Talk:Global AbuseFilter/Archives/2013

"No more than a day without actions"

I see no justification for this, because not all spambots spam on a completely daily basis. I would support changing this to a week or two weeks. In my opinion the danger of collateral damage for a specific-enough global filter is minimal over that time period and does not justify disabling the filter after just one day without hits.--Jasper Deng (talk) 00:41, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

A week or more would seem appropriate, but less than a month. Ajraddatz (Talk) 01:00, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. πr² (t • c) 01:16, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

x2. Legoktm (talk) 05:00, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I think I supported this requirement initially (a long time ago, obviously :P), but yes, one week is more reasonable. --MF-W 15:28, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I've changed this. --MF-W 18:28, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Status

Really, are we any closer to getting this implemented than we were a year ago? PiRSquared17 (talk) 23:58, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but there is still work happening on internationalization (per the page) and filters that only affect a certain set of wikis. If implemented right now, only completely global filters could be used, which for the most part would be tagging filters. Ajraddatz (Talk) 00:27, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

All stewards can now modify global AbuseFilters

It has finally happened. However, I wish there had been more discussion on when/when not to use it. An RfC is probably in order. PiRSquared17 (talk) 23:59, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree that more discussion should occur before giving anyone this right. There are still unresolved issues in terms of scope and technical implementation. Ajraddatz (Talk) 00:03, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

This is yet a very limited deployment mainly for technical testing, please see my mailing list post: wikitech-l post - Hoo man (talk) 00:05, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Ah. So it's just the same as the access Abuse filter editors have had, restricted to those wikis. I thought it was enabled on all wikis! Thank you for the clarification. PiRSquared17 (talk) 00:15, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

No, this is the ability to set/edit a single AbuseFilter that will automatically apply to all wikis (except that right now only a few wikis actually will get the filter applied, due to it being in testing). It's a "right to set global AbuseFilter rules" rather than a "global right to set local AbuseFilter rules", if that makes it clearer. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 00:43, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I know that. I meant: The rights of the global group "abusefilter" (AbuseFilter editors) has already included "abusefilter-modify-global" since late June. PiRSquared17 (talk) 00:53, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh, indeed, yes, that's correct. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 01:06, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, after all immediate blocking bugs have been resolved we decided to give the stewards the signal to actually start using the features which in fact were enabled for quite some time. This way we can see how the global AbuseFilters will behave in production. - Hoo man (talk) 00:23, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Voilà test no. 1: Special:AbuseFilter/72 (copied from no. 65); with no actions currently enabled. --MF-W 00:27, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

It seems to work: [1]. PiRSquared17 (talk) 22:37, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Note: see next section - now it is set to block. PiRSquared17 (talk) 18:46, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Global filter blocking

I am a bit concerned that this will set a precedent for having global filters block when we have "real" global filters (not just Meta, MW.org, test wikis). Does anyone think that having the GAF block is a good idea? PiRSquared17 (talk) 16:07, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

No... it's fine on these three wikis, and I guess that's why User:Billinghurst enabled it to block, but yes, this would aggravate large wikis, especially since there's no way for local admins to disable it.--Jasper Deng (talk) 23:01, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

For those three wikis it should be ok to use the block feature, however, when the abusefilter is really global at some point, we should not use it to block users. That could/will cause too much drama on several wikis, I guess. Maybe it would be possible to get something like wikisets for abusefilters, in which we can define which wikis are effected by the filter? So we could use the blocking feature for small wikis and where is it needed and use a different filter for other wikis or something like that. -Barras talk 23:57, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I've been pushing for wikisets in the global abusefilter for literally years now - it doesn't seem likely to happen, for now at least. There was some thought of linking them with centralauth, but I'm not sure what stage that is at currently. I agree with above; when the global af is enabled globally, it shouldn't be blocking, but it is fine blocking on the three wikis for now. Ajraddatz (Talk) 00:03, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

I see that now filter 72 has been set to blocking. I strongly oppose doing this while there is no policy for global abusefilters and we just pretend to have them in a test phase. See also the comments about blocking global filters on bugzilla:52681 (enabling of abusefilter blocks on Meta), which only made this possible as a side effect. --MF-W 21:02, 20 September 2013 (UTC) Additionally when I recently proposed on 3 wikis that they should be added to the "global abusefilter testing" (bugzilla:53537) I specifically wrote to them that they would be consulted again before we would create filters that do anything else except logging. --MF-W 21:15, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Wow. I didn't even know that we had them enabled on incubator, Wikispecies, and outreachwiki. I agree that it is misleading to enable this filter to block but promise to just log/other "mild" actions. PiRSquared17 (talk) 21:48, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

What rights do i need to get the opportunity to see filters (e.g. 72's) code? Is it global rights or local on meta? --Base (talk) 14:13, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

