk) 23:48, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do. Reaper Eternal (talk) 15:43, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

 Done See filter 426. Reaper Eternal (talk) 15:56, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

'Faggot'

• Task: Add 'faggot' as a trigger word to the 'potential BLP issue' or other appropriate tag.
• Reason: Unlikely to be used legitimately. Not currently listed ([1]).

— Manticore 01:44, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

• Note: before I read this request I tweaked filter 384. I just tested the diff above against the filter and it was matched. Sole Soul (talk) 10:18, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

DJ Nihilist

• Task: Edit filter should prevent the introduction of 'DJ Nihilist' text into Wikipedia namespace.
• Reason: Long term patten of abuse explained at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Persistent_Vandalism_For_At_Least_Two_Years

causa sui (talk) 20:15, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

 Done. Added to filter 58. Sole Soul (talk) 06:26, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

"Roman" from "Roman Catholic"

• Task: Edit filter should prevent "Roman" being removed from "Roman Catholic" in article space.
• Reason: Long-term vandalism as described at User:Drmies/Roman Catholic?.

- Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:49, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

 Done. Created filter 434, currently in log mode. The filter cover the larger part of the user's usual activities. The remaining part was added to filter 58. Sole Soul (talk) 14:43, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Ian Chattan

• Task: Block the addition of the words "Ian Chattan" to any page by anyone except autoconfirmed accounts. Any further options like blocking IP editors who try to add the words would be nice.
• Reason: An IP hopper by the name of Ian Chattan has been engaged in crazy forum style rants such as this in various articles for a long time. I can't even begin to provide a good survey of the ridiculous crap he's been spamming here, like how we're all cartoon bugs, because Bugs Bunny, that exponents can only be supernatural, and that exponential growth means that most "people" are really not "human". Some of these are anti-Semitic, and I know he's been going on since 2006. I know we're supposed to be sensitive about citing these two pages, but WP:Competence is required, WP:Wikipedia is not therapy. I would say "only talk pages," but he has added crap to articlespace. I think that it should be ok to allow autoconfirmed users to say his name so that we can discuss other ways to keep him away if necessary. He did have an autoconfirmed account, but he appears to have lost the password, and we can just block him if he rediscovers it.

- Ian.thomson (talk) 22:25, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

 Done. Added to filter 58. Sole Soul (talk) 18:59, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Ian.thomson (talk) 16:16, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Stopping spammer from talking about tugging on little boy's penises

• Task: Disallow any post by unconfirmed users contains the following combinations of words: "National Organization of Restoring Men," "tugging," and "youtube."
• Reason: Some IP hopper more obsessed with little boys' penises than the ancient Greeks is trying to use Talk:Occupy Wall Street (mainly that one, but he has gone into other pages, and it's unfair to prevent good-faith IP editors from editing because of one guy talking about tugging on penises) for anti-circumcision advocacy, claiming he's "Occupying Wikipedia." Thankfully, the posts are pretty similar, so I think that blocking the above combination should work. Attempts to block him have failed, and he has gone on to other

- Ian.thomson (talk) 18:50, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I'll add something to filter 58. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 21:18, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

 Done, that should deal with the ones I've seen. I've not used the phrases above. There's scope for expansion if it returns. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 21:53, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

ABDELKADER OUMOUADENE

• Task: Block talk page comments mentioning ABDELKADER OUMOUADENE (the name is sometimes given in the other order.) Examples can be seen from Google search: [2]
• Reason: This fellow has been IP hopping and posting quite bizarre rants, in a range of articles (mostly talk pages, actually) for rather a while. Most recent one I've seen is [3]. Most -- perhaps all -- of the changes have come from 41.104.131.105/16. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 16:10, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

• I looked over the pattern. Maybe 50% or more of the contributions from the 41.104.0.0/16 range are from this guy. A block of the /16 range (anon only) is almost but not quite justifiable. Not sure if it makes it any simpler, but if an edit filter could simply stop all edits from that /16 range which had no edit summary it would also address the problem. EdJohnston (talk) 17:01, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Not having written an edit filter yet, my guess is that the following expression would match the contributions of this editor:

(user_age == 0) & ip_in_range(user_name,"41.104.0.0/16") & (length(summary) == 0)

The user_age == 0 seems to be the recognizer for IPs. — EdJohnston (talk) 17:26, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

I've added the words "ABDELKADER OUMOUADENE" to the list of words prevented by filter 58. Sole Soul (talk) 20:28, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

 Done Marking this as done, because the filter has already disallowed several contributions from 41.104.0.0/16 on 11 December. Thanks to Sole Soul for taking care of this. EdJohnston (talk) 21:05, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Pezzuto, Ivo

• Task: Prevent references to Pezzuto, Ivo. Example: diff
• Reason: IP hopping spammer has been inserting unused and inappropriate references to Pezzuto into many articles for quite a while now. We can't take care of this with the spam blacklist because he often leaves the links out, and in any case they're to places like ssrn.com. Totally ignores all attempts at discussion.

Some example spamming IPs:

• 94.36.107.125 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 94.36.101.231 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 78.14.231.185 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 78.14.232.10 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)

My first time on this page, don't be afraid to tell me if there's a better way to deal with this. Thanks. - MrOllie (talk) 16:45, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

 Done, see Special:AbuseFilter/444. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:34, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Totallympics

• Task: Stop "totallympics" being added to talk pages.
• Reason: Persistent spamming of talk pages by dynamic IPs. The URL is already on the meta spam blacklist but the spamming continues. SmartSE (talk) 13:08, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

 Done. Added to filter 58. Sole Soul (talk) 15:26, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

QED--Vituzzu (talk) 11:23, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Specific filter created. Sole Soul (talk) 04:04, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Michigan IP hopper

• Task: Prevent or warn anon edits where the edit summary has at least 5 Wikilinks and no alphanumeric characters outside of Wikilinks. I'd prefer "prevent", and I'd also prefer that some additional slack be given so the editor doesn't tweak his way around it. Up until a couple months ago, there were no non-blank characters outside of Wikilinks, but he seems to be branching out; the last few had "...---..." in the summary as the only non-blank characters outside of Wikilinks.
• Reason: Detect or prevent edits by a certain IP-hopping editor. I was going to say only 99.* and a particular IP in the 97. range, but he's branched out into 141.* recently. The edits fall into the following categories; on articles, a few clearly against consensus; most gnome-like, but against WP:MOS. On talk pages, usually either a Wikilink (with the suggestion it be added to the page), or a URL and a quote, without saying what the reference is to be used to support on the article page or another article. See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive723#Michigan_troll(s) for some of the recent history.

- — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:29, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Testing in filter 436. Hits older than 19 November are not related. Sole Soul (talk) 17:15, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Filter 442 was created. Sole Soul (talk) 07:50, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Yourname

• Task: Modify the "long-term pattern abuse" filter or add another filter in order to take care of Yourname (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). Should be extended to user talk namespace.
• Reason: Because this soon-to-be-banned user's vandalism and trolling is almost always the same nowadays, and from various open proxies, even on their talk pages. Here are two samples of the vandalism: [4] and [5]. See this ANI thread for details.Jasper Deng (talk) 00:27, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I've just set Filter 358 (my own test filter) to catch these. If it works well, I'll set up a real filter to disallow the edits. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:45, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Gone live at Filter 445. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:07, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Small addition consist of obscenities

• Task and reason: An edit consists wholly of adding one bad word is almost always a vandalism (as opposed to an edit that contains a bad word + other words). AVBOT's author explained this idea here. I'd like to see this tested.

- Suggested code

 article_namespace == 0
 & !"autoconfirmed" in user_groups
 & edit_delta < 20
 & edit_delta > 0
 & (match := "\ba+ss+[- ]?h+o+l+e+\b|bitch|\b(c+o+c+|k+a+w+)k+s*\b|loo+s+e+r+|[kc]unt|dildo|d+o+u+c+h+e+|f+u+(kk+|c+k|k+c)|n+i+gg+(e+r+|a+h*)|pedophile|fagg|pe(anus|nis|n15)|s+l+u+t+|w+h+o+r+e+|pervert|racist|s+h+[1i]+t+|sock[ \-]?puppet|suck")
 & lcase(added_lines) rlike match
 & !(lcase(removed_lines) rlike match)

The bad words above was taken from Special:AbuseFilter/225. I removed a few words that I suspect will cause some FPs.- Sole Soul (talk) 19:49, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Created for testing at Special:AbuseFilter/384. Someguy1221 (talk) 22:56, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Wow, that was an extremely effective filter, catching bad edits that no other filter caught, once every two minutes. But unfortunately, it consumed a third of the condition limit, so I had to shut it down. If you can find a way to make it run more efficiently, I'd love to have it back up. Someguy1221 (talk) 23:24, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for picking this up. I think the "lcase" syntax is the cause. What about:

 article_namespace == 0
 & !"autoconfirmed" in user_groups
 edit_delta < 20
 & edit_delta > 0
 & (match := "\b[aA][sS][sS][- ]?[hH][oO][lL][eE]\b|[bB][iI][tT][cC][hH]|\b([cC][oO][cC][kK][aA][wW])[kK][sS]*\b|[lL][oO][oO][sS][eE][rR]|[cCkK][uU][nN][tT]|[dD][iI][lL][dD][oO]|[dD][oO][uU][cC][hH][eE]|[fF][uU]+[cC][kK]|[nN][iI][gG][gG]([eE][rR]|[aA][hH]*)|[pP][eE][dD][oO][pP][hH][iI][lL][eE]|[fF][aA][gG][gG]|[pP][eE][nN][iI][sS]|sS][lL][uU][tT]|[wW][hH][oO][rR][eE]|[pP][eE][rR][vV][eE][rR][tT]|[rR][aA][cC][iI][sS][tT]|[sS][hH][iI][tT]|[sS][uU][cC][kK]")
 & added_lines rlike match
 & !(removed_lines rlike match)

Sole Soul (talk) 02:42, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

That is much better. Down to 0-30 conditions per edit, whereas the original filter consumed as many as 600 conditions last I checked. The run time also seems down to about a millisecond. If there's anything else that can be done to reduce the condition consumption, that would be great, but I'll leave it running on log mode for now to see how it goes. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:37, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Spoke too soon. Condition consumption still creeps into the hundreds on some edits. Can you rewrite it as a regex string? I know you can't see filter 260, but something like define a regex string, and then ccnorm(added_lines) rlike regexstring) & !ccnorm(removed_lines) rlike regexstring. Thanks. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:45, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Can you send it (filter 260) to me by e-mail? Sole Soul (talk) 04:51, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

(←) The filter is already written as a regex string. Whether the regex string is named "match" or "regexstring" doesn't make a difference. My last try before asking someone else to look into this is:

 article_namespace == 0
& !"autoconfirmed" in user_groups
& edit_delta < 20
& edit_delta > 0
& added_lines rlike "\bass[- ]?hole\b|bitch|\b(coc|kaw)ks*\b|looser|cunt|dildo|douche|fuck|nigg(er|ah*)|pedophile|fagg|penis|slut|whore|pervert|racist|shit|suck"
& !removed_lines rlike "\bass[- ]?hole\b|bitch|\b(coc|kaw)ks*\b|looser|cunt|dildo|douche|fuck|nigg(er|ah*)|pedophile|fagg|penis|slut|whore|pervert|racist|shit|suck"

Thanks. Sole Soul (talk) 09:12, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry about the run around. I was probably just overanalyzing. Anyway, this works as well as 260 (which hasn't been shut down in the year and half it's been running, so it must be acceptable). The last version was probably fine too. Anyway, I'm going to leave this running on warn-only to make sure there aren't any false positives, which I'm assuming will be almost non-existent. Someguy1221 (talk) 09:31, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

There will be some false positives, such as from when someone types the name of an album, or a quote, or something else obscene with asterisks (e.g. f*ck), and then another editsor attempts to change it to the uncensored version in accordance with WP:NOTCENSORED. But I don't want to stand in the way of this filter and will deal with any false positives as they come. ♥Soap♥ 02:07, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure there will be as with other filters, but hopefully this filter is a net positive. Note: currently, only small case letters are included, this will reduce FPs of bad words as proper names like albums names. Sole Soul (talk) 06:34, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

XtremeGapYear

• Task: To disallow addition of spam link www.xtremegapyear.co.uk to article Gap year. If I understood the rules format correctly, the following filter should give a reasonable condition:

  article_articleid == 620809 & user_age < 3600 & "xtremegapyear.co.uk" in added_links

• Reason: Changing anons keep adding spam section to Gap year.[6][7][8][9]

 --Lambiam 10:02, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

You'll probably want to try the spam blacklist or page protection instead. As it says above, "problematic changes that apply to a single page are likely not suitable for an abuse filter." 28bytes (talk) 20:34, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

 Done for spam blacklist billinghurst sDrewth 09:59, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Removed the duplicate from the blacklist, I already handled this some time ago by blacklisting the domainS. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:52, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

New pages without sources

(Spawned from #Prevent creation of short pages below.)

