Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested

Racist labeling of political leaders and historical figures

Here are the two most recent examples:

• Diff 1
• Diff 2

This has been happening for several months, perhaps back to last year. I've seen various combinations of the wording "white supremacist" and "racist " edited into political articles, both currently serving individuals and historical figures. These would be edits made after the article was already created. Not limited by geographical area, time period, living or deceased office holders. Can we create a bot that blocks these? And once created, can we update it if a new similar term begins happening? — Maile (talk) 22:40, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

I just blocked Special:Contributions/2600:1700:12E1:A090:0:0:0:0/64 for a year as it appears every edit from there has been junk for a long time. That covers several examples of what you describe although I don't know if there are more from other IPs. Johnuniq (talk) 23:21, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Well, that's helpful. Thanks. I don't know if it's been this one IP or not. But I can date this phenomenon to beginning after the BLM events of the last year or two. For whatever reason, one or more editors have been motivated to label BLP and deceased individuals, or geographical areas as, racist, by one term or another. — Maile (talk) 23:59, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

@Maile66: Started testing at 1014 (hist · log). Just checking for "racist" or "supremacist" for now. I'll add a check for biographies later. Any other words?

FYI, I doubt this could ever be refined to the point where it's possible to disallow. Yes, all filters have false positives, but I'm worried about what message we'll be perceived as sending if we stop "X was the target of racist taunts on the field", etc. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:38, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

@Suffusion of Yellow: no other words come to mind. I keep hoping this type of editing will fade on its own, but I doubt so in my lifetime, because a lot of it is fed by national-international media reports. Not necessarily limited to the United States, or any other country. — Maile (talk) 22:44, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

@Maile66: I added both words to 189 (hist · log) (tag-only). This is actually really common; see the log of 1014 (hist · log). I still might try to work out a disallowing filter if possible. I just don't feel comfortable with stopping Senator McSenatorface resigned after admitting to sending hundreds of racist texts...<ref><ref><ref>. It looks like we're whitewashing. So maybe I'll just disallow very small edits without refs, e.g. Special:Diff/1053952115 and leave 189 to tag the rest. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:43, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

@Suffusion of Yellow: Understood. My request here is more about the concern the past year or two of a pattern of adding blatant labeling to existing articles, usually in the opening sentences of a lead, and begin more or less, " ...(name) is a racist and white supremacist ... " without any sourcing indicating it as factual. I've never seen, "" ...(name) is a racist and black supremacist ... " Or pick any color inbetween. — Maile (talk) 23:55, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Well, here's one. But of course it's not as common. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 18:55, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Please allow EBSCO Information Services links in Special:AbuseLog/31536074

Moved to WP:EFN

 – Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:10, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Userpage spam filter

There seems to be a bunch of userpage spammers going around. I am requesting an edit filter that disallows creation of these pages when there's enough links (e.g. 100 external links). – AssumeGoodWraith (talk | contribs) 11:18, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Since I have a list of examples, here you go:

• Ccosmos1 (talk⧼dot-separator⧽contribs) (filtered)
• Counopass (talk⧼dot-separator⧽contribs) (xwiki)
• Logs for "Couponglist1"
• Logs for "Dodothidnd"
• Logs for "Japansususu01"
• Logs for "Joenradno"
• Mangetts (talk⧼dot-separator⧽contribs) (2nd edit, deleted)
• Logs for "No1highschool"
• Logs for "OKdudes"
• Logs for "Ssuodnkkd"
• Logs for "Yesgopuzzi"

-- zzuuzz ^(talk) 11:58, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

@Zzuuzz: And again. – AssumeGoodWraith (talk | contribs) 07:25, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

I've not seen any of this recently, and not much before this report, besides which, if I'm right about this, next time if you poke a checkuser I think you might get some results ;) -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 23:34, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Filter personal attack in edit summary

• Task: Filter edit summary from user User:ChadPutin1 on revision history of List of 2022 American television debuts
• Reason: Personal attack of other editor
• Diffs: 1

SanAnMan (talk) 17:31, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

@SanAnMan: revdel can be requested at WP:AN. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:30, 3 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 ([1], [2], [3], ...) 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 [4]). -- 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: [5] [6] (unsigned) [7] [8] [9]. 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: [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17]

Random and nonsensical: [18], [19]

Vandalism of talk page templates: [20], [21]

Creating a random talk page that doesn't have a main article: [22]

Related but not about improvement of article: [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29] (thought the article subject owns the article)

Creating an article in a talk page(?): [30] (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)

Prevent manual addition of automatic mediawiki categories

• Task: Prevent manual addition of categories listed at Special:TrackingCategories, which should only be automatically added by the mediawiki software.
• Reason: These categories should never be manually added, as adding them manually clutters up tracking categories even after the issues with the page are resolved.
• Diffs: One of those categories had to be removed Special:Diff/1063705433 here

--Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:55, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

BLP trolling/vandalism

• Task: Deny BLP talkpage trolling
• Reason: This should be an easy one: there are a lot of IPs making talkpage posts to Talk:Federal Bureau of Investigation, Talk:Alphabet Inc. and others with identical mentions of "Nathaniel meskimen". I've placed a /48 block, but they're getting around it. I've left the last IP unrevdel'd, the edits are all identical to this one. Can we make or modify a filter to deny these edits?
• Diffs: [31] [32] [33]

Acroterion (talk) 16:35, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Tracking in 1125 (hist · log) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:09, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Moved temporarily to disallow. Suspect it won't be necessary long term. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:10, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. The joke should get old soon. Acroterion (talk) 00:48, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

New users requesting edits on "Name of page you are requesting an edit to" at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection

• Task: This filter task is to warn and tagged new users of making edit requests.
  • Page: Wikipedia:Requests for page protection
  • User groups: Unregistered users and new users
  .
• Reason: This filter is needed because there are many newcomers and IP making too many requests to edit "Name of page you are requesting an edit to" at WP:RPP.
• Diffs: Revision 1063486393 (Diff), Revision 1063553303 (Diff), and Revision 1063582091 (Diff).

