[Foundation-l] AbuseFilter to be enabled on all Wikimedia wikis by default today

[Guillaume Paumier]

Hi,

On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 5:17 PM, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
>
> Was there any discussion about giving every Wikimedia user an "abuse log"? I
> don't really have any objection to the AbuseFilter (beyond the performance
> implications, particularly with poorly written filters), but there are very
> legitimate issues with giving every user a publicly accessible "abuse log".
> The English Wikipedia basically renamed the entire extension to EditFilter.
> Subsequently messages such as "abuse log" were changed to "filter log". (The
> whole extension should be renamed to "ActionFilter" in my opinion.)
>
> Was there any discussion about the possible mischievous uses of this
> extension and how to curb them? Small wikis are particularly susceptible to
> abuse if a few local admins want every article to not include a particular
> viewpoint or particular phrases. Is there any plan to monitor this?

Both concerns you raise are valid, and I agree with you, but globally
enabling the extension by default is no different in that sense from
enabling it one wiki at a time.

Mischievous admins could be abusing AbuseFilter already on any small
wiki where the extension was enabled following a request in bugzilla,
and we wouldn't know about it if no one brought it up to the larger
community.

Similarly, a group of POV-pushing could be blocking users, deleting
pages or protecting POV versions on a small wiki, and we wouldn't know
about it either unless someone reported it. Yet, this is not a reason
for not giving all admins block, delete and protect rights by default.

Globally enabling the extension is merely more convenient for users
(who don't have to wait until their shell request is processed) and
shell users (who can spend time fulfilling other requests).

HTH,

-- 
Guillaume Paumier
Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation
http://donate.wikimedia.org