Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested/Archive 19

Block addition of __INDEX__ in mainspace

• Task: Block editors from adding __INDEX__ within mainspace
• Reason: __INDEX__ is a magic word instructing search engines to index the page its placed on. As all pages in mainspace except those not yet patrolled by NPP are automatically marked for indexing there is no usecase for ever having to use this magic word in mainspace, and adding it does nothing to the article except add a few extra unncesary bytes (and help see COI editors).
• Diffs: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Country_FM_Rwanda&diff=prev&oldid=1065005298&diffmode=source

-- Asartea ^{Talk | Contribs} 19:33, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

__INDEX__ anywhere is probably weird enough to reasonably trigger a filter. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 15:47, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

...except when discussing __INDEX__! Certes (talk) 16:08, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I could see a case for adding a filter to check for any additions anywhere where someone adds __INDEX__ without surrounding <nowiki> which warns, but since in mainspace you aren't discussing it and it doesn't do anything its probably fine to just flatout block. -- Asartea ^{Talk | Contribs} 16:59, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

About 1000 articles use the word (sample), so we may want a purge once further additions have been prevented. Certes (talk) 17:27, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Okay, having been poking:

• There are 187 uses of INDEX in Draft: which aren't nowikied. These should all be wasteful, so it can probably get blocked
• There are 282 uses in User: and User talk:, which I think are all reasonable and should be allowed.
• There are 697 uses in (Article) which aren't nowikied, and none which are. These are all a waste and probably should be blocked
• There are 18 uses in all other namespaces which aren't nowikied, at least some of which are reasonable, but also some which aren't.
  • (all of these results can be checked by going to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?sort=last_edit_desc&search=insource%3Aindex+insource%3A%2F__INDEX__%2F+-insource%3A%22%3Cnowiki%3E+index+nowiki%22&title=Special%3ASearch&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&ns0=1 and selecting the namespace(s). Annoyingly enough I can't just post the urls as external links cause MediaWiki tries to be smart and breaks them (also note I substracted one from the all other namespaces count, since I have an open AWB perm request which contains INDEX in a search url, which I just realised I also need to fix).

So overall I think that __INDEX__ can just be flatout blocked in (Article), Draft: and Draft talk:, allowed in User: and User talk:, and that insertions of __INDEX__ where there are no <nowiki> tags surrounding it in all other namespaces should output a warning message. For bonus fun there is also {{Index}}, but I think that can be handled at a template level with a switch based on namespace. -- Asartea ^{Talk | Contribs} 17:28, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Many of the articles have recently been indexed, e.g. List of Acts of the 1st Session of the 42nd Parliament of the United Kingdom and many similar lists of UK acts. I also noticed {{INDEX}} but was unsure whether to mention it. It seems to be unused. I sneaked in a URL by searching for _\_INDEX__. Certes (talk) 17:35, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Per the doc page of {{INDEX}} __INDEX__ only does anything in User: and User talk:, so BEANS shouldn't be an issue. I'm currently writing a patch to make the template hardfail with warning in all other namespaces. -- Asartea ^{Talk | Contribs} 17:39, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

I'd like to see mainspace and draftspace tagged rather than blocked (for now)...let's see what sorts of folks think they should be adding it. GeneralNotability (talk) 19:44, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

@GeneralNotability I get what you mean, but every time its added it will need to be removed at some point, which adds volunteer time. I'm fine with tagging for now, but long term I'm going to advocate for blocking in the namespaces I mentioned above (Article, Draft, Draft talk) -- Asartea ^{Talk | Contribs} 19:51, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

TPER filed at Template talk:INDEX#Template-protected edit request on 22 January 2022, so once that gets merged that fixes the {{INDEX}} issue. -- Asartea ^{Talk | Contribs} 19:45, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

@Asartea: See 1183 (hist · log). This isn't really disruptive and it has no effect on the reader, and doesn't actually enable spam, so I don't think we should be disallowing. But I agree with GeneralNotability that it might be worth seeing what sorts of folks think they should be adding it. Right now the filter is really broad; logging all uses of INDEX and NOINDEX in all namespaces, by all users. It might be worth excluding users with (say) more than 1000 edits, but I want to see what it catches for now. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:09, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