• Task: Log/Warn new pages created without a URL or <ref> tag.
• Reason: If a page doesn't contain a ref tag or an external link, it is probably not ready for mainspace. The references could entered without the ref tag, so maybe it should also allow through articles which contain "== References ==" or "== Sources ==". Even if the edit filter only tags these articles, I think that is useful information for WP:NPP, esp. when they see an article name is a persons name and the 'no sources' tag; that is a potential BLP flag. This edit filter could be extended to edits of existing pages, but that might be a bit too intensive/OTT.

-John Vandenberg ^(chat) 06:35, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

I like this idea, but wouldn't this apply to most new pages? From what I've seen in my sojourns at NPP, this would include almost all new pages, with the exception of people very experienced at article writing, very clueful newbies, spammers and the occasional link to an official website. — Preceding signed comment added by Cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 00:45, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

I've created Special:AbuseFilter/402 with a few limiters so that it doesnt apply to all articles. e.g. a size minimum of 150 to avoid overlapping with Special:AbuseFilter/98 and we might want a maximum to avoid overlapping with Special:AbuseFilter/180. 61 and 79 may contain some useful algorithm ideas. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 08:18, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I've noticed a few of the hits are someone writing an unreferenced article and adding refs in the second or third edit. It'd be useful to have a second tag to indicate that references are added, but that might be expensive. I can't see any way to only tag subsequent edits on articles which have been recently created - there is no 'creation_timestamp' or 'article_revision_count'. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 22:32, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

"Jew" in all capitals

• Task: Prevent anon editors inserting the word "JEW" in articles/talk pages.
• Reason: Although the word "Jew" can be used in constructive edits pertaining to the actual article and related ones, I've seen virtually no constructive IP edit that puts "JEW" in all caps. This is almost always used in an offensive way.

- Tyranitar Man (talk) 01:34, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

 Done Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:28, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Prevent recurring IP vandalism

• Task: Disallow all edits containing any of the following strings: "Charizard the Dragon", "Charizard Guy", "Charizard Colors", "Charizard Free Riders", "Charizard Generations", "Angel Combat", "Furry Warriors".
• Reason: A recurring IP vandal has repeatedly made multiple edits most often related to the strings listed above for around a year and a half. Because he changes IPs so frequently, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to keep him permanently blocked from editing. It's clear that he has no intention of making positive contributions, and a filter is the only means I can think of for preventing his actions. See the related SPI case for a list of previous IPs and edits. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 22:47, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

 Done I won't mention the specific strings checked for, but it's in filter #58. Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:03, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Redirect Mainpage

• Task: Prevent locking out pages by vandals adding #Redirect [[Main Page]]
• Reason: 218.19.7.84 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) added #Redirect [[Main Page]] to a number of pages which seem to be difficult to remove as there is no "redirected from ..." link on the main page.

- Jim1138 (talk) 08:24, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

•  Done Reaper Eternal (talk) 12:21, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

inlineAdmedialink

• Task: Prevent any editors from adding <a class="inlineAdmedialink" href="#"> in articles.
• Reason: The issue identified, fixed then disabled again described at Wikipedia:Edit_filter/Requested/Archive_5#Extraneous_formatting has returned with a recent rash of <a class="inlineAdmedialink" href="#"> being added to articles corrupting article formatting. Editors don't seem to be aware that something in their browser is doing this. Geraldo Perez (talk) 15:39, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Endorse - A multitude of these have been appearing again yesterday and today, and they are not all the same editor (although so far, all have been IP users). --Tgeairn (talk) 20:34, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

 Done - re-enabled Special:AbuseFilter/440. — The Earwig ^(talk) 20:10, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

I just merged the filter to 345 since they do the same thing. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 06:41, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Insertion of Example image

• Task: Warn on insertion of File:Example.jpg in article namespace.

• Reason: It seems fairly common for newcomers testing edits to accidentally (or deliberately) add this to a page. It seems fairly easy to implement and fast to check against as well.

- Hello71 (talk) 18:41, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

You sure about that? -Scottywong| gossip _ 14:08, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Not sure if you're trying to agree or disagree with me. Hello71 (talk) 21:10, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, when I posted that, the list of articles that used Example.jpg was empty. Now a few days later, it's not empty, which probably lends some validity to this request. -Scottywong| express _ 20:31, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

 Done Filter 479. -Scottywong| gab _ 20:03, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Hindi philosopher

• Task: Prevent the addition of "* [[ सर्व शिक्षा मातृभाषामा नहुनु सुक्ष्म गतिमा दास हुनु हो | सर्व शिक्षा मातृभाषामा नहुनु सुक्ष्म गतिमा दास हुनु हो ]]" along with a couple of other lines of Hindi text in square brackets.
• Reason: This has been to ANI a couple of times every time ending with the suggestion of an edit filter but no one (including me) ever got to filing a request for one. The IP that adds it comes from a very busy and large range: 117.xxx.xxx.xxx so it's impossible to deal with this through blocks. The problem also happens at Commons sometimes and has been going on for over a year and a half or so. Had died down for a while, but back now [10], [11]. Let me know if the ANI discussions are necessary I'll try to dig them up. cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 16:32, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

• Request seems fine, no problems.--Deathlaser (talk) 18:26, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

 Done at filter #58. Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:24, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Long-term harassment of a particular user

TeaDrinker (talk · contribs) has been harassed by an IP hopper. Because all the vandalism is very similar ("come drinker"), a filter or an addition to the LTA filter would be nice.--Jasper Deng (talk) 00:45, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

 Done Reaper Eternal (talk) 02:27, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Hindi Text

• Task: It will prevent any edit with the following Hindi/devanagari text like in this edit:.

* सर्व शिक्षा मातृभाषामा नहुनु सुक्ष्म गतिमा दस हुनु हो 
* मातृभाषाको सम्मान राष्ट्रको सम्मान 
* माताको दुध शिशुलाई शिक्षा मातृभाषामा प्रभाव पर्छ सृष्टिलाई प्रकाशको गतिमा 
 

• Reason: This editor is a serial vandal who adds these four lines of Hindi text (his views/slogans on mother tongue education) to language and India related articles. He uses a dynamic IP and has been doing this for a couple of years. Some of them are caught by cluebot but many slip through because of his sheer persistence.--Sodabottle (talk) 02:25, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment. Not all additions appear to have the striking pattern of the three examples above. The commonality I see is that the added text contains a preponderance of Unicode Devanagari characters (U+0900 – U+097F) and further only blank space and wiki markup, or in any case no alphanumeric characters.  --Lambiam 18:10, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
  • After studying some more of the IPs contributions, it seems that the string "प्रभाव पर्छ सृष्टिलाई प्रकाशको गतिमा" occurs in almost all, so simply filtering on this may be enough to stop these additions.  --Lambiam 20:38, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
• Ping. Anybody home?  --Lambiam 10:00, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
  • How are these not being caught by filter 346?? Someguy1221 (talk) 02:24, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
    • I've no idea why that doesn't work; I tried the "Test this filter against recent edits" tool but could not get that to work. The vandalism is still ongoing: [12], [13], [14].  --Lambiam 22:04, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
      • Definitely needs to be stopped, request seems OK.--Deathlaser (talk) 18:23, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
        • Just to clarify, filter 346 was never set to prevent these edits from being made, only to issue a warning if they are detected. It's also supposed to tag the edits as "non-English content", and that doesn't seem to be happening for some reason. The diffs in the post immediately above do trigger filter 346 now, but that may be because the filter was updated a few days after those edits were made. -Scottywong| confess _ 21:40, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

 Done See above. Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:27, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Catching malicious <a> tags probably inserted by a browser extension

As I can't edit abuse filters over here, it would be create if someone could create one containing

!("bot" in user_groups) &(lcase(added_lines) rlike "ktg6us78hf8vdu7")

to catch edits like this, which are probably caused by a broken browser extension. The MediaWiki developers/ the system operators are already looking into the issue, but for now, we don't have a solution, Cheers Hoo man (talk) 23:59, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Done on it.wiki, filter 112. May I also suggest for adding a suitable help text, same flavour as this. Thank you. --M/ (talk) 00:07, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Done here on enwiki, filter 485. The Helpful One 01:24, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Requesting a filter to track following terms at mr-wiki

Sorry, if I am putting my request at wrong place.I am admin and burocrat at Marathi language mr-wiki.

• Task: We are looking for a (new or exported) filter that can track following kind of words.( All users & article namespace )

खरोखरीच , प्रसिध्द, प्रसिद्ध,अतिसुन्दर,रमणीय,अगदी,सर्वोत्तम,अत्युच्च,महान,लोकहृदयसम्राट,थोर,परमपूज्य

• Reason:We want to track certain types of avaoidable words for further review and delet if needed at mr-wiki.

Thanks and Regards

Mahitgar (talk) 11:03, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

You could use code like the following:

(article_namespace == 0) &
contains_any(added_lines, "खरोखरीच", "प्रसिध्द", "प्रसिद्ध", "अतिसुन्दर", "रमणीय", "अगदी", "सर्वोत्तम", "अत्युच्च", "महान", "लोकहृदयसम्राट", "थोर", "परमपूज्य")

As an aside, this is the place for requesting filters on enwiki, so this request should be at WT:FILTER. Reaper Eternal (talk) 20:09, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your valuable support Mahitgar (talk) 03:36, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Denied requests

deathcamps.org

deathcamps.org is a serious site describing ghettos (death camps) until 1945, Aktion Reinhard and more. It is quite a good documentation.

I used a table from deathcamps.org (with kind permission) for creating de:Liste der Ghettos in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus.

About myself, I am German. It is necessary to write about this events in European history.

Some years ago there was a break in the group and an alternative site death-camps.org claimed to be the legal successor. However, it was closed down again soon after.

I would like to ask you to remove that black-list-entry for deathcamps.org

Thank you very much

Yours sincerely Simplicius (talk) 08:54, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

 Not done This should go on MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist. Reaper Eternal (talk) 15:05, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you Mr Reaper. -- Simplicius (talk) 13:47, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Changing of Inter-wiki link by non-auto confirmed user

• Task: The filter will catch all non-autoconfirmed users who try to change inter-wiki links; such as fr:Apple to bn:Apple.
• Reason: This may be a smart way of vandalizing Wikipedia- I have seen some doing these at AIV, but clearly I can't point them out now, it's been 3 months ago. I gurantee, that if this filter be created, very little vandalism may be found on Wikipedia.

- Dipankan ^{In the woods?} 15:35, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

 Not done There's no guarantee that the user wasn't fixing something. Reaper Eternal (talk) 15:09, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

New userpage through Outreach:ACIP

• Task: Find all edit summaries with "Outreach:ACIP" within namespace #2.
• Reason: This should be used for maintenance purposes, e.g. tagging user pages with {{blocked user}}, etc. There's already a category for this (New Wikipedians 2011-09), though it doesn't go time-by-time/list newer ones first (I wish we could do that with cats)

- 71.175.53.239 (talk) 16:15, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

 Not done If anything, this should be done via the ACIP template, not via edit filter. Reaper Eternal (talk) 15:10, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Duplicate reference tag

• Task: Vandalism filter; adds a "Duplicate reference" or "Recycled reference" tag in the edit history to any new edit that reuses an existing reference from the page.
• Reason: I've personally had my share of problems with editors adding unsourced information and recycling a reference from somewhere else on the page to hide it (usually after an "unsourced/improperly cited" warning appears on their talk page), or copy/pasting a section to expand a table and add new information, and inadvertently reusing a source from the copied area. To inform experienced editors through the edit history to check and verify the information added to the article is actually included in the source.

- KnownAlias X 07:45, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

•  Not done I do not believe this is technically possible with our current AbuseFilter tools. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:58, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Possible ENGVAR violation

• Task: This filter would stop editors from changing articles originally written in American English to British English, or vice-versa.
• Reason: Many IPs are so urged to change articles from one variant of English to another, completely ignoring WP:ENGVAR.

