Commons:Abuse filter
 | Click here to report an issue with an abuse filter |
AbuseFilter is a tool used to allow privileged users to set specific controls on user activity and create automated reactions for certain behaviours.
The extension allows automatic filters/heuristics to be applied to all edits. Specific rules can be developed, such as "users with fewer than 500 edits are blocked from moving pages to titles which match this regular expression: /poop/". Of course, the rules can get quite a bit more complicated – for example, a rule that blocks all pagemove vandalism with a 70% success rate (and with the option of blocking the IP address of the user making these page moves), with about 2-3 false positives per year (checked on the last year's worth of moves for English Wikipedia).
All users will be able to view some filters, and all log entries. For all filters, including those hidden from public view, a brief, general summary of what the rule targets will be available, and displayed in the log, the list of active filters, and in any error messages generated by the filter.
We're planning on treading carefully – most abuse filters will be tested for a few days (in "log only" mode) before being brought to full force.
Filter requests
If you have an idea for a filter and you need help developing it, please start a new thread on the talk page. Filter conditions are limited (currently 2000), therefore filters will be created only if a real need exists and if it can't be handled in a other way.
Logs
Logging is a critical part of the abuse filter system. The log is at Special:AbuseLog and is visible to all users. Only administrators can view details of individual log entries. All users can view abuse filters (except those marked "private", where making the filter public would allow malicious users to more easily bypass it), but only administrators can create and edit them.
Notifications
- See Commons:Abuse filter/Messages for an overview of the current warning messages.
- Recent edits or other events that couldn't be checked by all active abuse filters (help)