@Suffusion of Yellow could you exclude user and user talk? Those are the only two in which it actually has a effect, so I don't think we need to log those, since its fine to add there. -- Asartea ^{Talk | Contribs} 08:22, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Still makes sense to log them if you assume that a certain group of problematic editors (COI) is using them. Regards SoWhy 10:10, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

I excluded non-extendedconfirmed editors in userspace. That's already covered by 930 (hist · log). Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 19:58, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Oh also @Suffusion of Yellow alerting you to the existence of MediaWiki talk:Robots.txt#COIBot report, which if done should remove the need for a COIBot exclusion. -- Asartea ^{Talk | Contribs} 20:04, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Persistent addition of incorrect soundtrack credits

• Task: To prevent adding the name Mohammed Shanooj to Malayalam film articles.
• Reason: There is this IP hopper who is persistently adding incorrect soundtrack credit in film articles, probably for self-promotion because there's no other reason why they should do it. This person managed to obtain circular references for Meppadiyan[1] and Hridayam[2] that copied his own hijacked version of the article and cited it back into the same articles. If you google his name there's actually an IMDb page and other pages for this composer, but if you look deeper you can see that he's a teenager who has uploaded few amateur music videos on YouTube (which is not original but altered version of existing works). I guess what he's trying to do is obtaining circular references mentioning his name as the composer of notable films so that he can promote himself as a music composer and create composer's profile (like the one in IMDb) at popular music websites that still needs more sources for verification. ToBeFree advised edit filter since their IP range is too large to block.
• Diffs: [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12].

2409:4073:2094:FF07:3452:920C:D85A:CFEF (talk) 14:03, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for requesting this! Looks like a good task for an edit filter, as the person won't be interested in circumventing the filter by using a different name. Catching them using a filter should be simple. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 15:42, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

 Done I have an existing private filter that handles similar types of self-promotion. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 16:10, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Possible strange widespread vandalism of talk pages

Moved from WP:AN

 – ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:55, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

In the past day I've seen (and reverted) edits on three talk pages: on Talk:Trivia, on Talk:Messenger, and on Talk: Google Ngram Viewer.

They're unrelated and come from unrelated IP addresses, but all create a new discussion with a single-word title and a single word of content. And if I saw three of them on my watchlist there are probably thousands of others. Any thoughts? Thanks, Dan Bloch (talk) 19:05, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

The only tool which can be relevant here is the edit filter; the more examples you can find, the easier it will be to stop this. 2A03:C5C0:207F:22C2:F8CF:DD87:F2C:49C7 (talk) 19:13, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Weren't article talk pages enabled for logged-out mobile web editors recently? I wonder if what we're seeing is just the kind of crud that appears in the "comments" section of ... any webpage with a "comments" section. I'm not seeing many high-quality comments here, of any length. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:08, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! That's almost certainly it. Many of the edits from your "recent changes" query look like the ones I'm seeing ([13], [14], [15], ...) and it would explain why the articles and IP addresses are all unrelated, and also why the edits have signatures. Dan Bloch (talk) 20:21, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Found the task, it was phab:T293946. Looks like the talk page link was enabled in mid-November, making the pages easier to find. Wondering if that was such a good idea, given that banners are hidden and edit notices are nonexistent. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:34, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I suspect this is the cause. I'm seeing the typical mix of spam, random one word comments, and totally offtopc comment (eg [16]). -- Asartea ^{Talk | Contribs} 20:38, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

If we do want to create a filter for drive-by mobile comments (say, disallowing comments under 25 bytes), remember that the only message that a mobile editor will see is "The topic can't be added due to an unknown error." There's no possibility of a custom message, or indeed any message that mentions that the edit was stopped by a filter. See phab:T281544. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:48, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Oh dear. Yet another failing of MobileFrontend to adequately display information to editors. firefly ( t · c ) 20:57, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

adds it to the pile of them. But seriously, wasn't AF not displaying supposed to be fixed for the Android app? The fact this is now happening suggests it wasn't that fixed, or whatever they did they special cased it to the (Article) namespace only? -- Asartea ^{Talk | Contribs} 08:24, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