- ANDROS¹³³⁷_TALK 21:28, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

• •  Not done Too many legitimate uses, for example, enforcing a certain style in an article about an American or British topic. Also, this is a bit impossible to implement due to the difficulty in coding what constitutes a change between American/British English. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:56, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

"Played with himself"

• Task: Flag variations on the phrase "played with himself/herself" as a potential BLP violation when added to BLPs
• Reason: I've just removed a small bundle of such vandalism from BLPs, several of which appear to have been rather durable. It seems to be a particularly easy bit of vandalism to slip through in articles on musicians and athletes. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 15:30, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
  • I think there may actually be legitimate uses of the string "played with (him|her)self", especially when taken out of context, so I don't think a filter would be ideal here. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:53, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Addition of example image to article space

• Task: This filter tags new editors and IP editors edits with "Addition of example image to article space" to alert people that it's a test edit and may have to be removed. This filter will only be triggered in the article space and not in the user space.
• Reason: A lot of IPs and new/unregistered users add example images to articles and they have to be removed as test edits. Puffin ^{Let's talk!} 17:09, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

- Puffin ^{Let's talk!} 17:09, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

I've got a bot that tracks these edits. It automatically updates this page when it finds one. 28bytes (talk) 21:24, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

3RR filter

• Task: The edit filter should be intended to inform users who attempt to do more than 3 reverts on an article within 24 hours that they may violate WP:3RR. The warning should include the list of exemptions to 3RR and that if the revert falls under one of those conditions, they should go ahead and save. The warning should also include a link to WP:BRD and other related policies on avoiding edit warring. However, all edits that may be a violation of 3RR will be tagged "possible 3RR violation" if the user decides to go ahead and revert.
• Reason: It will hopefully encourage editors to discuss and reach a compromise instead of edit warring. The tag will also get the attention of recent changes patrols and administrators so that they may intervene quickly and stop the edit war quickly before it gets worse.

- OpenInfoForAll (talk) 01:39, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, we have no way of detecting a revert directly. While we could try and bypass that by checking the edit summaries, frequently the users who would need this the most also don't use edit summaries. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:15, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Prevent pages with "Barack Obama" and "Nigger" from being made

• Task: Block offensive pages from being made
• Reason: I've deleted the talk page of two similiarly formatted pages along the lines of Barack Obama/is/a/Nigger. It would be useful to stop these before they're even made.

- Alexandria (Ni!) 15:33, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

• The MediaWiki:Titleblacklist should have caught that; you may want to note on the talk page there that it didn't (probably because of the slashes). That's a loophole that should get tightened up there, IMO. 28bytes (talk) 18:31, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Preventing new "JAT" users

• Task: Block any new "JAT" user from editing.
• Reason: There could be a new "JAT" user. It would be good to know when it hits and without having to delete pages and reverts.
• Code: "JAT" in user_name
• Actions: Disallow, depromote, warn, log

~~Ebe123~~ (+) ^talk
_Contribs 18:19, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

• This should go to MediaWiki:Titleblacklist, because WP:Account creators are then able to ignore the blacklist for serious users. mabdul 19:01, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

  Okay, so could you put "JAT* <newaccountonly|errmsg=titleblacklist-forbidden-new-account>" for that on the page. I do not have editinterface or anything like that.

Resolved

I moved the discussion to the corresponding page, since I have no sysop rights. mabdul 13:13, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Extraneous formatting

• Task: Adjustment to Extraneous formatting filter 345
• Reason: While on RC patrol, I noticed a new account adding in extraneous HTML code that appears to be an inline advertising tag for certain keywords. The code looks like:

<a class="inlineAdmedialink" href="#">save</a> 

The account that I noticed it with was Emptyexistence (talk · contribs), but I do not think they are doing it maliciously. I found a few IPs doing it, too: 109.151.11.218 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), 108.21.102.6 (talk · contribs · WHOIS). The keywords that I've seen are "category", "code", "save", and "content". So it whacked a few of the article categories. Diffs to individual edits for examples: [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]

I know, I could have changed the filter myself, but I am bringing it up see if anybody recognizes whatever software/adware that is putting this code into the edits. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 04:50, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

The problematic pages were found. See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#inlineAdmedialink_markup? mabdul 13:17, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I created a new filter filter 440 in log mode. If it works, then rolling it into 345 might be a good idea. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 21:59, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

After running the filter for a bit over a month, the issue does not seem to be a very common occurrence. Therefore, I disabled and deleted it. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 07:45, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Redirecting pages to nonexistent targets

• Task: Tag edits that attempt to redirect pages to nonexistent targets, with the exception of targets which were previously targeted but deleted via XfD while the redirect was still in place.
• Reason: To clean up after useless redirect pages created in error or of obvious vandalism, because they go nowhere and waste time and resources.

- :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 00:50, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

 Not done As far as I know this is not possible to do with an edit filter. There is a bot that updates a list at Wikipedia:Database reports/Broken redirects every day, though. - EdoDodo ^talk 14:39, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

It is technically possible to detect redirects to red links, but because of the false positives and the fact that right now every new filter we add means we have to turn another one off to keep the load in control, I oppose this for now. —Soap— 20:35, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

It seems tro me that filter 163 already does this. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:23, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Nowiki Vandal

• Task Disallow new users from adding nowiki tags to user/user talk pages.
• Reason' The edits of User:Dozen lived, User:Brickpeas, and User:Ocean when make it pretty clear there's a vandal at work here. If this filter already exists, I apologize for the duplication. TNXMan 19:55, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Filter 367 catches these in mainspace, but it's log-only. It could be extended to catch userspace edits if that's desirable. — Gavia immer (talk) 20:02, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes please! What are the chances of setting it to "disallow"? TNXMan 20:02, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

This vandal has been here for a while. Here's some of their older socks: Pirtstset (talk · contribs) and Poinmak (talk · contribs). Elockid ^(Talk) 20:07, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

As I said below, I strongly oppose changing this filter to disallow. There are far too many legitimate uses of nowiki tags for me to support preventing new editors from using them simply to force one persistent vandal to change his method of operation. If people start coming to the false positives page asking why their welcome message was classified as vandalism, what can we honestly say besides "sorry, this is a bad filter and it should be removed"? The only reason I haven't disabled it already is that it has proven useful to catch illegal download links because some users use nowiki to obfuscate URL's. Even if someone figures out how to get the filter to stop the vandalism without frustrating those who want to use welcome templates and tables and other things that rely on nowiki to work, I still would be against it, because it wouldn't actually stop anyone from vandalizing, it would just make them change their methods. Moreover there are too many filters running already and adding another one will just make more vandalism get through because it would cause more edits to reach the condition limit. However, my opinion is not more powerful than anyone else's, and if people really want this filter then I will not take it down if it's created. —Soap— 20:20, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

OK, I see where you're coming from. Would a set of limitations help the filter? I don't know much about creating filters, but I think this would work if it were set to monitor new users (accounts created less than 24-48 hours ago), whose only addition consists of nowiki tags. If a narrow filter isn't possible, that's fine, but I thought it would be a good idea to check. TNXMan 20:28, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

All I can think of is that we could add a "throttle" so that it would affect only people who do it many times. Anything else would be easily dodgeable once figured out, and I wouldn't want to say publically what we'd be doing anyway. —Soap— 21:33, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

These are all socks of Pointy pointy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · logs · block log · arb · rfc · lta · SPI · cuwiki). I think I'm going to file a checkuser request to check for sleepers. Access Denied 21:42, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

FYI, I believe that these are all User:Tile join. NawlinWiki (talk) 20:03, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Throttle would be good, or warn. Stifle (talk) 11:26, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Canines

• Task: To prevent the addition of the word 'dog' into the article Tim Russ, by any editor, IP or unconfirmed registered user. It should probably also include any plausible synonyms for 'dog', to future proof it after the filter's existence becomes known.
• Reason: There is an extremely persistent IP hopper who for unknown reasons, is obsessed with adding the fact that in his early life, Tim owned many dogs, or variations thereof. It's never been sourced, it's certainly pointless trivia, and the editor is completely uncommunicative anyway. The sheer persistance and intermittent duration of this farce makes permanent semi-protection innappropriate (it's been tried temporarily).

- MickMacNee (talk) 16:54, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Please note the warning at the top of the page: Filters are applied to all edits. Therefore, problematic changes that apply to a single page are likely not suitable for an abuse filter. The last diff before today that seems to be what you're describing was in December. And the next one before that is in December 2009. If this filter had gone up in December 2009, we would have examined 40 million edits between now and then just to catch 3 instances of easily reverted and relatively harmless vandalism. While I understand it is frustrating for you, I really can't endorse the idea of proposing a whole new edit filter for a problem as infrequent as this. (It is not the type of request that could be easily tacked on to an existing filter either because it targets both a specific page and a specific set of words.) Please just rely on ordinary anti-vandalism methods to handle this issue. I'm sorry if I sound frustrated, I don't mean anything against you personally. —Soap— 20:57, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I did read it, probably just too quickly. You see what you want to see I guess, and I must have got the idea from somewhere that this did have a single page watching capability. I don't know that other tools are out there, I've just been watching and waiting tbh. MickMacNee (talk) 14:33, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

 Declined, please use blocks, pending changes, semi-protection, etc. Stifle (talk) 11:25, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Creation of a new page containing a {{hang on}} template

• Task: If a new user attempts to create a page containing a {{hang on}} template, stop the attempt & inform the user about the proper procedure(s) to follow if he/she feels that an article that he/she had recently created was speedily deleted in error.
• Reason: Several new users have created such pages in response to seeing one or more of their articles speedily deleted. Such page creations only result in unnecessary work for new page patrollers and administrators.

- --SoCalSuperEagle (talk) 19:46, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

• The recent changes to Template:Db-meta and Template:Db-notice have pretty much rendered this particular filter request obsolete; therefore, I'm withdrawing it. --SoCalSuperEagle (talk) 18:45, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Throttle unauthorized bots

• Task: Throttle edits to a maximum of 4 per minute for users that are not bots.
• Reason: Slow down unauthorized bots to limit the damage they can do. This is related to this discussion. I'm not certain if this is feasible, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 07:18, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
  • No it is not feasible. This would have a ridiculous number of false positives, as anybody using a tool to edit or even just going through a list of articles needing minor tweaks would trip this filter. Almost all Huggle and AWB users would be severely affected. Reaper Eternal (talk) 00:45, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

 Declined - I wasn't sure if it would be workable or not. Thanks for letting me know. I'm marking this declined and moving it to the appropriate section. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 02:54, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Limit mass disruption

• Task: Throttle a series of similar edits that occur over a short period of time.
• Reason: To minimize "mass" disruption of Wikipedia. This is related to a series of discussions (Mass edits, Mass pruning of redirects, Mass nominating unused templates, Mass AFDs. Mass PROD spree, CSD spree). - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 07:41, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't know if this is such a good idea. We have a condition limit, and if we were to throttle new user edits indiscriminately, it would certainly eat our conditions up. Keep in mind that we already have throttles for new users when it comes to page moving, making subtle changes, adding bad words, page creation, redirecting articles, article reversion and adding links. If you can think of another specific action that you want to see throttled, leave a message here. Tim1357 ^talk 04:19, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

 Declined - Thanks for the reply, Tim. I thought it might have too much overhead to be viable, so I'll mark this as declined and move it to the appropriate section. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 01:08, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Block Twinkle hacking

• Task: Stop users from bypassing a black list of users for Twinkle.
• Reason: Note: filter details should not be discussed on-wiki and this should be a private filter. Related to this discussion, at least one user was able to bypass a Twinkle block. I don't know the details but User:Kingpin13 does and should probably be consulted. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 06:45, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

 Not done as Twinkle no longer has a blacklist. See Wikipedia talk:Twinkle/Archive 22#Blacklist and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive221#New Twinkle blacklist proposal. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 04:17, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

"Band" in new page title

• Task: Flag new pages when the text "band" appears in the title. (And also "song")
• Reason: Vandalism/patrolling. Per WP:GARAGE, non-notable band articles often have the word "band" in the title. Flagging articles with "band" would help to find these spam/promo articles easier.

— Timneu22 · talk 14:19, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

NAs this stands, it is not a good idea for an edit filter. While many new band pages do not meet the notibility guidelines for bands, we should not go and tag every new band page. Perhaps a new band page, being created by a very recently created user. Tim1357 ^talk 08:46, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Possible perspective or POV issues

• Task: Tag new pages and other edits in the main articlespace by new users that contain one or more occurrences of first-person or second-person pronouns (e.g. "I", "our", "you").
• Reason: The use of any such pronouns outside of properly-cited direct quotations relevant to an article subject is often a red flag for non-NPOV statements, spam, how-to guides, or other inappropriate material.

