On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 7:39 AM, Laura Hale <laura(a)fanhistory.com> wrote:
On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 2:43 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
ENWP Pine, 04/05/2013 08:36:
Ironholds, would you be interested in
investigating how stewards, global
sysops, and global rollbackers might be helpful in dealing with the spam
problem, especially for small wikis, and what new steps would be useful?
I doubt they need suggestions, they need tools: <
https://www.mediawiki.org/**wiki/Admin_tools_development<https://www.med…
The question is rather how much they are
already helping: botspam,
obvious crosswiki vandalism and NOP are mostly handled globally,[1] so
local logs can only help assessing what's consuming the local communities
time, not what are the true menaces. In worst case, of course, you may even
be measuring the "excuses" to block rather than most important problems
users were creating (similarly to Al Capone ;) ).
The following is an analysis of the entire block log on English Wikinews.
It is currently at
https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/User:LauraHale/Blocks_on_English_Wikinews
*Ironholds wrote a summary of problems on English Wikipedia viewed
through block logs <http://blog.ironholds.org/?p=31> in late April. This
is nominally based on that research to the extent that it is inspired by it
in terms of understanding blocking on English Wikinews.*
As referenced on the WMF research list, the issue of blocking is
potentially a very big deal for smaller projects. Problems can easily
overwhelm a small community if there is not an active community patrolling
recent changes in addition to the content work they are engaging in. For
English Wikinews, there were 22 active reporters in January
2013<http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikinews/EN/TablesWikipediansEditsGt5.ht…tm>.
(This is tiny when SUL is a larger contributor to English Wikinews having
720,753 total registered users of which 0.00069% were active in January.)
At the same time, there were 64 blocks made that month. 39 of these blocks
were for spam. English Wikinews is one of the fortunate smaller projects:
We have two local Check Users <https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:CU>who respond
quickly to problems. We generally have at least one admin awake
and monitoring recent changes at any given time. We have global CUs who can
and sometimes come in and block the big problems. Thus, we can deal with
the automated problem quite easily.
Since English Wikinews has opened and 27 April 2013, there have been
15,105 un/blocks. The following is based on the complete block log. On the
project, 4 types of block actions exist on English Wikinews: block,
unblock, log action removed and changed block settings for. They all appear
in the same block log, thus the 15,105 number is not total blocks but total
block related action. (If you harass a user, get blocked for a week for it,
get unblocked after promising to behave, get reblocked and then have your
block extended, there are three distinct actions. If you do that with an
offensive user name, the log action may be hidden, which is a fourth type
of action.)
Since 2005, 99 different people have taken an administrative blocking
action on English Wikinews. While there are currently only 36 admins on
English Wikinews, the number used to be higher and local policy is if you
do not use your admin privileges, you lose them. This is to prevent
potential abuse and to make sure all admins are aware of current policy in
order to prevent wheel-warring and other potentially damaging things to the
community. Amgine has blocked the most users on the project with 7162 block
related actions. Brian McNeil is second with 1522 related block actions. He
has been less active in the past 18 months or so. Cirt is third with 723.
Cirt is our most active local Check User. Pi zero is fourth with 503 block
related administrative actions. Tempodivalse, who is no longer involved
with the project, rounds out the top five with 487 block related
administrative actions. Amongst the next five administrators with blocks,
only one is actively involved on the administrator side, Cspurrier, who is
also a Check User who is ranked seventh for total administrator block
related actions with 343.
Who is getting blocked? There are 14,815 total entries identified to
specific accounts where an administrative blocking account was acted upon
the account, of which there were 12,643 unique accounts where
administrative blocking related action was taken connected to the account.
This means that there are 1,100 accounts with 2 or more administrative
blocked related actions taken regarding them.
This is somewhat ambiguous; "2 or more blocked-related actions" could
mean
either multiple blocks or a single unblock.