I think this is coming from mobile browser clients, not the App. Article talk pages were recently made visible to anonymous mobile web editors. I imagine some readers see the "talk" link, and do what many Internet commenters do - leave an irrelevant message just to show the world they were there. firefly ( t · c ) 09:21, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

I noticed a big increase in such contributions from about 27 November. Earlier examples: [17] [18] (unsigned) [19] [20] [21]. Certes (talk) 22:53, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

... And now we have talk page vandalism? – AssumeGoodWraith (talk | contribs) 01:33, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Thread convergence: those edits have summaries of "Fixed typo" with a significant size change. Certes (talk) 12:42, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

The "fixed typo" and "added content" summaries are there because it's a suggestion in the mobile edit summary box. Usually not fixing a typo. – AssumeGoodWraith (talk | contribs) 13:15, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

I'll add some examples if this helps:

Completely irrelevant, using as a forum (stuff like "hi"), etc: [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29]

Random and nonsensical: [30], [31]

Vandalism of talk page templates: [32], [33]

Creating a random talk page that doesn't have a main article: [34]

Related but not about improvement of article: [35], [36], [37], [38], [39], [40], [41] (thought the article subject owns the article)

Creating an article in a talk page(?): [42] (IPs can freely create talk pages) – AssumeGoodWraith (talk | contribs) 11:53, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment) I agree that the ones that are super-short and/or contain only "hi" messages, like this one from March at Talk:Quantum mechanics, should have an edit filter. Actually, I think I've seen similar edits in mainspace, but I don't recall where. Let's see what an EFM thinks about this. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 03:07, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Danbloch, Suffusion of Yellow, I'm responsible for the proposal. Some level of crap was expected anyway, but it's not entirely trivial to determine whether it's an epidemic or anything like that. I'm not unsympathetic towards disabling editing for anons altogether (it's hard to collaborate with a fleeting IP), but as long as they are editors they need talk page access. The examples indicate some users think this is Twitter or something. A few appear to be mistaking Discussion Tools for a search engine.
Based on the examples I suggest creating an edit filter for additions from mobile anons in talk where the edit summary contains "new section" and less than 200 bytes were added. Set it to just log first. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 23:52, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi y'all – it's helpful to see the edits you are encountering on talk pages and to know this trend is pronounced enough for you to consider taking action to mitigate it.

I* recognize I'm a bit late to this discussion. Tho, I thought you would value knowing how the Foundation is thinking about this uptick in destructive behavior.

1. We share the hypothesis @Suffusion of Yellow noted above that this increase in vandalistic talk page edits is a consequence of exposing the Talk link to anons on mobile on 15 November 2021.
2. We are are in the process analyzing the impact of making Talk visible to anons on mobile is impacting metrics like: talk page revert rate, talk page bounce rate and talk page page views.
3. In the coming weeks, we will share a summary of the analysis mentioned in "2." so that we can collectively discuss what actions we should consider experimenting with in response. I'm thinking we'll start this discussion on WP:VPR where we last talked about this.

Alright, if any new thoughts/questions/ideas emerge between now an "3." please ping us here.

*I'm Peter. I work as the product manger for the Editing Team who, along with @OVasileva (WMF) (the product manager for the Readers Web Team) is investigating this. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 17:43, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Prevent new/unregistered user(s) from editing featured articles and featured lists

• Task: This filter's task is to prevent new/anonymous users from editing featured article and featured lists. This filter should be applied to new/anonymous users and all featured articles and featured lists (including Today's featured article and Today's featured list), these pages are tagged with {{Featured article}} and/or {{Featured list}}.
• Reason: Because featured articles and featured lists often appeared in the main page, they are often a target for newcomers and IPs to vandalized articles which is prohibited in Wikipedia.
• Diffs: Revision 1069409361 (Diff), Revision 1064971775 (Diff), and Revision 1069327548 (Diff)

