Wikibooks:Edit filter/Requested

Edit filter management
Documentation · Discussion · How to create a filter · Requested edit filters · Reporting false positives · Tags

This page is for non-administrators or people without sufficient knowledge about the coding involved to make requests to enact edit filters. Please add a new section at the top of current requests using the following format:

==Filter name==
*'''Task''': What is the filter supposed to do? To what pages and editors does it apply?
*'''Reason''': Why is the filter needed.
- ~~~~

Bear the following in mind:

Filters are applied to all edits. Therefore, problematic changes that apply to a single page are likely not suitable for an edit filter.
Each filter takes time to run, making editing (and to some extent other things) slightly slower. The time is only a few milliseconds per filter, but with enough filters that adds up.
There is a limit to what filters can check for. More complex, non-essential tasks, such as those that need to perform a more in-depth check of the page or fetch information that the filter system does not have access to, are better served by separate software, run by an individual user on their own machine, or dedicated server such as the Toolserver, rather than those used to actually host Wikibooks.
It is not called the abuse filter for a reason. Contributors are not expected to have read every policy, guideline, and style page. Trivial formatting mistakes and edits that at first glance look fine but go against some obscure style guideline or convention are not suitable candidates for an edit filter—quite apart from performance concerns, if it doesn't harm the project, it is best not to hassle new contributors because of it.
For prevention of creation of pages with certain names, MediaWiki:Titleblacklist is usually a better way to handle the problem.

Poop vandalism

Task: detect "Poop" vandalism
Reason: A major abuse filter on enwiki. I reverted an instance of poop vandalism. I have a filter from test wikipedia you can use. —I-20 the highway 20:58, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- We do have a filter, but it needs more words. —I-20 the highway 21:01, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - The filter at test.wikipedia.org is hidden. I'll be happy to make any additions you'd like. Our filter is visible, so you should be able to analyze where we are lacking from your end. – Adrignola talk 01:18, 13 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    - I know it's hidden. I can send the filter via email. —I-20 the highway 00:55, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Why don't you just add poop to the spam filter? Why make another one just for 1 word?

|Wikibooks=PokestarFan • Talk • Contributions|#default=PokestarFan • Talk • Contributions}}|Wikibooks=PokestarFan • Talk • Contributions|#default=PokestarFan • Talk • Contributions}}|Wikibooks=PokestarFan • Talk • Contributions|#default=PokestarFan • Talk • Contributions}} 14:07, 11 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@PokestarFan: Such things tend to be quite tricky to do without inadvertently preventing some legitimate edits. A while ago over on en.wn, I was prevented (for a time) from making some administrative edits to archived articles that, amongst other things, significantly reduced the size of the article pages, if the article happened to mention Liverpool. Why? Because an edit filter, created some time before to combat a vandal with a specific modus operandi, would prevent an edit if it made the page significantly smaller and the resulting page contained the string "poo". --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 16:26, 11 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Large Scale Hidden IP Vandalism

See the discussion at the bottom of my Talk Page. It seems there has been some strange vandalism where large amounts of seemingly normal text have been added to pages by IP users which mostly consists of text copied from Wikipedia with some useful parts left in. It's gone undetected mostly. Would it be easy to set up an edit filter which warns or doesn't permit when an IP user adds more than, say, 10,000 bytes?--ЗAНИA ^talk 22:15, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

New edits can do this. Filters cannot be applied to old edits though. I think tagging the edits as "big edits" should be the way to go and should be applied to everyone, not just IP users. Big edits can then be easily examined by everyone. Some registered users have copied text from Wikipedia and other websites at times too. No telling how many of those have gone undetected as well. --dark lama 00:28, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The suggestion by Dirk is that this is vandalism rather than cases of unknowledgeable editors and it seems to be only IP editors.--ЗAНИA

^talk 07:20, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A filter will find 10,000 bytes by an unknowledgeable IP editor with good intentions, an IP editor who waited until they had a lot written before submitting their work, and vandalism. I think ~~AGF~~ assuming nothing and letting things slip through is better than assuming its all bad. Applying a tag will allow all to be found, and people to address only those situations where there is an actual problem. --dark lama 13:26, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The ideal, of course, is not to AGF but rather (taking a tip from Wikinews :-) to not ABF. But the point is well made. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 17:47, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]