You have to have at minimum abusefilter-view, or abusefilter-modify. Only local sysops have that on this wiki.--Jasper Deng (talk) 20:50, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for information. But it sounds a bit weird. To see info about filter that works on another wiki one have to have the local rights on meta. E.g. I'm one of outreach's sysops (yep one of 200+ but one of few active as well) can see local filters there, can see that filter hooked an edit, I can see info about the hooked edit but I can't see filter itself — shall I deduct filter's code experimentally? --Base (talk) 18:08, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

The filter is for NTSAMR spam. Maybe admins at any affected wiki should be able to view a filter, but they should not be able to modify global filters. Ideally, they would be able to disable/opt-out of an individual global filter locally, though. PiRSquared17 (talk) 18:26, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Yep, I fully agree with your statement. Local disable/opt-out is important because filters are never perfect and one may need to override it with proper reason. --Base (talk) 19:51, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

And we have a new blocking global filter! Special:AbuseFilter/77 PiRSquared17 (talk) 23:57, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

+1 for allowing sysops of the affected wikis to see the code of these global filters. Helder 12:06, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

I have now removed the blocking from the two filters. --MF-W 20:51, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Handling global abusefilters in the "test phase"

Ideas, derived from what is currently written on the front page:

• Global AbuseFilters are used only to prevent crosswiki spam & vandalism on the wikis currently affected by global filters (logical).
• For local-specific problems, local filters should be used; global filters are only for spammers etc. that really hit multiple wikis (unfortunately most do).
• Filters which do anything else than tagging should have the non-tagging actions removed after 1 week of no non-false-positive hits of the global filter.
• The blocking function is available because Meta decided to use it locally and global filters depend on the abusefilter interface of Meta. Global filters do not get the block function set until a real policy about using it has been created. (Blocking filters are not the standard setting; we should also treat it like this for global filters).

For the record, if I see it correctly, currently these filters are global:

• 69: "new user youtube, &c." - Warn, Disallow, Tag, currently 261 hits
• 72: "Global test filter against Ntsamr" - Tag, Block, currently 1033 hits
• 76: "general new user spam in several ns" - Warn, Disallow, Tag, currently 4 hits
• 77: "vandalspam" - Disallow, Block, currently 0 hits.

We could create an overview page (subpage of this page) to discuss needs for global filters, current settings, false positives, problems a filter causes on local wikis etc.

--MF-W 18:47, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree. I'm also not sure that "vandalspam" is a great filter. Why can't it just use the spam blacklist? I hope the test phase ends soon though, since this proposal is literally years old (ancient in the Wikimedia universe, no?). PiRSquared17 (talk) 18:58, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

What would a good page name be for the overview? Global AbuseFilter/Overview or something else? PiRSquared17 (talk) 19:15, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

@vandalspam: Ask the filter creator :) @old: Certainly! But many useful features unfortunately take ages for the WMF to implement, which rather likes to spend its energy on wikiafication. @page name: That seems fine to me. Or maybe Global AbuseFilter/Active filters. --MF-W 22:23, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Good idea to have an overview page. I already suggested it a few weeks ago I thought. :-) Trijnstel_talk 15:35, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

"Vandalspam" was meant to catch the user adding that link rather than the link itself, I'm pretty sure I know what blacklists are. That vandal will be, sooner or later, back but feel free to disable it anyway. --Vituzzu (talk) 01:08, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Who will be able to modify global filters?

I'm guessing only stewards. Is this correct? PiRSquared17 (talk) 18:48, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

At the moment yes; but the front page says "(probably stewards, possibly global sysops as well)". --MF-W 18:54, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Meta isn't a global sysops wiki, so a local group on Meta would need to be created for them. Or maybe just a separate local group. PiRSquared17 (talk) 18:56, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

That's true. Btw as a steward I have the global filter edit right at the moment through the global group of stewards, but can't make filters on other wikis than Meta into global filters. Probably there is a setting that Meta is the "source" wiki for the global filters. So it could either be a global group or a local group, there would either way be no risk of global AFs accidentally being made outside of Meta. But maybe we shouldn't discuss the technical details at the moment, but rather the basic decision of who may edit global filters. My basic idea would be: stewards only first, and if there is a need, other users can be added. Global sysops also can't make global blocks (because people opposed that when GSes were introduced), so it would maybe be consequential to not let them edit global filters (which can prevent edits as well) either.

However I also think that some local sysops which are involved in spam-fighting might be interested in helping to create useful global filters with their local AF knowledge. IMHO we should consider such questions once global filter policies are actually defined (& global filters maybe active on more wikis) and discussions are being had about filters etc. (e.g. some non-stewards who frequently make suggestions for improvement) --MF-W 22:21, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

SPAM

Hi! Just in case this is useful for some global abuse filter: b:pt:Special:PermaLink/263332. Helder 12:45, 30 September 2013 (UTC)