Vitaium (talk) 06:39, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

@Vitaium: That would require community consensus, first. And I think such a proposal would have a WP:SNOWball's chance of succeeding, but even if it did, mass protection would be the way to go. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:25, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

OK, i will switch to RfC instead of WP:EFR Vitaium (talk) 23:47, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Brief description of filter

• Task: To stop long-time vandal
• Reason: Repeatedly posting violent content on biographies of living persons
• Diffs: They are revision deleted, 1 and 2 but the gist is that he writes, " I will slit your throat [name] I will slit your throat [name]" over and over again. I can't see any future possible use of the phrase "I will slit your throat" that will be impacted by this filter. I'm sure he will probably change his MO but this would prevent a lot of revision deletion that occurs on a daily basis these days. There is also a more violent and sexual graphic phrase that he regularly uses but I'd rather email that to those who create edit filters than repeat it here. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:18, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Liz: There are already filters targeting this vandal, but this LTA changes their MO repeatedly and I believe has some technical proficiency so would prefer not to discuss much publicly. A rangeblocks approach would probably be better though. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:22, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Copy and pasted vandalism

• Task: Disallow copying parts of the interface and pasting them unmodified
• Reason: this will prevent some vandalism
• Diffs: [43]

-- lomrjyo ^{(✉ • 📝)} 21:29, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Another one: [44] Cutlass^Ciera 18:24, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Stop BLP vandalism against Benjamin Netanyahu

• Task: prevent anonymous and new users from adding the phrase "crime minister"
• Reason: This phrase, initially used as the name of a protest group against Benjamin Netanyahu as a play on words of his position at the time of its creation (prime minister) and the fact that he was under investigation (and now on trial for) crimes, is being used by an anonymous user as a slur against him. This user recently also created an account to continue this.
• Diffs: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yonatan_Netanyahu&diff=prev&oldid=1075178080
• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_%22gate%22_scandles_and_controversies&diff=prev&oldid=1075799457
• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Netivot_railway_station&diff=prev&oldid=1075807177

2.55.13.156 (talk) 04:34, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

See also WP:VPT#‎Is there a better way to stop this?. Certes (talk) 11:39, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Spamrefs of Riggs, P.J.

• Task: Inhibit anonymous edits containing reference with the string "Riggs, P.J." and likely variations thereof, on physics related articles. See IP contribs lists for an overview. Edits have been reverted and warnings given by users Adakiko, FyzixFighter, myself, and now Tercer, all to no avail, it seems.
• Reason: There seems to be a persistent multi-ip spammer active, promoting works by a certain Riggs, P.J.
• Diffs:
• 219.90.189.51 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • blacklist hits • AbuseLog • what links to user page • COIBot • Spamcheck • count • block log • x-wiki • Edit filter search • WHOIS • RDNS • tracert • robtex.com • StopForumSpam • Google • AboutUs • Project HoneyPot)
• 219.90.190.170 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • blacklist hits • AbuseLog • what links to user page • COIBot • Spamcheck • count • block log • x-wiki • Edit filter search • WHOIS • RDNS • tracert • robtex.com • StopForumSpam • Google • AboutUs • Project HoneyPot)
• 118.208.187.189 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • blacklist hits • AbuseLog • what links to user page • COIBot • Spamcheck • count • block log • x-wiki • Edit filter search • WHOIS • RDNS • tracert • robtex.com • StopForumSpam • Google • AboutUs • Project HoneyPot)
• 118.211.114.142 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • blacklist hits • AbuseLog • what links to user page • COIBot • Spamcheck • count • block log • x-wiki • Edit filter search • WHOIS • RDNS • tracert • robtex.com • StopForumSpam • Google • AboutUs • Project HoneyPot)
• 106.69.213.227 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • blacklist hits • AbuseLog • what links to user page • COIBot • Spamcheck • count • block log • x-wiki • Edit filter search • WHOIS • RDNS • tracert • robtex.com • StopForumSpam • Google • AboutUs • Project HoneyPot)
• 124.171.108.10 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • blacklist hits • AbuseLog • what links to user page • COIBot • Spamcheck • count • block log • x-wiki • Edit filter search • WHOIS • RDNS • tracert • robtex.com • StopForumSpam • Google • AboutUs • Project HoneyPot)
• 219.90.191.246 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • blacklist hits • AbuseLog • what links to user page • COIBot • Spamcheck • count • block log • x-wiki • Edit filter search • WHOIS • RDNS • tracert • robtex.com • StopForumSpam • Google • AboutUs • Project HoneyPot)

DVdm (talk) 22:20, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Spammer is problematic and continued spamming after multiple warnings. I found a number of previous edits by searching for "riggs, p.j.".