- --SoCalSuperEagle (talk) 23:06, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

• This seems like it would have a lot of false positives. I could go for "our", but perhaps not the others. Stifle (talk) 11:36, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Books that copy Wikipedia

• Task: Prevent all editors making edits that add these text strings to articles: "Webster's Quotations, Facts and Phrases", "Webster′s Quotations, Facts and Phrases" (note the curly apostrophe in this case), "Frederic P Miller", "Alphascript", "Betascript". Warn editors adding these text strings to articles: "Icon Group International", "VDM Publishing".
• Reason: Two series of books copy material from Wikipedia: Alphascript/Betascript/VDM Publishing and Icon Group International/Webster's Quotations, Facts and Phrases. Alphascript copies whole articles, Icon Group copies snippets. Both 'sources' are often used as circular references by Wikipedia editors unaware of the nature of the source. Hundreds of uses of these books have been removed from Wikipedia articles; a filter would help stop this recurring. As the books are hosted on Google Books a blacklisting of a URL is impossible. See WP:ALPHASCRIPT and Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 70#Icon Group International/Webster's Quotations, Facts and Phrases for more on this. - Fences&Windows 22:12, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
  • I removed more today. This filter was previously requested but not done: Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested/Archive/3#Icon Group International. Fences&Windows 17:26, 3 August 2010 (UTC)
  • Please add "Mainyu Eldon A." to the text to block, this is a new "author" used by Alphascript. Fences&Windows 17:42, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

    I would very much support doing this if it can be done without stressing the wiki too much. If we block the string "VDM Publishing", we should probably also block "VDM Verlag", which is another name used by the same publisher for various unreliable publications, though not to my knowledge for Wikipedia dumps. — Gavia immer (talk) 18:02, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

  • I would concur that this edit filter is worthwhile. Stifle (talk) 10:28, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
  • I just removed 10 refs here (and some more on other-language 'pedias) that would have been caught by this filter.  --Lambiam 23:50, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
    • Several more removed today. Dougweller (talk) 12:03, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
• Hellooo?!. It's tumbleweed here. How do these actually get agreed? Fences&Windows 23:21, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
  • My understanding is that at the moment for performance reasons we can't add any new edit filters unless we remove an existing one. Stifle (talk) 15:05, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

addition to filter 367

• Task: Extend filter 367 to cover any non-autoconfirmed users adding any nowiki tags outside of their own user space (also add support for <nowiki />)
• Reason: When i suggested this filter i was mainly thinking of user and user talk space. Access Denied ^{[FATAL ERROR]} 02:59, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

- Access Denied ^{[FATAL ERROR]} 02:59, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

• I don't really think that would be a good idea. For one, it would take a longer time to run the filter. Secondly, people generally are aware when their userpage has been vandalized, and this type of vandalism is not really particularly more of an emergency than any other kind. Thirdly, the filter wouldn't actually do anything to stop the vandalism since it's a log-only filter, and probably always will be, since it has over a 90% false positive rate already and if we disallow people adding nowiki tags anywhere in a user page or user talk page it will certainly go even higher. It would even stop people from using welcome templates, since most of them contain nowiki tags as well. I don't post on this page much because people would soon get tired of my "no, no, no", but in this case I really have to object more loudly than normal. —Soap— 11:20, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

• I agree. Vandalism to user pages isn't as much of a problem as that to articles, and generally gets noticed anyway, so this filter is unnecessary. - EdoDodo ^talk 12:08, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

"File:Example.jpg" filter

• Task: Tag insertion of "File:Example.jpg", as shown in this edit.
• Reason: This is constantly used for vandalism.

- Reaper Eternal (talk) 16:04, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

• • Except 95% of the time, it is not vandalism, yet just test edits. (X! · talk)  · @705  ·  15:54, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
    • Test edits in mainspace? We revert those anyways do we not? Suggested code:

article_namespace = 0 & added_lines rlike "\[\[File\:Example\.jpg\]\]|\|" Regards, MacMed^talk_stalk 23:19, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

• I have started a discussion at the Village Pump here regarding the cleanup bot that will undo these edits. 28bytes (talk) 17:21, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Example texts

• Task: prevent addition of example texts of users playing with edit buttons.
• Reason: This is not nescesarily abuse, but I think it would be usefull to tag them. For example "Heading text" is present in many articles at this moment [20].

• Details: The Dutch wikipedia has this rule (translated) [21]

(article_namespace == 0) &
(contains_any(added_lines,
"'''Bold text'''",
"''Italic text''",
"== Heading text ==",
"[[File:Example.jpg]]",
"[[Media:Eaxample.ogg]]",
"<nowiki>Insert non-formatted text here</nowiki>"
))

Additional lines could be:
"* Bulleted list item",
"# Numbered list item",
":Indented line",
"<big>Big text</big>",
"<small>Small text</small>",
"^{Superscript text}",
"_{Subscript text}",
"File:Example.jpg|Caption1",
"! Header text !! Header text !! Header text",
"| Example || Example || Example",

Germany has a similar rule. My edit can be used as test. HenkvD (talk) 18:52, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Just looked throuht the list of other request and found some similar request: #"File:Example.jpg" filter and #Default Text Editor Filter, #Example file tagging. HenkvD (talk) 19:05, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

There is an existing filter that's coded to do some of this, Special:AbuseFilter/10718, but it's currently disabled. Perhaps one of the other edit filter managers can comment on why. 28bytes (talk) 18:16, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Are you sure that's the correct link? 107 is a very early filter that was used to stop people getting around the spam blacklist. We do have 18 , which does address the test type edits described above, but it has been disabled since 2009 because a lot of editors would make good edits and then accidentally click the toolbar in the same edit (even I've done that). Many of these people would then not save the edit because they were confused. As noted above, this seems to be a perennial request here (maybe even permensual), but it is not just me that's holding it back, it's just that not too many people watchlist or frequently edit this page. I wasn't even an edit filter manager when the filter was first disabled. —Soap— 18:40, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

D'oh! Yes, of course I meant 18. That's a heck of a typo. 28bytes (talk) 18:44, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

In the meantime, since I have a minute, I'll start to clean up the 121 "heading text" articles the OP linked to. 28bytes (talk) 18:50, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I started cleaning up, but noticed it is hardly monitored. I personally clicked on the buttons by mistake a couple of times. I think I catched them before saving, but I am not 100% sure. Am I correct that tagging them won't prevent users from saving these kind of edits? I hope that will make these kind of edits more visable and solved faster. HenkvD (talk) 10:51, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I just fixed most of the 121 examples HenkvD linked to in his request, and almost all of the "heading text" examples were edits that should not have been made even without the "heading text" insertion. 28bytes (talk) 16:10, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I have added "== Heading text ==" and "<big>Big text</big>" to filter 18 (still disabled for now); most of the other ones were already in there. 28bytes (talk) 20:57, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

• I think the "tag" feature was not available when the test filter was disabled. Re-enabling the filter, as a tag only, is a good option. Sole Soul (talk) 11:08, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
  • It seems sensible to try that, but I've asked Ruslik0 for his opinion since he marked the filter as deleted. 28bytes (talk) 16:06, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
• The tag feature was available from the beginning. This filter was disabled in November 2009 by User:Wknight94 (you should ask them why). I only deleted it because it had not been in use for a long time. Ruslik_Zero 20:27, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Thanks Ruslik. I've asked Wknight94 for his thoughts on this. 28bytes (talk) 20:36, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
    • I think I might remember why. AFAIK it was disabled because new users might add useful content along with the test type material, and would not save their edits a second time when the warning comes up, causing us to lose the material they could have contributed. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:49, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
      • Perhaps enabling and just logging would be the thing to do, then? Seems like that would help call the attention of other editors who could clean up the edit tests and leave the appropriate additions (if any). 28bytes (talk) 14:22, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
• Note: I've requested approval for a bot that will clean up these edits. 28bytes (talk) 18:28, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
• I have started a discussion at the Village Pump here regarding the cleanup bot. 28bytes (talk) 17:20, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Ghostface Killah

• Task: Add regex to block "Ghostface Killah" or similar combinations or breakouts by IP editors.
• Reason: Prolific IP-hopping editor, possibly blocked user Grawp (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), repeatedly editing multiple articles to add reference to these words. Not feasible to rangeblock IP addresses due to multiple /16 ranges in use.

--Alan the Roving Ambassador (talk) 20:49, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I made several rangeblocks. I recommend that we give the rangeblocks a chance first. He/she already has tried changing their MO with 88.240.186.56 (talk · contribs). Filter would probably be ineffective. Elockid ^(Talk) 21:42, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

nteu280.org

• Task: Disallow the external link nteu280.org from being added to United States Environmental Protection Agency. Link has also been added sporadically to pages such as Water fluoridation controversy but the EPA page is the primary target.
• Reason: This link (EPA employees' union) has been added to the US EPA page for over a year. Initially registered users added it, who have since been banned for socking. Now it is added by anons who are most likely the same person. Link does not meet WP criteria for notability or direct relation to the page and defies long-standing consensus. Link is already on the spam blacklist but it doesn't appear to keep it from being added. [22] [23] See administrators' noticeboard and talk page. Either the link needs to be filtered, or the page protected. Banning the spammer's current IP might be a short-term solution. Input is appreciated; I'm new to this process.

- Bdc101 (talk) 16:29, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

The diffs you have are of malformed link attempts with extra spaces in them, not actual links, which explains why the blacklist didn't stop them. The IP's edit summary correctly notes that they were unable to add an actual link due to the blacklist. 28bytes (talk) 19:51, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Possible LGBT related vandalism or BLP violations

• Task: Tags edits by new users or unregistered users made to BLP articles that contain Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, faggot, or fagg. Actions to take: warn, tag (DO NOT DISALLOW due to possible false positives)
• Reason: I see multiple instances of BLP violations and vandalism relating to this. If you create this filter, DO NOT DISALLOW the edit. There will be a few occasional false positives for people who are really LGBT.

Crazymonkey1123 (Jacob) ^{T or M}/_{Sign mine} 03:50, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

We have filter 339 which will tag an edit as "possible libel or vandalism" if it mentions homosexuality, bisexuality, or transsexuality in a BLP, wherein no mention of homosexuality/transsexuality/bisexuality previous existed. Tim1357 ^talk 04:12, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Example media

• Task: Alert editors who place example media (e.g. File:Example.jpg into the main article namespace.
• Reason: Example media are never to be in the article/main namespace, but presently Example.jpg is in almost one hundred articles.

- —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:14, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I've got a bot under trial that fixes that on new edits. I plan to request approval for an additional task that will clean these out of old edits as well. At the last Village Pump discussion about this there wasn't consensus to prevent/revert these edits if they were accompanied by other changes. 28bytes (talk) 10:04, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

We had a filter [24] that tagged edits that added File:Example.jpg as possible test edits. I'm not sure why it was turned off. It appears Ruslik0 (talk · contribs) marked it as deleted back in August 2010.[25] I guess you could ask him why. Tim1357 ^talk 04:08, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks I've posted to his talk. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:46, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

He already responded below a while back. 28bytes (talk) 18:52, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

citation needed

• Task: Suggest edits containing "(citation needed)" actually refer to the template {{citation needed}}. This should apply to all pages, although just articles would do. Most existing examples have been added by IP editors, but some logged in editors have added this too.
• Reason: Once these non-template "templates" are added to articles they are hard to find -- at the point of editing is the best place to catch them. BTW see here for discussion of the general problem.

- Mark Hurd (talk) 15:26, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

•  Not done I can't see this as a particularly useful—it's more likely to make the IPs just not save their edit. Reaper Eternal (talk) 15:55, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Inappropriate words in all-caps that have been obfuscated

• Task: Disallow all edits from new and unregistered users that contain any string that includes one or more bad words typed in all-caps with the capital letters being separated by any number of lowercase letters. An example of an edit that this filter would stop can be seen here.
• Reason: Generally, if a user attempts to insert a bad word into an article in this manner, it's deliberate vandalism. Note that the example given above did not trip any existing filter.

- --SoCalSuperEagle (talk) 23:42, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

This would likely be too expensive. Reaper Eternal (talk) 19:48, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

 Not done Reaper Eternal (talk) 12:43, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Copyvio

CorensearchBot does a great job, but it runs after the edit has been made. would it be possible to include this in the filter? I appreciate that there would be processing overheads, but could we get it at least partially in the filter, maybe by checking the first sentence of new articles? ϢereSpielChequers 08:11, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

 Not done As I mentioned on the Villge Pump page, it is not technically possible to search the internet with the edit filter. Reaper Eternal (talk) 12:58, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Misleading usernames

• Task: Disallow, excepr for account creators, the creation of accounts with usernames containing the strings "rollback", "reviewer", "file mover", "autopatrolled", "account creator", "edit filter manager" or "IP block exempt".
• Reason: According to the username policy, "Usernames that give the impression that the account has permissions which it does not have" are considered to be misleading usernames. User:Autopatrolled (talk) is one such account. Words like "sysop", "admin", "checkuser", "steward" etc. are already blocked globally, but some of the groups which are specific to Wikipedia and not used on some other Wikimedia wikis are not currently blocked, it is better to block them only on Wikipedia to cause the least damage possible. jfd34 (talk) 12:57, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

 Not done They get blocked anyway. Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:48, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

PageTriage

• Task: This filter should mark any edits with the edit summary "Added tags to the page using PageTriage" and edit content that was solely the addition of templates to articles.

