User talk:Edit filter

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Bot is showing in the recent changes?

Can we hide this bot's actions? --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 02:02, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

@Kazitor RoninMacbeth (talk) 03:21, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

@LeftyGreenMario and RoninMacbeth Probably not. Like I said on the saloon bar, for some reason we are getting spammed heavily at the moment. I enabled blocking on the filter because there was just too much spam coming in. I guess we should just wait for it to die down. —Kazitor, ^pending 03:28, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

@Kazitor I did a little looking, turns out the edit filter doesn't have the bot user right. RoninMacbeth (talk) 03:31, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

@RoninMacbeth Yes, it seems Nx removed it 7 years ago, a few hours after it was added. If a bot blocks someone, does that stop it from showing in recent changes? And if so, should we overrule Nx's judgement? Personally, I don't think seeing <10 blocks in RC is that big a deal. —Kazitor, ^pending 03:38, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Eh, it'd be a little more convenient not seeing it, and giving it bot rights prevents this thing from happening again. We should just let it run in the background while we go about our business. And yes, bot-blocks don't show up on RC. RoninMacbeth (talk) 03:40, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Alright, changed its rights. I guess it's not that bad since I believe quite a few people check the logs too. —Kazitor, ^pending 03:43, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

good bot

[ pets bot on the head ] —ClickerClock (talk) 09:09, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Still fucking up, I see

So apparently the Edit Filter is still blocking @Dysklyver, I`m sure one of us will try to fix it again, I'll see what's wrong with it later, too busy right now.--Don Juan (talk) 18:45, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

It's fine, basically I am deliberately tripping the filter to check it works when making new filters, more particularly the ones that block. — Dysk (contribs) 19:32, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

I noticed, I edited the filter to remove all the "junk" sequences, and left in the bits that would actually help filter out trolls and vandals.--Don Juan (talk) 20:49, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

@D Now that it's been several months and I trust you enough, "too busy right now" meant "too lazy to be bothered doing a damn thing." — Oxyaena ^Harass 01:09, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Bot

I think we should give the edit filter the bot user right so that it doesn't clog Recent Changes. Any objections? RoninMacbeth (talk) 05:25, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

RoninMacbeth: Sure, if it isn't already. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 20:47, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

This was done a while back now, there is some detail on the technical support page. — Dysk (contribs) 22:05, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Removing the bot right

I’m considering doing this, unless anyone objects, it would make it slightly easier to spot any false positives. It was apparently given the bot right because it was clogging up recent changes, but something’s changed (maybe a filter has been disabled or no longer blocks) as it now only blocks a few accounts a day. Christopher (talk) 21:25, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

I’m not a patient person. If anyone hates this decision, they can ask me to reverse it and I’ll just have to click “show bots” every time I check recent changes. Christopher (talk) 21:40, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Consider this comment an objection. JJP...MASTER!_{[talk to] JJP... master?} 19:39, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

That didn’t last long. Christopher (talk) 19:43, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Longer bans for blackhat spammers

Why does the edit filter only block "Blackhat SEO Spammers" for 3.6 days? They usually just get permabanned by a sysop or mod anyways. --Luigifan18 (talk) 03:13, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

The short block in the spam filter was done by the author(s) of the filter, recognizing that the filter can sometimes be triggered by non-spammers (i.e., a false positive). Im almost all cases, spammers use throwaway accounts and will go away if blocked for a few days. Edit filter actions are always supposed to be reviewed by the sysops. —cosmikdebris ^talk stalk 11:50, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

I think this could be improved upon. At least some of those bots, maybe even most, only register accounts because they tried to spam as IPs first, but were prevented from that without being blocked for it. Dividing filtering into more filters would allow blocking harder in cases where there's a smaller risk of false positives. For example Uncyclopedia (and later Illogicopedia, where I'm an admin) has a filter which blocks clear-cut lottery spam bots with practically no risk for false positives. The difference is, there they get blocked as IPs for 3 months, and there's no need to clean up accounts after that. (Beyond that, User:Celeste knows much more about Uncyclopedia's filtering than I do.) But that kind of thing would perhaps be too large a departure from RW's policies, I don't know. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 17:11, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Christopher is responsible for a lot of good work on the edit filters here. —cosmikdebris ^talk stalk 18:14, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

@Cosmikdebris …the filter can sometimes what non-spammers? --Luigifan18 (talk) 20:17, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

If your first edit is creating a new page with any sort of link in it, there’s a good chance it’ll be caught by the filter; I’m surprised it doesn’t affect more real people. You do need to submit the same edit twice to get banned though.

I added some stuff to the filter to reduce false positives at some point but I don’t think I set the block time. Christopher (talk) 20:43, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

There seems to be an unwritten rule that robots should not permaban accounts that trigger a filter. I don't have any objection to increasing the ban time for some of the filters, such as "black hat seo spammers", to something like 3.14 months. Taking a big picture look, though, it appears that the spammers use a hit-and-run approach and almost never return to a previously created account if it is banned by one of the spam-detecting edit filters. Now that was before plutocow started permabanning spammers after reviewing the edit filter blocks, so I can't say if the spammer behavior has changed. —cosmikdebris ^talk stalk 00:01, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Based on how many times spam accounts get autoblocked, at least a considerable amount of spam accounts do seem to return after their block. Plutocow (talk) 00:42, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I took a look at the edit filter log for filter 57 "blackhat seo spammer" and it has a very, very low false positive rate. So, I'm changing the block time from 3.14 days to infinity. I'll keep a close eye on it for a while to see if any legitimate edits are tagged. —cosmikdebris ^talk stalk 16:15, 29 September 2022 (UTC)