FYI: a "Riggs, Peter, J." was cited on footnote #2 Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses that was added on 26 September 2007 by Pocopocopocopoco (talk · contribs) who has not edited since February 2009. Adakiko (talk) 00:10, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Additional IP:

• 219.90.178.169 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • blacklist hits • AbuseLog • what links to user page • COIBot • Spamcheck • count • block log • x-wiki • Edit filter search • WHOIS • RDNS • tracert • robtex.com • StopForumSpam • Google • AboutUs • Project HoneyPot)

Adakiko (talk) 01:26, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Possibly helpful information: all the IPs geolocate to Canberra, Australia, and there is a Dr Peter J. Riggs based there. Tercer (talk) 08:38, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Additional new editor:

• CircuitOne (talk · contribs) Addition of "Riggs, P.J." to Causal loop #1, #2, #3

Adakiko (talk) 22:12, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

The Trudeaus

• Task: Prevent unregistered editors from adding "Castro" to any article about a member of the Trudeau family (Justin Trudeau, Margaret Trudeau, etc.) or its talk page. Likewise for adding Trudeau to Fidel Castro or its talk page.
• Reason: Unimaginative and repetitive BLP vandalism.
• Diffs: See history of articles mentioned above.

Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 15:27, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Testing 2. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:05, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Doesn't seem like this LTA is very active Ivanvector, see logs for 2 (hist · log) between 1–20 March (and the revision of filter code preceding the current one). Is it missing any hits (due to too narrow filter code or revdel, or otherwise)? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:37, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Also, all but one of those is a false positive. I haven't noticed any missed vandalism, either. I don't think this is one particular LTA, there's a fairly well known conspiracy theory going around about Castro and Margaret Trudeau. It's demonstrably false (Fidel and Margaret didn't meet until several years after Justin was born) but it's something that Canadians who would wet themselves if they could vote for Trump like to shout about in between rolling coal and whining about how expensive gas is. We can stick to WP:RBI for this. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:10, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Strange IP portal talk vandalism

Moved from Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 83 § Request for a bot task

 – 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 20:08, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Okay, this is a very specific but limited request for a bot to do some sleuthing. I just discovered an editor, using IPs, mainly from Ontario, Canada but previously from all over, who has a strange kind of vandalism. They create pages and post long stories about riding an elevator. Here is a diff of an example of the same content that just gets reposted. Any way, they are always posted on Portal talk:Current events pages for different days of the year. I was just finding Portal talk pages from random days in 2007 but the example I just shared was a day in 2013. Going through some pages I found that they were doing this, posting this same content about riding an elevator back in 2012! Since I doubt any editors have Portal talk pages on their Watchlist, there might be a lot of this nonsense that still exists or it could be that I found all of it today and there is none left.

Could a bot run a check on Portal talk pages for different days of the year and see if there are any pages that have this strange content? So far, I haven't found any reason for there to be a Portal talk page for each day of every year so maybe a mass deletion is in order if there are a lot of these pages that have been created. Since these pages are typically not seen by readers, this is obviously not a high priority task but since the vandal has recently been very active at doing this this month, this might serve to discourage them. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:18, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Those who have admin goggles, can see on Portal talk:Current events/2007 September 21 that they have done this repeatedly, at least on this page, going back to 2013. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:23, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

A search reveals four shorter travelogues. An edit filter might prevent further journeys. Certes (talk) 10:50, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

No further elevator pitches have appeared for a while, so I've blanked them. Certes (talk) 14:18, 11 April 2022 (UTC)