• Reason: This filter is needed in order to, a, gauge usage rates of the WP:New Pages Feed, as well as, b, provide a way for "higher-ups" in the Triage project to quickly find and review others' tagging and their effectiveness. I didn't think this already existed... of course, if it did, my apologies.

- Theopolisme _:) 21:25, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

 No. Use toolserver data dumps for that. Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:48, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Adding Texting Symbols To Article

• Task: The filter should first warn and than tag edits which contain texting symbols such as :(, :), :P, and :D (drop me a line if you need help with the regex). The filter should only apply to unautoconfirmed users adding those symbols to articles. It should be set to warn, than tag.
• Reason: These are usually test edits by newbies, which I frequently encounter while using STiki. They don't trip any filters, and ClueBot doesn't catch them, so a filter is necessary to prevent these types of edits.

- Electric Catfish 13:21, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

 Not done They also match many indented lines. Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:22, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

That was fast! Electric Catfish 13:23, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Abusable CSS

• Task: Catch "position: absolute" and "position: fixed" being used in CSS. The following condition will perform this task:

  lcase(new_html) rlike "<[^>]*\bstyle\s*=[^>]*position[^>;]*:[^>;]*(fixed|absolute)"

• Reason: By using "position: absolute" or "position: fixed" in CSS, the entire page or large portions of it may be covered up by user-generated content. This was often done by Earth Exploding Live sock puppets, such as in this case (now rev-deleted)

I do not anticipate many, if any, false positives, but I have no reliable way to test for this myself. - Secretlysend (talk) 03:31, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Wasn't there supposed to be a filter that stopped this, or did it only screen template edits? Someguy1221 (talk) 04:39, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment) Disalowing position:absolute will produce a lot of false positives as it has many legitimate uses, and is used by many templates (such as {{location map~}}). jfd34 (talk) 08:23, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of this use. However, perhaps position: fixed can still be matched, since all legitimate wiki content is supposed to scroll with the page. Also, the filter could be set to only tag rather than blocking the edit. Secretlysend (talk) 00:36, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment) position:fixed may be blocked in article space only, tagged and/or warned in all other namespaces. A few user pages do use fixed and absolute positions (see User:Vibhijain/Editnotice).

That seems like a good solution. - Secretlysend (talk) 15:11, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Could this filter also catch copyrighted images used in CSS? The following condition should work, but I am not sure if it is exactly correct.

lcase(new_html) rlike "<[^>]*\bstyle\s*=[^>]*(background|list-style)-image\s*:\s*url\((https?:)?//(?!upload\.wikimedia\.org)\S+\)"

jfd34 (talk) 12:56, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

 Not done This and several variants of CSS vandalism are already blocked in article space to stop vandalism. If vandals vandalize their talk pages, the disruption is relatively minor compared to the number of false positives the filter used to cause when it applied to all namespaces. As for the copyrighted image issue, you cannot link images in that way because the MediaWiki software throws out all CSS utilizing that linking method. Reaper Eternal (talk) 12:29, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Bronies

• Task: Prevent addition of "Bronies" to articles: Bronygarth, Bronytsia, BTR (vehicle).
• Reason: Vandalism from IPs belonging to Qwest/Century Link in Portland, Oregon. Usual ranges 67.5.160.0/19, 71.222.64.0/19 and 75.164.192.0/18 but also others such as 70.58.198.72 so range blocks unlikely to be effective. Edit filter would be better than semi protection as other users could edit the pages. Peter E. James (talk) 00:14, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

 Not done For problems on specific pages, protection is better. Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:23, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Actual Cannibal Shia LaBoeuf

• Task: Block the phrase "actual cannibal" from appearing with "shia laboeuf"
• Reason: I've seen a whole slew of vandalism edits (e.g. [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33])regarding this new meme over the past few days: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/actual-cannibal-shia-labeouf

I feel like it should be very easy to add an abuse filter for this that wouldn't affect legitimate edits. I am unfamiliar enough with the system that I don't want to attempt it myself, however. -RunningOnBrains^(talk) 04:36, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

And more today: [34] [35]. As it is a meme, I'm sure it will die down eventually, but not after a few weeks of exhausting whack-a-vandal. -RunningOnBrains^(talk) 21:03, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that this needs a filter. It's just a fad, and one that is generally isolated. I think the risks involved using a filter for this outweighs the benefit it would give. Hghyux (talk to me)(talk to others) 22:35, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

It definitely died down a lot faster than I thought it would; at one point I counted 20 pages with unreverted vandalism for this meme, but I haven't seen any in a couple of days.

 Request withdrawn-RunningOnBrains^(talk) 03:01, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Block new threads on user pages

• Task: Block the creation of new (signed) sections on non-subpage User pages; for example: <https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?diff=486999506&oldid=486370198>. This filter should be run in "dry mode" for a while to ensure that there aren't (m)any false positives.
• Reason: Users have a tendency to post talk page messages in the wrong namespace.

Thanks! --MZMcBride (talk) 17:51, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

 Not done While it does happen, it isn't exceptionally common, and the filter would most likely just cause the new editor to give up rather than ask his question. The user can easily move it to the talkpage to answer. Reaper Eternal (talk) 20:05, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Navin Harris

• Task: Disallow the phrase "Navin Harris" from being added to an article — either barring the edit or just insta-reverting.
• Reason: A serial vandal who uses several IP ranges has been adding "Navin Harris" as a backing vocalist credit to Let Me Be There and If You Love Me (Let Me Know). As confirmed on ANI, Navin is actually the vandal's name. Given that the vandal uses several ranges, an IP block is ineffective, and locking the article only works for so long, because the vandal always returns the instant the article is unlocked.

- Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 18:26, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

 Not done If only those two articles are affected, it would be best to indefinitely semiprotect them. Reaper Eternal (talk) 20:06, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Spam or article writing in category space

• Task: Trigger on edits to category space that add significant (300 bytes?) of text or any external links. Depending on false positive rate in testing, exempt trusted users. Set to warn. Publicly viewable.
• Reason: Category pages should usually not have lengthy text or external links except to define its scope. Many category pages are lightly monitored and these types of edits can go undetected for months. A simple filter could identify many of these. Since these are often due to a misunderstanding of the correct way to populate a category rather than intentional vandalism, a filter set to warn would be effective.

- Kilopi (talk) 20:53, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Could you provide links of this occurring? It does not seem to be a common occurance. Reaper Eternal (talk) 20:58, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Sure, I found some today: 4 months 6 months 1 month 15 months. There's also a bunch I did as an IP last year. At any given time, you can probably find a few new ones in this RC query. Kilopi (talk) 21:13, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm going to mark this as  Not done since it really isn't high-priority and we are near the condition limit already. Reaper Eternal (talk) 00:46, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Template:Cleanup

As Template_talk:Cleanup#Should_the_reason_parameter_be_made_mandatory rfc it may be a goo idea to inform editors adding {{Cleanup}} wikicode that they should provide reason for their tagging, it may be also a good idea to tag their edit Bulwersator (talk) 15:58, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

 Not done I don't think this is a good job for an edit filter. Just make the template spit out a big red {{error}} message if {{{reason}}} is undefined. Reaper Eternal (talk) 19:39, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Changing URL in external link without changing display name

• Task: To tag edits made by IP addresses / non-autoconfirmed / non-confirmed users which involve changing the URL of an external link without changing the title (display name).
• Reason: This is a tactic which could potentially be used by spammers and vandals to make uconstructive edits. The URL of an external link is changed to a website affiliated to the editor making the change (which is not allowed according to Wikipedia's spam policy), a website used for advertising or promotion, a website not related to the article or its subject, or a website containing malicious code such as a virus. But the display name is not changed, so viewers may think that the link is unchanged or safe, but when they click on the link they are directed to the wrong site. Also because such edits cannot easily be identified, it would take a long time to revert such edits. I have not seen any such links, but I have seen something similar to this, which has been mentioned in another filter that I have requested.
  

- Jfd34 (talk | contribs) 08:53, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

 Not done This seems very rare. Additionally, new users commonly fix broken links. Reaper Eternal (talk) 12:40, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Changing URL in citation template without changing title

• Task: To tag edits made by IP addresses / non-autoconfirmed / non-confirmed users which involve changing the |url= parameter in a citation template without changing the |title= parameter.
• Reason: In an edit made to 2012 Asia Cup on 26 March 2012 17:25 (UTC), 182.177.32.10 changed the |url= parameter in one of the references from

http://www.espncricinfo.com/asia-cup-2012/content/ground/236761.html

to the following URL:

http://sellgoldcoinsprices.com/asia-cup-bangladesh-put-sri-lanka-in-to-bat/

But did not change the title (display name). This makes viewers think that the reference has not been changed, but when they click on the link they are directed to the wrong site, which did not have any evidence about the claim referenced, and could also be spam. Fortunately, ClueBot NG, an anti-vandalism bot, reverted this edit but bots are automatic computer programs and cannot be relied on all the time, and some URLs may be treated as constructive by bots.
- Jfd34 (talk | contribs) 08:53, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

 Not done This seems very rare. Additionally, new users commonly fix broken links. Reaper Eternal (talk) 12:42, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Neurorel

• Task: Disallow all edits containing any edit summaries with "Austin Gallaher", "Neurorel" or "Edgeform".
• Reason: For the past few months I've been revdeleting edit summaries made by a IP sockhopper. Their edit summaries seem to be outing an editor by announcing their real name. These edits span multiple articles, and the IPs jump around enough that rangeblocking isn't effective. For example, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. I think it's become disruptive enough that an edit filter would be warranted.

- — HelloAnnyong ^{(say whaaat?!)} 03:07, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

It is impossible to revdel the abuse filter entries, so I'm not sure we want outing recorded for anybody to see in the edit filter. Reaper Eternal (talk) 19:49, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

That's true - but maybe it's better to have it just in the edit filter (where it's not indexed by search engines) rather than in mainspace edits? — HelloAnnyong ^{(say whaaat?!)} 01:31, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

So...anybody else looking at this page? Reaper Eternal (talk) 12:43, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Any oversighters here? I can't even see these edits! Reaper Eternal (talk) 19:37, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

• This is not something suited to an edit filter, and I do not believe the relative infrequency of its occurrence justifies the "expense" of an edit filter. The appropriate action is to revision-delete it and report it to the Oversight mailing list for suppression where applicable. I'll note that this request itself is doing the very thing it intends to prevent. Risker (talk) 15:40, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Risker.  Not done Reaper Eternal (talk) 20:08, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Legal Threats

• Task: It will apply to autoconfirmed users and IP addresses. It looks for legal threats (obvious ones), and will Dissalow them, Warn (or block) the user and possibly revoke their permissions.
• Reason: I have seen quite a few legal threats around in the past 3 days, and I believe action is needed.

~ ⇒TomTomN00 @ 19:30, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

 Not done There is no method to check for whether an edit constitutes a legal threat and no reason to block it anyway. We just block the user involved. Reaper Eternal (talk) 19:34, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

YOLO

• Task: Filter the phrase "YOLO" or "yolo".
• Reason: It's a new trendy vandal phrase that started on facebook.

Hghyux (talk to me)(talk to others) 01:31, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

 Not done A four-letter phrase would trigger a massive number of false positives. Anyway, this is the type of thing that ClueBot NG will pick up on and revert. Reaper Eternal (talk) 00:42, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Plaintext links to sites claiming to offer free giftcodes for Minecraft

• Task: Disallow the addition of "Minecraftcodes.info" or "Minecraftcodes.me" to a page.