There were a number of people with large numbers of
block related
administrator actions taken in relation to the account, including
Neutralizer with 71, Simeon with 39, Mrmiscellanious with 35, PVJ59 with
23, DragonFire1024 with 17, Edbrown05 with 17, Amgine with 16, Brian
McNeil, NGerda and International with 13 each, StrangerInParadise with 12,
and 203.122.254.26, 207.248.240.118, 67.52.164.132, 71.197.8.9,
76.247.222.101, Harej, Ironiridis and MyName with 10 each. The total blocks
by individual is a bit of a confirmation bias towards throw away
spam/vandalism related accounts. It also suggests possibly a low tolerance
for shenanigans on the project, with little tolerance for giving people who
do not demonstrate they are there for the project to have multiple
opportunities to learn until you realize that over half the total blocks
are for open proxies.
Not necessarily; if there was little tolerance, some of those blocks would
be indefinite, and presumably the users would not need multiple blocks :).
How long are accounts getting blocked for? There are
150 different block
lengths, though 47 of these are changes in block ending. This leaves only
103 total different block lengths. Most blocks are indefinite, accounting
for 10,618 of all blocks. If you take the 7,926 open proxy related blocks
in 2006 by Amgine out of the equation, this number looks much smaller at
2,692. Still, the next most common block length is 24 hours with 1,176.
After this, there are 462 blocks for one week. There were 340 blocks for
one day and 241 blocks for one year. Experienced Wikinews administrators
are generally able to identify the obvious spammers, copyright violators
and trolls. For the past two years after WN:Never
assume<https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Never_assume>became policy, there is
less of need on the project to assume good faith on
a number of these obvious spam accounts and obnoxious user names to see
what they are doing.
I don't recall AGF ever requiring that, but frankly (as an aside) I find
such a policy highly disturbing. Still, projects can do what they want.
Pro-active blocking based on CU reports becomes a much
more feasible
options and reduces long term administrator burden by needing to monitor
this behavior.
<https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/File:Block_actions_on_English_Wikinews.png>
Total block actions by year on English Wikinews as of 27 April 2013-
When did the vast majority of blocks take place? 2006 when Amgine did a
mass indefinite block on open proxies. That year, there were 7926 blocks.
The second and third largest block years book ended that year, and includes
the year the project was founded. Since then, the total blocks by year,
with the exception of 2011 when there was a failed project fork, the block
totals have remained relatively consistent and 2013 seems like it will hold
to the same pattern of between 800 and 1000 blocks by the end of the year.
The thought that indefinite and longer blocks are on the rise when by year
block lengths are looked at. The table below gives an idea of some of this
for the block periods with at least 5 or more blocks in a year and with at
least 5 years with at least one block of that length.
Block lengths by year Block length/New block end date 2005 2006 2007 2008
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 1 day 391 259 147 128 50 69 47 63 22 1 day and
7 hours 0 3 7 8 7 5 0 0 0 1 hour 6 29 47 19 7 10 4 2 6 1 minute 1 4 0 8
0 1 0 0 0 1 week 50 62 24 37 51 75 38 87 38 10 minutes 6 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 12
hours 3 6 2 6 1 21 15 9 2 14 days 18 6 3 3 5 6 1 0 0 15 minutes 3 12 8 9
7 4 3 0 0 Indefinite 222 7102 760 397 656 434 408 470 169 181 days 9 3 4
2 0 12 3 2 1 2 hours 21 52 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 3 days 98 39 14 26 14 20 20 33
8 3 hours 3 22 61 20 4 16 6 4 1 3 years, 6 hours, 32 minutes and 24
seconds 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 7 0 90 days 4 4 2 12 9 22 23 34 15 365 days 7 6 1
9 3 10 22 168 15 2 days 2 31 24 40 25 26 13 11 6 31 days 61 31 5 10 12
10 5 2 1 30 minutes 2 6 3 0 1 0 1 0 0 4 hours 1 13 6 0 0 1 0 0 0
Out of a total of 15,104 blocks, reasons were identified for 14,473 of
these blocks using the drop down categories as a guide. These categories
include Open proxy, Vandalism, spam, Abusing multiple accounts, Unblock,
Unacceptable username, Harassment, Not listed, Inserting nonsense/gibberish
into pages, Bot, 3RR, Unknown and Copyright violation. Three groups should
be taken out to better understand reasons why people are blocked including
Unblock, Not listed (which includes reasons like "Stop being an arse!"),
and Unknown (where it was also hard to identify the block rationale). These
groups had 806, 181 and 629 total blocks respectively. Of the remaining
block reasons, open proxy is the most common block rationale with 7,867
total blocks. The next four largest categories are largely related in that
they are obvious problems by people not invested in working towards the
goal of publish news: 2,213 vandalism related blocks, 1,331 spam related
blocks, 991 abuse of multiple accounts/sockpuppeting blocks and 440 blocks
for unacceptable user names. After this, we begin to get to more community
centric internal related blocks with 248 blocks for harassment. The back to
non-community related blocks with 175 for Inserting nonsense/gibberish into
pages, and 130 for running unauthorized bots. A community centric problem
with 77 blocks for 3RR, with 14 copyright violation related blocks rounding
out block reasons.
