Abuse filter maintainers

←Policies and guidelines

Abuse filter maintainer policy & information

This page outlines the standards and guidelines related to the abuse filter maintainer and their use of their rights to maintain abuse filters globally.

Abuse filter maintainer is a global user group assigned by stewards that permits trusted users access to view, and where appropriate, edit abuse filters. This permission is enabled on every public Wikimedia wiki that shares access via CentralAuth and SUL, and is only to be used for non-controversial maintenance, or by request of the local community. Since users in this group can seriously disrupt Wikimedia wikis if used incorrectly, the abuse filter maintainer permission is only assigned to users who have a strong track record in maintaining abuse filters.

Scope

Use of rights

This global group is enabled on every Wikimedia wiki that shares access via CentralAuth and SUL (including locked (closed) wikis and excluding private and fishbowl wikis). Abuse filter maintainers must not make any controversial changes to filters on any project. Essentially, unless explicitly requested or endorsed by the community, abuse filter maintainers should not change the functionality of filters. Instead they should use their rights solely for maintenance such as preventing a filter from breaking due to upcoming changes to the AbuseFilter extension itself. Notes should be left in the filter description explaining why the change was needed, and listing the relevant Phabricator tasks if applicable.

Abuse filter maintainers should avoid making routine changes to the filters on larger projects without prior notification and agreement. Projects with established communities and processes for maintaining abuse filters can request to be avoided (i.e. "opt out"), in which case they should provide abuse filter maintainers with appropriate guidelines about how to notify them of the necessary changes so that they can be applied by the local community. Examples may include a link to the "village pump" page, a mailing list, or requesting the abuse filter maintainer to contact a local sysop through in-wiki email.

Rights

• View and create filters that use protected variables (abusefilter-access-protected-vars)
• View the abuse log (abusefilter-log)
• View detailed abuse log entries (abusefilter-log-detail)
• View log entries of abuse filters marked as private (abusefilter-log-private)
• Create or modify abuse filters (abusefilter-modify)
• Create or modify what external domains are blocked from being linked (abusefilter-modify-blocked-external-domains)
• Create or modify global abuse filters (abusefilter-modify-global)
• Modify abuse filters with restricted actions (abusefilter-modify-restricted)
• View abuse filters (abusefilter-view)
• View abuse filters marked as private (abusefilter-view-private)
• View IP addresses used by temporary accounts (checkuser-temporary-account)
• Retrieve information about IP addresses attached to revisions or log entries (ipinfo)
• Enable two-factor authentication (oathauth-enable)
• View the spam block list log (spamblacklistlog)

Appointment

Requests for abuse filter maintainer rights should be placed on Steward requests/Global permissions. The request will be approved by a steward if there is a consensus for the user to become an abuse filter maintainer after a period of discussion of no less than one week. The discussion is not a vote; comments must present specific points in favor of or against the user's approval.

As a guideline, abuse filter maintainers should:

• Hold sysop or abuse filter helper (where exists) on their homewiki
• Have extensive experience with AbuseFilter: created or edited several filters
• Contribute to the AbuseFilter code and participate in the relevant discussions on Phabricator

By default, appointment will be temporary, lasting any time up to a year. Requests for renewal can be done by placing a new request on Steward requests/Global permissions#Requests for other global permissions.

Removal

Continued access to abuse filters is dependent on activity and community trust.

• Misuse or abuse: If this permission is used for any actions which are controversial, such as major additions or removals to a project's abuse filter, or continued disruption due to errors, access will be revoked by a steward. Requests can be made to any steward by placing a request on Steward requests/Permissions#Removal of access or, in emergencies, the #wikimedia-stewards^connect IRC channel.
• Inactivity: If an abuse filter maintainer has made no global edits for six months, the permission may be revoked by a steward.

Review of an abuse filter maintainer's actions can be requested from any steward or via requests for comment.

Guidelines

Abuse filter maintainers should create a global user page where they explain that they have these global permissions and how they may be used (i.e. by linking to this page). Abuse filter maintainers are encouraged to use two-factor authentication.

Users with Abuse filter maintainer right

• Automatically generated list of abuse filter maintainers

See also

• Abuse filter maintainers: global permission · global groups (toolforge) · member list · group changelog
• Global groups
• Abuse filter helpers
• Abuse filter editors (obsolete)
• AbuseFilter (with wikis configurations comparison)
• Documentation on mediawiki.org
• RfC: Abuse filter maintainer