• Reason: Spammy sites offering free gift codes for Minecraft in exchange for completing various sketchy ad-related activities. Most, if not all, sites that purport to offer codes like this are either useless, or worse, will actively steal your information. Even if these particular sites are legit, they're of absolutely no encyclopedic value to the project whatsoever. These links have been added numerous times by various IPs to Talk:Minecraft. I initially filed a request to add these sites to the MediaWiki spam blacklist, but was turned down and told to revert as it occurs because the links were not technically hyperlinks. However, in the past few weeks the problem has worsened considerably, with the links now being added three or more times a week. This is something that could probably be easily caught by the edit filter, and has no foreseeable false positives (I can't think of many reasons one would add these particular strings of text for a beneficial reason). elektrikSHOOS (talk) 02:12, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

 Not done Please make this request at MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist. -Scottywong| yak _ 20:29, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Facepalm As stated above, I already did. They said there was nothing they could do. I also posted a report at WikiProject Spam and they said to come here. elektrikSHOOS (talk) 21:18, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Lol sorry. Not sure how I missed that. Could you post a few diffs of the edits you describe? Are they ever added to article space, or is it always on talk pages? -Scottywong| comment _ 14:12, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Sure thing. As seen by these revisions, it's actually a standard string of text that gets added. It's only added to Talk:Minecraft, but that's likely because the article itself is semi-protected. (Digging into the site, step 2 of the process requires you to copy/paste that exact string fives times, anywhere. Wikipedia ends up being a popular target.) You could probably just block that exact string, actually. elektrikSHOOS (talk) 19:03, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Though, actually, looking at the string, it looks like it's changed slightly a few times, possibly to get around filters like this. And the domain itself has been hopping through a few TLD's. So blocking the exact string would only help for a bit. Hmm. A warning telling would-be pasters that they're being scammed would be nice, too, if it's possible. elektrikSHOOS (talk) 19:10, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. Well, since the problem is not super-frequent and never affects article space, I'm inclined to not add a filter for it. Keep in mind that each edit filter has to be checked for every edit that is made to any page, and therefore each edit filter slightly increases how long it takes to save an edit. So, my opinion is that it's not worth increasing the filter burden just to prevent relatively infrequent vandalism to one article talk page. It's true that the edit filter is probably the best place to prevent these edits since they're not actually linking the text to the site (and therefore I'd understand if you're frustrated by the lack of help), but it's just not "important" enough of a problem to deal with here. Finally, I'll also add that I am relatively new to the edit filter, and so if I'm off-base in denying this request, please feel free to override me without hesitation. -Scottywong| talk _ 19:56, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Ancient requests

|id= in filter 247

• Task: Amend Special:AbuseFilter/247 so that the check for an id parameter is insensitive to whitespace.
• Reason: False positive as reported in Wikipedia:Edit filter/False positives/Reports#Trevj

The regex fragment at issue is "(?<!\|[Ii][Dd]=)". Currently it accepts |id=, but not | id=, |id =, or | id =, and the last of these resulted in a false positive. Apparently, adding \s* before and after [Ii][Dd] results in "Compilation failed: lookbehind assertion is not fixed length at offset 56". A lookbehind assertion means "when preceded by" or "when not preceded by", but lookbehind assertions in PHP PCRE must have a fixed length. Is there an alternative to the lookbehind assertion to find these, so that the |id= match can be made insensitive to whitespace? Is there a specific reason that we're using a lookbehind assertion as opposed to a lookahead assertion followed by .*? Lookahead assertions have far less severe restrictions on length. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 22:35, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Improper conversion of an article into a redirect

• Task: Stop new or anonymous users from inserting #redirect tags at the top of existing valid articles.
• Reason: When a #redirect tag is inserted at the top of an article, all of the article's content will cease to display, even if the original article content is left intact in the page coding. Furthermore, in almost every case that I've actually seen, the redirect itself was clearly inappropriate. (Several examples can be found here).

- --SoCalSuperEagle (talk) 18:55, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I noticed that little spree of idiocy when it hit one of the articles on my watchlist, but I wonder if a bot would be better suited for this? It seems two things that would be helpful in preventing false positives (in addition to the user's edit count) would be the age and number of edits to the article being redirected, and I don't think the edit filters have access to that data. (The older and more heavily edited the page, the more likely it is that a new user redirecting it is vandalism.) Anyway, I'll do some tests and see if there's a lightweight way to do this based on user edit count and article size alone that won't generate too many false positives. 28bytes (talk) 18:39, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

We have 113 , but I'm not sure how it works. It also seems to be coded in a way that will tag redirects not placed at the top, so maybe there is a way to make it catch redirects that are placed at the top. —Soap— 18:47, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Filter name

• Task:Add Bitchesdontknowaboutmyholocaust.jpg to the blacklsist of edits
• Reason: Most of the nazi related vandalism I currently see have that phrase in them. See http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Chancellor_of_Germany&diff=prev&oldid=413183454

- Tyw7  (☎ Contact me! • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 22:18, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Is this a frequent issue? You say "most of the Nazi related vandalism" you see has that phrase, but there is only one diff. —Soap— 20:58, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I saw it about five or six times last night in a row. It got burried under my other reverts. --Tyw7  (☎ Contact me! • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 21:18, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Genre changing filter

• Task: Tag insertion of genre changes on music articles within the infobox (i.e.: Tag: genres changed)
• Reason: genre warring IP adresses are major disruptions to editors of music-based articles, so much so that even a genre-changing series of warnings was recently added to Twinkle. GunMetal Angel 20:33, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Slugs have hymen filter

• Task: prevent or tag edits like http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Hymen&diff=396664930&oldid=396578142
• ongoing waste of resources since many months. Happens sporadically so that page protection does not seem appropriate. Richiez (talk) 09:01, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Profanity and Derogatory comments added to articles

• Task: Place a tag like (Tag: obscenities and/or derogatory comments) on edits that contain words like shit, ass, gay, hell, negro, homosexual, etc. Make it a private filter as well.
• Reason: I can't believe nobody has created a filter for swear words. I am no expert at edit filters, but it seems like a filter like this would be really helpful in general vandal-fighting. Usb10 ^Connected? 01:21, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Various filters already catch some of these words. Is there any edit you think should have been caught by the edit filter, but didn't? עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:22, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Well I mean I know there is a possible vandalism filter but it doesn't really catch anything (e.g it caught this but then on a different page why doesn't it catch this?? The filters that are supposed to find profanity don't seem to work to well; maybe someone could make them better?? Usb10 ^Connected? 01:01, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

IP user changing numbers/years

• Task: Flag edits where only numbers in the article are changed (perhaps restricted to biographies)
• Reason: Some vandals like to randomly change the year of birth, etc. in biographies, like this. If several numbers are changed in an article at once by an IP user, it's often a sign of vandalism, particularly if the changes are to four-digit numbers (19xx or 20xx).

- Morn (talk) 15:57, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately I don't believe this is possible, as the edit filter sees the "before" and "after" diffs as single chunks, and does not have the ability to detect if a single part of a line or paragraph has been changed, nor can it tell whether numbers or letters or anything else are being added or subtracted, or whether numbers that are present in the "after" diff were also present in the "before". The closest thing that could be within the realm of possibility would be to detect changes to an infobox, but even that would have the same problems as this request from Jun, namely that it would turn up a lot of false positives because a lot of edits to infoboxes will be legitimate. —Soap— 20:14, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Well I suppose I'm spoiled by Python's difflib which does have character-level diffs (just as the graphical diff under article history). It's a bit unfortunate that this functionality isn't available. Scientific articles might also benefit from a bit more control over which numbers are changed. Vandalism to numbers often goes undetected for surprisingly long, because it's not the kind of mistake that jumps out at you exactly. ("Oh, but that 117th digit of pi is actually an 8!" doesn't really happen that often I think). That's why they're such a popular target. Also, there are sometimes good faith edits to birth years that are contested, but then you would also want people to at least include a reference. So I guess we'll have to file this request under "WP is not yet ready as a scientific reference" for now. :-/ --Morn (talk) 22:02, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Another idea: How about checking for IP edits where the number of wikitext bytes does not change? If you only vandalize a birth year, obviously the number of characters stays constant. Not perfect, but perhaps worth a try. At least that criterion would have flagged the two edits above. --Morn (talk) 22:58, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Comment: just wanted to mention that I have also come across this nefarious form of vandalism several times. Many of this edits may go undetected for a long time, especially in older articles. Jason Quinn (talk) 15:42, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Not a BLP issue

List of School Rumble characters regards a fictional TV series, but an edit was tagged as "Possible BLP issue or vandalism. In addition to a transclusion template specifying that an article is about a school, perhaps the "School Libel and Vandalism" filter can be tweaked to require the template. mechamind90 22:31, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Possible BLP issue or vandalism

This tag is used by three filters (Abusefilter/39, Abusefilter/189 and Abusefilter/339) that aren't public, for good reason. However, whichever of the three tagged &diffonly=1 this diff subsequently didn't tag this one, and obviously taught the IP editor how to evade the filter. Better homoglyph detection is desperately needed here; the second diff stood for nearly three hours. — Gavia immer (talk) 02:08, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

As you could have seen here, it was filter 339, which is currently public. I think it may be a good idea to make it private, but this isn't the place to discuss it. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 12:43, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Identify external website links without http:// protocol prefix

• Task: Identify external links which don't include the protocol prefix http:// and notify the editor.
• Reason: According to the help section external links should be specified as [36] but if a user forgets to include the protocol - external link [www.website.com] - is included as text instead of a clickable link.

- Adrian-from-london (talk) 22:34, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

1. Is this a major problem here on Wikipedia? While this is clearly technically possible, the need to confirm that it's a single square bracket, not a double one, would probably take more time.
2. Any reason not to have an optional "s" after the "http"? Some external links may be to https sites.

עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 05:49, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Note that excluding the protocol prefix is standard operating procedure when reporting a website at MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist, specifically because it renders as a plaintext link. (The spam-blacklist prevents saving edits to a page if the new revision contains an offending link.) —Jeremy v^_^v ^{Components:V S M} 03:44, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Filter name

• Task: Prevent IP and new editors from doing mass replaces of {{otheruses4}}, {{For2}}, {{quote}}, etc with other templates, and other pointless edits
• Reason: These are the signature actions of the sockpuppets of the indef community banned editor User:100110100, whose only edits are to do these random template changes (and then usually come back with another sock and try to get them deleted under the claim that they are "unused") and to post odd questions at the various reference boards. As he often performs hundreds of these edits before he is detected, having a filter would be immensely helpful. If it needs to be limited to specific ranges, we have at least two he is known to work from.

- -- AnmaFinotera (talk ~ contribs) 14:23, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

• You're going to have to expand on "etc" and detail which other templates and other pointless edits you want to have considered. Neither we nor the edit filter system can guess what is and is not unconstructive. Stifle (talk) 11:29, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

As I recall, he has also stripped {{quote2}} and {{otheruses3}}. I'd have to go through all the socks to find anymore, but those are a start. If it comes off his IP range, though, and involves template replacement, it isn't constructive since he is indef banned. -- AnmaFinotera (talk ~ contribs) 13:05, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

User talk page trolling in German

• Task: Disallow additions of offensive/disruptive German words or phrases at any user talk page by new users. An example of what this filter should stop can be found here.
• Reason: To stop further trolling at user talk pages by a certain long-term cross-wiki vandal who uses a German phrase (often an offensive or disruptive one) as the username for each new sockpuppet.

- --SoCalSuperEagle (talk) 07:46, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

I certainly don't speak German, so perhaps you could help me out by making a list of blatantly bad German words, and their translations. That way I could add the words to one of our existent filters. Tim1357 ^talk 13:40, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

I could help, but German is a very ... expressive ... language in some ways, and we'd need a pretty long list. The latest message is something like "(username) ...'s diaper is full", which is probably not something we can predict, but on the other hand it also has the word 'dreckschwanz' which is Dreck "dirt" + Schwanz "penis" ... use your imagination. Also, there's the problem that edit filter logs cannot yet be oversighted. The last time I checked, we were automatically oversighting all of this "Diesel" guy's vandalism, but on the other hand, it seems we're not doing that anymore, at least not regularly, if there is a diff that you can link to. —Soap— 14:48, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I just realized the diaper part was in his username. Still, that would be a good way to patch the SUL loophole that is allowing these usernames to be created in the first place. —Soap— 15:00, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

New user adding very large text to typically small pages

• Task: New user adding very large text to typically small pages like categories, files, dabs, redirects.
• Action: tag and possibly warn.