Ironholds post strongly suggests that spam is a rising problem on English
Wikipedia.
Not really. It suggests that more people are being blocked for spam. This
could mean that spam is a rising problem, or it could mean that the regexes
I used are inaccurate, or it could mean that spam levels have remained
constant but our tolerance has reduced, or it could mean that there are odd
inconsistencies in activity that are masked by a year-by-year analysis (I'm
breaking it down month-by-month to track these). I'd also note that our
studies are not really comparable; mine was exclusively on indefinite
blocks that have not been reversed.
While our totals suggest vandalism is a bigger
problem, when block reasons
are broken down by year, spam appears to be one of the biggest problems on
English Wikinews. Year to April 27, there were 5 times more blocks for spam
than any other blocking category on English Wikinews with 182. Inserting
nonsense/gibberish into pages was second with 34. This is often connected
to spam as it is bot generated garbage that lacks links. Vandalism and sock
puppetry are much smaller comparative problems. Vandalism in the past used
to be much, much easier but flagged revisions and an inability to edit past
news (facts do not cease to be facts, but news ceases to be news. old news
stories are archived and edit protected) makes it very difficult for random
vandalism to occur. Instead, what does tend to get vandalized are user
pages and user talk pages.
<https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/File:English_Wikinews_blocks_by_year.png>
English Wikinews block by year
Changes in archiving policies may explain why 3RR, never a huge problem on
Wikinews, ceased to be a problem by 2009 as the project has not had a 3RR
block since 2008. Beyond that, the project maturing and a review process
beginning to get formulated which assisted the community in working towards
a shared goal may have also stopped the edit warring. Open proxy related
blocks have also dropped down, with only 1 so far in 2013. Copyright
violation related blocks have always been small, and are not a major
problem. There has been a slight increase over time but they do not
represent a significant problem in terms of scale. Harassment of users has
declined as a blocking reason, with the drop off appearing to correlate
some with the creation of the failed fork. This suggests that conflict
decreased and left a core group of users less likely to engage in on
English Wikinews conflict. Harassment block numbers dropping also correlate
to unblock (0.59) with unblocks having dropped off after the review process
began to be formulated.
Overall, the blocks on Wikinews reflect a community initially formulating
itself, creating policies, shifts in participation and with most blocks now
being longer and for activities that do not relate to community activities
around the shared goal of publishing news stories.
I'm concerned that you're undertaking an analysis of blocks by year, and
attempting to draw from that useful information about shifts in community
attention, without any reference to user activity. To put it another way;
if you have 3,000 blocks in 2006, and 5,000 in 2007, it's certainly useful
to take both of those groups and say 'okay, what are the differences'. But
the substantial difference in numbers means that all you can say is 'there
are more blocks of TypeX' not 'blocks of TypeX are becoming more/less of a
problem when we look at our incoming users'. This is particularly
problematic without reference to things like incoming newcomers and
registration logs; it could be there are more/less blocks in a certain area
not because the situation is getting worse/better, but because there have
been shifts in activity levels and incoming newcomers. I'd suggest
analysing a normalised sample rather than relying solely on the net block
action numbers.
--
twitter: purplepopple
blog:
ozziesport.com
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