Vitaium (talk) 03:57, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

We should probably link to the last discussion, Wikipedia:Edit_filter/Requested/Archive_18#Blank_RfPP_requests, which seems to mostly agree. The page would be Wikipedia:Requests for page protection/Edit. I tend to think that MediaWiki:Abusefilter-warning-empty-edit-request could be used, but I'm not sure if it needs some tweaking, or a new message, related to the fact that the request might not be empty (even if the title is). -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 23:44, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Addition of external links to body sections

• Task: Tags (and maybe someday warns) edits introducing external links to article body sections
• Reason: Violates WP:ELPOINTS #2
• Diffs: Special:Diff/627038050, Special:Diff/641871211, Special:Diff/808221327, and Special:Diff/983474406

{{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:14, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

(I'm not too familiar with edit filters, so this may have been brought up before; if so, apologies, and just give me a pointer.) One of the most common forms of inappropriate editing we see from new editors is the addition of hyperlinks within body text. Would it be possible to use an edit filter to track this and maybe someday help guide users to use a reference instead?

In technical terms, we would want this to tag all mainspace edits that introduce a URL to a non-Wikimedia site and that do not fall into one of these exception buckets:

• Anything within a template (includes stuff like {{External media}} and infoboxes that link a website)
• Anything within a table (see WP:ELLIST)
• Anything within a reference
• Anything within the last section of an article, or a section that contains any of "Reference", "Source", "Further", "Reading", "Work", "Publication", "Citation", "Cited", "External", "Link", or "Note"

Does that sound feasible? Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:14, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

@Sdkb: I don't think we should warn people for this. It's basically a formatting mistake to write Some fact.[https://some.ref] instead of Some fact.<ref>https://some.ref</ref>. We can't warn newbies for everything, or they'll just ignore everything we say, or worse give up and go to a more user-friendly site. As to creating a filter at all, even a log-only or tag-only filter, well I won't say "impossible", just "incredibly hacky if possible". If I can think of a clever way, I'll try something. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:21, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

@Suffusion of Yellow, thanks for the reply. Re We can't warn newbies for everything, yeah; I think the main issue is that our tools for warning are too blunt—all we can do is have them encounter a big notice when they try to publish, rather than having a friendly "want to turn this into a reference? We don't allow inline external links" prompt pop up in a box next to the paragraph as soon as someone tries to add an inline external link. See WP:Making editing easier 2021. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:29, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

You mean a Web worker constantly checking as you type, like what we already have for JS and CSS pages? That would be nifty. But a major project. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:49, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Akane Yamaguchi spam

• Task: Prevent newly created accounts from spamming the user talk namespace with vague requests to clean up Maureen Wroblewitz and Akane Yamaguchi
• Reason: Per Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Haiyenslna.
• Diffs: [34] [35] [36] etc. there's loads

These sockpuppets will spam the user talk of as many recently active editors they can find with requests to improve Akane Yamaguchi and the spam is getting to be quite disruptive. I just blocked Semwq, then immediately after that one Zasjd. Would it at all be possible to disallow new users from doing this rapid spam? I don't believe I've ever made a request here before so apologies in advance if this is not feasible or worth the time to create. Sro23 (talk) 07:09, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I've been spammed twice over the course of two years, very annoying. I was thinking about proposing this myself. The easiest way to implement this would be to create a filter for new users using the string "Akane Yamaguchi" (The spam for Maureen Wroblewitz seems to be historical and no longer relevant) that would either disallow the edit to be made or would be logged to alert admins. Hemiauchenia (talk) 08:58, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

@Sro23 and Hemiauchenia: See 1182 (hist · log). Log-only, but will set to disallow at some point.. If this user proves to be adaptable, I have another way I might go about this, but keeping it simple for now. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:04, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Removal of Counterpunch from Filter 869

• Task: The urls being counterpunch.org and counterpunch.com
• Reason: There are significant concerns regarding the validity of the previous RfC, which appears to have attracted at least 6-7 sockpuppets, found after its close. It has led to this discussion at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Rerun Counterpunch RFC?, seeking a new one and started by the closer of the RfC themselves. In the meantime, the filter is inappropriate for this site.

Tayi Arajakate _Talk 14:56, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

I've opined in that discussion, but with the closer of the discussion (David Gerard) also feeling the discussion isn't robust due to sockpuppetry this seems fairly clear-cut I think. So  Done ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:19, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

David Gerard is now saying that the RfC is still valid so I guess undo? Tayi Arajakate _Talk 19:37, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

I have no clue what's going on at this point. There seems to be an edit war ongoing at WP:RSP/WP:DEPS etc, and I don't want to have the dispute carry over to an edit filter's contents which would be quite disruptive, so I'm going to hold off on any further edits to the filter personally. I will say the situation is highly confusing at this point, with everyone seemingly agreeing the previous discussion is tainted, but not agreeing on whether to still class the source as deprecated, and now a new RfC is started re whether the source should be deprecated. I'd have suggested figuring out the status of the source at WP:AN, but with the new RfC I don't know if that's a suitable path anymore. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:11, 11 January 2022 (UTC)