- Sole Soul (talk) 05:35, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Could you provide an example, and try to define what you mean by "very large" (number of characters added) ? Tim1357 ^talk 13:41, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

This is an example [37]. "Very large": umm, I'm not sure but I think > 5000 bytes to be in the safe side (in my example the size change was 2601 bytes). Sole Soul (talk) 14:23, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

This sounds a little bit like the issue we're facing on talk:Disney's House of Mouse, documented here and filter requested here. Perhaps it's possible to address both issues with one filter? Cheers! -- Bgpaulus (talk) 15:38, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

"Perhaps it's possible to address both issues with one filter?" The issue I see here is that article talk pages are not typically small, and an IP user undoing blanking by a vandal could add very large text. Sole Soul (talk) 17:58, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Replacement of BLP infobox image

• Task: Tag all edits that change the filenames of images in the infoboxes of BLP articles regardless of whether such edits are made by (auto)confirmed users.
• Reason: This filter would aid in the detection of image-related BLP vandalism, such as this edit. In addition, this filter would aid non-free image patrollers, as non-free images of BLP subjects generally do not qualify for fair use; in fact, I have actually caught some users replacing free images of BLP subjects with higher quality but non-free alternatives.

- --SoCalSuperEagle (talk) 02:09, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

• Great idea. However, I'm not sure it's possible for the filter software to be able to use variables in the sense of identifying a particular substring as an image name, and then checking to see if that same substring is the same or not in the new diff. I notice that not every infobox has the image template as "image", but that shouldn't be too much of a problem. I think this is definitely possible, but it may be rather clumsy and have a lot of false positives, so it would be best, unless I'm wrong about the software, for it to be a tag-only filter (which I think is what you were planning on anyway). —Soap— 12:12, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Redirect vandalism

• Task: This filter is to catch and tag inappropriate redirects to articles and user pages, such as redirecting a page to articles like penis, vagina, and fuck.
• Reason: This filter would be useful to help catch vandalism.

- ~NerdyScienceDude (✉ • ✐) 18:29, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

• This sounds like a good idea, and it would be very easy to do. We wouldn't even need a new filter, since we used to do this on filter 12 in the past. It was disabled due to false positives, in particular a legitimate attempt to redirect a page to a title with the name McManus in it (contains "anus"). But I don't think that adding a small list of exceptions for words like McManus would greatly slow down the filter, and if we made the change we'd be able to remove one condition anyway. So I endorse this, but I endorse it with caution and I think it's best to wait for others to comment as they may disagree. —Soap— 15:07, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

New editor pages

• Task: Tag articles with a flag like "page created by new editor". This would happen when the editor of the new article has fewer than, say, 10 edits. This might be valuable for all edits, not just page-creation.
• Reason: A huge majority of vandalism, especially in the terms of new pages, is created by users with zero edits (or only a few more). This would help patrollers see these types of pages quicker.

— Timneu22 · talk 16:20, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

•  Technically possible. Stifle (talk) 20:48, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Could be done like this:

!"autoconfirmed" in user_groups
& article_articleid == 0
& article_namespace == 0

There might be a better way though. - EdoDodo ^talk 13:22, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Jamesbreadth

• Task: Block the insertion of the term "Jamesbreadth" into articles
• Reason: IP vandalism - see this edit for an example

- Mjroots (talk) 16:34, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

This is Swamilive. Jamesbreadth isn't the only phrase that needs to be blocked though. See also the edits on 216.211.52.0/22 which is currently blocked. Elockid ^(Talk) 16:57, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

• Can we get a full list please and they can be integrated into one of the other filters which disallows words that'll never be useful. Stifle (talk) 20:53, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Repeated high-speed white-space edits by unconfirmed user

• Task: Take a look at Special:Contributions/Vauhtimato. He's done essentially null edits, adding whitespace only, to get enough edits in so he can then cause trouble.
• Reason: Vandal fighting. - jpgordon^{::==( o )} 23:39, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
• Agree that this is worth addressing. Stifle (talk) 14:52, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

  Unfortunately this is practically impossible to detect. We don't get to detect what's been added or removed directly, only the lines that have been affected. I do have an idea of how to detect it (specifically, rmwhitespace(added_lines) == rmwhitespace(removed_lines)) but unfortunately this would be extremely costly to run and would slow down the wiki to the point where the filter would not be worth it. Unless anyone has any better ideas, I don't really see a good way to implement this right now, despite the fact that it is a good idea. --Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 20:01, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Any vandal that is smart enough to do this - and I have seen an increase in it recently - would be smart enough to switch to single words or punctuation instead. If this is ever implemented, it should probably be tag-only so as not to teach vandals how to avoid scrutiny. — Gavia immer (talk) 20:11, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Can there be an initial light-weight test for "non-autoconfirmed user"? That would limit the costly test to those who get the vandal benefit. DMacks (talk) 20:08, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

It's already done in almost all filters, but still, you would be surprised how many edits are not by autoconfirmed users. It would still be a heavyweight filter. The problem really is in the string manipulation, which is particularly slow. --Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 00:01, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that's pricey. The example I showed was an easy detect -- all one-liners adding whitespace at the end of a line. Tagging that would be a good quiet signal for this particular troublemaker. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 23:29, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Seeing as this type of issue is aimed only at getting an account autoconfirmed, it would seem that it is perfectly reasonable to target non-autoconfirmed only. Stifle (talk) 12:59, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry if I wasn't clear; I was trying to point out that I think that there might still be too much of a performance hit even when we restricted it to non-autoconfirmed edits only. However, since we've been able to pull down the number of running filters back to a reasonable point now, I'm ok with giving my originally suggested idea a trial. I added a few extra clauses to help optimize it. It's currently running log only as filter 322. Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 04:35, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

We're encountering a false positive I hadn't considered: Users moving content from one location to another in the article. Right now, I can't think of a way to resolve this due to limitations in the filter. However, I have an alternate idea: It is likely that an editor that's trying to do this to get to autoconfirmed will do these types of edits in rapid succession. Accordingly, I'm tightening down the filter to include a "throttle" condition to see if that makes it more accurate. --Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 04:50, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

With the optimizations I've made, I see no significant performance hit by this filter. However, since I have addressed the false positives with the throttle and narrowed conditions, we have yet to see a hit on this filter. I think it's best to leave it run about a week to see if it picks anything up, then make the decision over whether it should be kept then. --Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 08:01, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Concur; we'll see how it turns out. Stifle (talk) 08:27, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

This filter has yet to do anything except for log. In other words, nobody has tripped the 'Disallow' function of the filter. That might be our sign that:

1. This filter is not useful.
2. We are not being strict enough with our throttle.

Tim1357 ^talk 13:55, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

• It's after tripping now. Stifle (talk) 20:51, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

The real fix for this one is to mod MediaWiki to strip trailing spaces from lines on save. Only pathological cases need a trailing space, and they are easy to fix. Rich Farmbrough, 17:44, 4 September 2010 (UTC).

V filter - preliminary request

Can we trial a filter that detects solely the addition of the letter "v" or "V"? This is likely due to someone mis-keying a paste, I'm inclined to think it will not be worth the cost/benefit of implementing, but it seems worth exploring. Rich Farmbrough, 17:40, 4 September 2010 (UTC).

The filter doesn't support custom variables, so the only thing I could think of would be to track removed_lines in added_lines and then screen out everything that isnt a one- or two-byte edit. But I would hope that most people doing this would realize their mistake and quickly fix it. —Soap— 17:52, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Oh well. It's just I stopped myself doing this about 7 times that day. When I get more hard disk space I'll see if I can find how often this happens. Rich Farmbrough, 00:45, 15 September 2010 (UTC).

How about

old_size+1= new_size and (count("V",removed_lines) +1  =  count("V",added_lines)  or count("v",removed_lines) +1  =  count("v",added_lines))

I have no idea how many false positives this would generate, but it is simple and could be run for half an hour. Rich Farmbrough, 00:58, 15 September 2010 (UTC).

Was here

EG I thought we checked for this? Rich Farmbrough, 00:45, 15 September 2010 (UTC).

Yeah. I guess it doesn't. But anyways, I completely agree with this suggestion. Endofskull (talk) 00:35, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Just for the record: DASHBotAV Checks for this. Tim1357 ^talk 22:33, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Correction, checked for that. I'd bet ClueBot NG's bayseian filter picks up on it though. Tim1357 ^talk 23:11, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Here's some unfinished code:

!("autoconfirmed" in user_groups) &
(article_namespace == 0) &
(match := "\w{,10} wa[sz] here[.!]") &
(lcase(added_lines) rlike match) &
!(lcase(removed_lines) rlike match)

— Waterfox ^~talk~ 00:46, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Gwen gale harassment

• Task: disallow edits similar in meaning to [38].
• Reason: Harassment campaign against User:Gwen Gale; one of the top ghits is an attack site dedicated to her hence the request to google her name.

- —Jeremy v^_^v ^{Components:V S M} 22:47, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

• • I'd be reluctant to install an edit filter for this, because it's relatively trivial. If you still want something, here's some unfinished draft code:

 article_namespace == 3
 & !("autoconfirmed" in user_groups)
 & edit_delta > 100
 & (match := "Google Gwen Gale")
 & lcase(added_lines) rlike match
 & !(lcase(removed_lines) rlike match)

— Waterfox ^~talk~ 00:37, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

"Add caption here"

• Task: Add a tag in the edit summary when a user adds a link to a file with a caption of "Add caption here". e.g. [[File:Simmons Airlines.png|thumb|Add caption here]]
• Reason: To remind editors to use real captions or to remove the words "Add caption here" if no caption is necessary. I just cleaned up hundreds of these, but new entries are being added daily.

- GoingBatty (talk) 18:16, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Preventing AFC/R empty submissions

• Task: The filter should prevent unexperienced users (not warning, prevent!) requesting empty category and redirect requests at WP:AFC/R. It is a common problem that users hit save without filling anything in the forms.
• Reason: see above, A "possible" idea of how the edit filter could look like is following:

article_namespace == 4 &
article_text == "Articles for creation/Redirects" &
((summary == "Redirect request: [[ ]]" | summary == "Category request: [[:Category: ]]" ) | new_wikitext == "Target of redirect: [[ ]]")

mabdul 22:25, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

 Not done Not every unproductive edit needs to be disallowed. Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:13, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Preventing addition of incorrect protection templates

• Task: Prevent the addition of a protection template if it is not a valid template for the page's protection level (as given by article_restrictions_edit and article_restrictions_move).
  • Alternatively, if that is too complex and uses too many resources, then whenever a non-autoconfirmed user tries to add a protection template to a page, disallow the edit. Considering that if the page is edit-protected (whether semi or full), such accounts wouldn't be able to edit the page at all in the first place, the only possible false positives would be for users adding a move-protection tag to a move-protected page, and such cases are likely rare enough that disallowing the edit anyway would not cause problems.
  • In either case, the user should be warned that adding the template does not protect the page, only administrators can protect pages, and that such templates should not be added unless the page is actually protected by an admin. The warning probably should also point out that the correct place to request that a page be protected is WP:RFPP.
• Reason: This may be too minor of an issue for a filter, but I occasionally patrol Category:Wikipedia pages with incorrect protection templates, and I constantly run across pages where an IP or new account has placed a protection template on an unprotected page, apparently in the mistaken belief that it will protect the page (example). This only creates more work for editors like myself, and a filter would be useful to stop them and let them know that it doesn't work.

jcgoble3 (talk) 03:06, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Do you have examples so I can match them against a filter? And do you have suggestions for a warning message? Sole Soul (talk) 04:41, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Examples: [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47] [48]

As for a warning, I have no experience in writing filter warnings, but how about something like this:

This would obviously need to be reworded if we go with the alternative filter suggestion above. jcgoble3 (talk) 17:25, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Added another example to the list. jcgoble3 (talk) 21:11, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Removal of Muhammad images

• Task: This filter would prevent new users/IPs from removing files with "Muhammad" (in regex: "(?i)(Muhammad)+?" ) in the title.
• Reason: Lately, there has been some unusual vandalism at Arab and Muslim related articles in which images of Muhammad are either removed or changed to another image.

-FASTILY ^(TALK) 22:43, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

('autoconfirmed' in user_groups)& (removed_lines rlike '(?i)File:(Muhammad)+?')

— Kudu ^~I/O~ 14:22, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

 Not done Too much risk of FPs. Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:16, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Self-published book

• Task: Tag articles where sources are added where the publisher is one of a number of well-known self-publishing companies such as AuthorHouse (at times called Author House), Trafford Publishing, iUniverse, Xulon Lulu.com and Xlibris, sometimes cited as Xlibris/Random House.
• Reason: These sources should generally (but not always) not be used per WP:SPS but many editors are unaware of this or that the source is self-published. Flagging such additions would aid editors who are watching the relevant articles.

- Dougweller (talk) 11:51, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Find-a-grave removal

• Task: Tag when edits such as [49] are made (specifically, removing the {{Find a Grave}} template)
• Reason: There's someone who edits with an IP who insists on removing these as linkspam, and refuses to discuss the issue (rather, he just blanks his talk page if you bring it up). It would make it much easier to monitor this behavior. Only needs to work for IP editors.

