Global AbuseFilter

Global AbuseFilter expansion of AbuseFilter extension is currently enabled on all Wikimedia projects (minus projects that explicitly opted out). This was implemented in July 2023 following a RfC. Previously (2014–2023), global abuse filters were only enabled on small and medium projects and those large projects that opted in, see RfC. This greatly improves the response to cross-wiki vandalism and spam, while also increasing community control over these global actions.

Technical details

The global AbuseFilter allows privileged users (stewards and Meta administrators) to create, modify and delete filters which act on most Wikimedia projects. Individual filters could be designed to affect certain wikis, either inclusive or exclusive to a list. The range of projects affected by each filter would be determined by what the filter would be targeting, and would ensure that the filters are not active on projects that they shouldn't be. The global AbuseFilter is hosted at Meta, and modified by users with the abusefilter-modify-global right. Global filters can be disabled and marked as private, like local filters.

Detailed logs are available for local and global filters with separate rights, meaning that local communities can keep their preferred settings on the local AbuseFilter log while a global standard can be set for the global filters.

The global AbuseFilter has the following options:

• The ability to log all actions which trigger a global filter.
• The ability to tag edits on local wikis for further review.
• The ability to provide a warning to users who trigger a filter.
  • It is not yet known how this feature would work.
• The ability to prevent an action on a local wiki if it triggers a global filter.
• A variable which identifies the project that the filter is triggered on

The exact changes to implement the filter can be seen in this code entry and this Gerrit change.

Locally disabled actions

Some AbuseFilter actions have been added to $wgAbuseFilterLocallyDisabledGlobalActions. Prior to this change, the management of the action was by convention that global abuse filters would not apply these actions.

Global filters with the below locally disabled actions enabled will still log the hit, but will not apply the disabled action.

• blockautopromote
• block
• rangeblock

Policy details

Global AbuseFilters are used to prevent spam and vandalism across many Wikimedia wikis. As such, they should only be made to stop patterns that affect many wikis. Global filters must be as specific as possible, and should be enabled for the shortest possible time. An exception to this policy are filters designed to just tag edits and not take further action. These filters can be left up indefinitely, since their purpose is to filter edits for further review and they do not take any automatic actions.

Implementation timeline

Global abuse filters were first enabled on metawiki, mediawikiwiki, and the testwikis on February 2013. On September 2013, it was enabled on three additional wikis: incubatorwiki, specieswiki and outreachwiki. On January 25, 2014, global abuse filters were enabled on all small wikis. Global abuse filters were enabled on all medium-sized wikis on November 2014. The private and fishbowl wikis are excluded.

In June 2018, global abuse filters were still enabled on all small wikis and all medium-sized wikis, but also on some big wikis: enwikisource, frwiki, ptwiki, specieswiki, wikidatawiki (with specificities in the main and Property namespaces), incubatorwiki, mediawikiwiki, metawiki, testwiki and test2wiki. In July 2023, global abuse filters were enabled on nearly all large Wikimedia projects, except projects explicitly opted out.

Opted out projects

This is a list of Wikimedia projects where global abuse filters are not active:

• English Wikipedia (per local discussion)
• Japanese Wikipedia (per local discussion)

Wikis that wish to be excluded from the framework of global abuse filters can do so by achieving a consensus of the community and then creating a Wikimedia site request in Phabricator. Before doing so, it is important to understand that disabling global abuse filters may allow for more vandalism to go through. It is advisable to consult Special:AbuseLog before deciding to disable global abuse filters on a wiki.

Active filters

See Special:AbuseFilter for the full list.