- jpgordon^{::==( o )} 14:43, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Addendum to filter 213

• Task: Block BLP violating edits of a long term vandal when it extends to his user space
• Reason: Content such as this and this should be blocked from ever being made.

The user I have termed as the Saban troll has been effectively blocked from acting on articles by filter 213. However, these other phrases may be useful in preventing further BLP violations. Also, if there is some way to block this, it would be beneficial from seeing that article vandalized and then identifying the vandal after the fact.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:51, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

 Not done Not really doable. Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:17, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Bare URL tag

• Task: Adds a "Bare URL" tag in the edit history to any edit whose source only contains a web link without the appropriate source information (eg; <ref>http://www.thefutoncritic.com/showatch.aspx?id=closer&view=listings</ref>).
• Reason: To inform experienced editors through the edit history that a reference has been added that needs to be properly cited.

- KnownAlias X 07:45, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

 Not done Wouldn't be particularly helpful and would chew up resources. Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:18, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Categories in userspace

• Task: Alert editors who place non-user categories in userspace.
• Reason: There are perpetually userfied articles in category namespaces where they don't belong. E.g. at the moment, two user articles are in Category:Human–computer_interaction. I see this on a semi-daily basis and any category of any size will inevitably have user articles (or even profiles themselves) in them. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:36, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • It would need to exclude legitimate userspace categories, like Category:Wikipedians who use Huggle and the like... I think all of those start with "Wikipedians". I seem to recall a bot that went around and commented out (or prepended a : to) inappropriate categories in userspace... I wonder if it's still active. 28bytes (talk) 22:08, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

•  Not possible as far as I can tell. Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:19, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Banned sock trivia edit

• Task: Block the words "Kraut", "Rockford" and "Cow - n'tdown" by any editor from Bob's Burgers and List of Bob's Burgers episodes.
• Reason: Sock refuses to relent to consensus, has been banned at An/I. Every other editor save one has deemed this edit trivia without notoriety on the talk pages, but sock continues to try to sneak this edit in with various accounts that break auto-confirm. The proxy (meat?) also refuses to acknowledge the issue of the edit's notoriety, preferring to claim this is an issue of bullying by Wikipedia, and has suggested recently that he will reintroduce another form of the edit on the other page, still against consensus. Full protection of both pages is the only other option against the sock, and I'd prefer not to have to go down that road again. I won't assume that nothing would happen to change the notoriety of this trivia, so the blocked words are (in my opinion) the least likely words to be otherwise used that are also WP:OR in each relevant section of original research that won't make the page even if the edit is approved (even though both advocates swear the OR is the vital aspect). I'm signing under an IP to avoid this sock trolling me, as with this sandbox vandalism or various previous attempts to delete RPP's before either the development of his auto-confirm talents or An/I, but have copied my signature, and will respond to any emails on the matter. I recommend also conferring with admins C.Fred (talk) or Elockid ^(Talk) who have been active on the matter on both pages.

99.36.14.22 (talk) 00:07, 16 June 2011 (UTC) aka KnownAlias X

Possible test edit

• Task: Tags an edit containing ''Italic text'' and/or '''Bold text'''. Users that are autoconfirmed probably would not make an edit like this, so tag new and unregistered users. *Reason: I see many editing test (and vandalism) each day in the mainspace containing this. Crazymonkey1123 (Jacob) ^{T or M}/_{Sign mine} 03:26, 12 May 2011 (UTC) :There was a filter that did that (18 ), but it's been disabled for a few years. There's currently a bot being written (by me) that's been approved for trial that will take care of this problem. See also the discussion below. 28bytes (talk) 03:34, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

 Not done - Per above. Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:20, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Removal of BLPProd templates

• Task: Detect the removal of a BLPProd template and tag the edit (similar to 29 , which does the same with removal of a speedy deletion template).

• Reason: This filter would be helpful in much the same way 29 is: It would enable users to check articles that have recently had the BLPProd template removed to make sure that they have sources and, if not, reinstate the template. - — Preceding signed comment added by Cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 20:17, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Misleadingly piped links

• Task: A new tag to catch links that are piped to suspicious targets or vice versa, like [[Joe Shmoe|douchebag]] and [[douchebag|Joe Shmoe]].
• Reason: This would catch a specific kind of vandalism or attacks, misleadingly piped links. Obviously, this should only be a tag and not have a "disallow" action or anything like that die to the risk of false positives.

— Preceding signed comment added by Cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 03:50, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

As discussed on the talk page, disabled filter 24 does/did this, so perhaps it could be revived and set to tag-only if no one objects. 28bytes (talk) 13:54, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

That's a good idea. I'm thinking the words to look for should be expanded a bit, but other than that, sounds good to me! Question, though, I don't know the (programming) language enough to tell, does it catch both forms (i.e., [[Joe Shmoe|douchebag]] and [[douchebag|Joe Shmoe]])? — Preceding signed comment added by Cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 01:24, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't at the moment, but it wouldn't be tough to add. 28bytes (talk) 01:29, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Awesome! Adding that functionality and then expanding the list of "bad words" will make the filter perfect for this. — Preceding signed comment added by Cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 04:35, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

 Tried and failed. Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:20, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Prevent creation of short pages

• Task: Prevent short pages from being created by anyone who isn't autoconfirmed.
• Reason: Good short pages are rarely created by newbies. They are typically pages like "he is cool"[50]. Hindi Wikipedia has an edit filter to tackle this.[51]

A more comprehensive edit filter was discussed at Wikipedia:Edit_filter/Requested/Archive_1#Reference_compliance_filter - John Vandenberg ^(chat) 08:44, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Are these not getting caught and CSD'ed by new page patrollers? I know I've tagged a lot of these coming through NPP. 28bytes (talk) 19:52, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

And actually, we do have a filter like this: filter 98 ("Tag: Creating very short new article"), which I do see pop up a lot in Special:Newpages. 28bytes (talk) 19:57, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

The NPPer are in short supply (see here), and the backlog is often quite large when one of our high volume NPPers isn't available for even a day. We can cut down their workload by lifting the bar just a bit, preventing more drastic measures, and letting NPPers spend more time curating the new pages which have potential. It also reduces work on admins.

98 is good for pages which probably could be improved.

Some examples in the last 12 hours. Special:Undelete/Devaraja, Special:Undelete/Cisco_AnyConnect_Secure_Mobility_Client, Special:Undelete/Wiki_Concepts, Special:Undelete/Tony_R._White, Special:Undelete/Oressie_Simmons_Jr., Special:Undelete/Demitrinieto, Special:Undelete/Match_Made_in_Heaven, Special:Undelete/Saint_bernards_collage, Special:Undelete/VKRS_Dissonance, Special:Undelete/AkbarFirdaus, Special:Undelete/Karya_Samudera, Special:Undelete/A1ERP, Special:Undelete/Zorko_Rajčić, Special:Undelete/Bear_ball, Special:Undelete/Happ.

Having now spent a bit more time looking through the deletion log here and on Hindi Wikipedia, I think pages less than 70 bytes should be rejected, pages less than 250 bytes should cause a warning first and tag the new page as 'very short'. --John Vandenberg ^(chat) 14:28, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately I don't have the admin flag so I will have to defer to another edit filter manager to examine those deleted articles, but regardless, your suggestion makes sense. I'll make a copy of 98, lower the threshold to 70 bytes, put it in log-only mode and see if there are any false positives (i.e. anything remotely plausible as a standalone page). Redirects are already accounted for in 98, so that shouldn't be a problem. 28bytes (talk) 14:47, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Filter 394 created in log-only mode. Already 1 hit for it. I'll keep an eye on the logs for this one and based on what it catches we can consider doing more than logging. 28bytes (talk) 15:58, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for setting it up. Nine hits, and all are bad articles; some are very bad. How long do we normally monitor a edit filter before it goes live? John Vandenberg ^(chat) 16:57, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Wow, I just took a look at what it's catching... that first hit was practically a featured article compared to the rest. I'd like to give it 24 hours at least to see if it's catching any false positives before enabling warning, tagging or prevention. But at this point this is looking like a very good filter to have. 28bytes (talk) 17:04, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

(←) The tagging-only filter 98 "short new article" is almost useless since Special:NewPages displays the exact sizes, so for the warning filter personally I would repurpose 98. Also note that 98 used to have this warning (removed later) so the same people might disable the warning again. — AlexSm 03:39, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

While the page size is visible in NewPages, edit filter 98 also has other conditions which have to be met. Still, 98 should include a helpful warning. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 09:23, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I've trawled through all the 500 results for Special:AbuseFilter/394, and most of the remaining articles were redirects. I've updated the rule to exclude redirects again. Here is a list of 20 pages which were not a redirect:

• Munimadugu, Funky Flute, Cliff Dempsey Racing, 299th Brigade Support Battalion (United States), Bendekere, Canon Pyon, Santos Chayene, Launaea sarmentosa, The Littlest Groom, Phone Tap, Amphicelle, User:LifeSettlementGuru/Altri Life Settlements, RJ Corman Railroad Bridge, Micah Schweinsberg, Mabaya, Čarli TV, TV Petelin, Emory Center for Alternative Investments and Feels So Good (311 song)

Some of these could be removed from the filter. e.g. User:LifeSettlementGuru/Altri Life Settlements was created with '{{new page}}'. 299th Brigade Support Battalion (United States) was started with 'Under Construction'. Santos Chayene was only a short article because of a mistaken save. The author of Launaea sarmentosa also continued to write a 200 char article in the second edit. The second edit to Phone Tap put it over the 70 char limit. If we do prevent creation of short articles, the message needs to be a positive "keep going" message so these people continue to add to their article. We should also say that the limit is x chars, so they know they don't need to write a lot before they can click save. e.g. the author of Amphicelle could easily have added another word or two in order to exceed 70 characters. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 09:23, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I think a positive "keep going" message might be good, but I'd also like to see a recommendation that they start the article in their userspace if they intend on starting with a very small amount of text. We could even offer them a link User:Example/article name they could click to get started on that. I'd be reluctant to tell them to "just make it longer" as the current message does; suggesting these micro "articles" go in their userspace until at least one reference is offered might be a better approach. What do you think? 28bytes (talk) 16:59, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I really like the idea of suggesting that they start a userspace draft, esp using the WP:Article Wizard, or direct them to Articles for creation.

I also like the "must have at least one ref" suggestion, which I have spawned into a new thread above, as it is applicable to longer articles as well. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 07:46, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

I'll whip up a proposed message box along those lines today. 28bytes (talk) 13:44, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Ken Hoang

• Task: Keep any socks of banned user Don't Feed the Zords (talk · contribs) from editing Ken Hoang or creating an AfD for the article. (Being unfamiliar with edit filters, I'm unsure how one would go about this, or if it is possible at all).
• Reason: Don't Feed the Zords has repeatedly used sockpuppet accounts to redirect, nominate for deletion, or otherwise interfere with the Ken Hoang article. They're good at it, too: for example, is the AfD salted? They'll get around it by misspelling the word "nomination" (admins only). So many sock accounts have been aggravating to deal with as well. I know of several of DFtZ's behavioral patterns, so contact me if necessary.

— CtP (t • c) 01:00, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

We can semi-protect the article, but the bot would just tag them when new AfDs get made. I think just blocking the AfD creations would be enough from the filter. Definitely needed. Monty₈₄₅ 01:10, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

If we're just blocking AfD creations, then do you think that MediaWiki:Titleblacklist might be a better route? The article is currenty semi-protected, but the socks just make useless or trivial edits and then lay low for a few days before editing the article. CtP (t • c) 01:14, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

I thought of that, but honestly, the article does have problems, and someone could quite reasonably want to make a good faith nomination of it. AFAIK, the only way to do something like a semi-protected title black list is a filter. Also, the socks are already using alternate names, there would be nothing to stop them from evading the blacklist the same way they are evading the salting. If I understood Regex, I would try to block any IPs/new editors from creating an AfD that links to the article. Monty₈₄₅ 01:18, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Looked at the blacklist docs, and you can set to autoconfirmed, still there is the issue of evasion. Monty₈₄₅ 01:22, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Assuming they're filing the AfD correctly (I can't see the deleted revisions), you should be able to block any edit that adds both {{la|Ken Hoang}} and {{find sources|Ken Hoang}} and maybe a link to "\bhttp://toolserver.org/~snottywong/cgi-bin/votecounter.cgi?page=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Ken_Hoang.*?\b". That being said, I'm not sure how expensive that would be to run as a filter. Legoktm (talk) 22:15, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Stale

— This, that and the other (talk) 13:00, 18 July 2013 (UTC)