Abuse Filter

This is AntiAbuseBot, arch-nemesis of MysteryBot.

The Abuse Filter is a newly-enabled TOW extension. In theory, Abuse Filter is able to ban disruptive users and obvious trolls. For technical reasons, the Abuse Filter is an absolute piece of shit that generates at least 100 false positives a day.

Designed to handle

• Grawp
• Willy on Wheels impersonators
• Potty-mouthed 13 year old boys
• Abusive ASCII such as Goatse
• Anything funny from the superior wiki
• Four abuse filters #7, #215, #228, and #230 exist just to stop the nonstop spam from AnonTalk.

Widespread acclaim

Some argue that the filter is the best thing that ever happened to Wikipedia. Most notably, Grawp (aka JarlaxleArtemis) has given up on simple page moves, like Pixar becoming a tax firm, much too far from his roots. He now endlessly harasses his enemies instead. If there is anything to blame for a growing pest like Grawp, it would be the Abuse Filter.

Like most other defensive mechanisms on TOW, it will inevitably be non-notable in two months time. The realm of fake editing and counter-vandalism is rushed at a ridiculous pace. Many editors become irate when they do not have the impression of pwning or slowing down "x chronic troll," so the Abuse filter and its ancestors merely prove to be a simple filibuster to a cancerous tumor of angst and butthurt.

AntiAbuseBot

The precursor to the Abuse Filter, AntiAbuseBot (moar liek AbuseBot, amirite?) is run by some faggot called Chris G. More or less it is a complete rip-off of MysteryBot. The main difference between the two lies in the fact while MysteryBot reverts legit vandalism, AntiAbuseBot removes Goatse ASCII, mudkipz, and all the stuff cool people actually care about, because noone gives a shit about 99% of Wikipedia's articles. In addition, AAB consistently B& users without the possibility of appealing on their talk page. Needless to say, an autistic sysop will jump in and endorse the block because all sysops hate ED.

Abusing the Abuse Filter

Luckily, entries on the Abuse Filter log can not be oversighted, making it a perfect way to spread doxOH SHI- THEY ALLOWED HIDING. Just insert the personal information and then add a phrase that you know will be disallowed, and then spam it hundreds of times until your talk page is protected.

Furthermore, spamming abuse filters in and of itself is a useful method of abuse. Just stuff your edit with as many keywords that will be disallowed by the filter as possible, crapflooding the logs with spam. One particular vandal who was quite successful at this was ScienceGolfFanatic.

Evading the filters

Luckily, most filters are just stupid Regex matches that are pretty easy to get around. You might want to engineer your vandalism to bypass these filters. Here is an example of a filter designed to stop Grawp page move vandalism, courtesy of a long time inactive sysop account. This is Filter 72 on Wikipedia, titled "Unusual move throttle".

/* This filter triggers when people on the whole Wikipedia site does the following more than 6 times in 15 mins */
(action == "move") &
(user_editcount < 50) &
(
  (
/* A character other than normal letters numbers or punctuation is added to the title */
    (moved_to_text rlike "[^A-Za-z0-9 _!.,?()&'?\-]") &  
    !(moved_from_text rlike "[^A-Za-z0-9 _!.,?()&'?\-]")
  ) |
/* The page title length has increased by more than 20 characters */
  (length(moved_to_text) > 20+length(moved_from_text)) |
  (
/* Extra text (4 or more characters) is added to the page title,
   but (Any Text Here) is not added */
    (length(moved_to_text) >= 4+length(moved_from_text)) &
    (norm(moved_from_text) in norm(moved_to_text)) &
    !(moved_to_text rlike "\(.*\)")
  ) |
/* Edit summary contains unusual characters */
  (summary rlike "[^\x00-\x7F]") |
  (
    (moved_to_text rlike "[^\w)]$") & /* New title ends in something other than a character */
    !(moved_from_text rlike "[^\w)]$") &
    !(moved_to_text in moved_from_text) /* New title does not contain old title */
  )
)

So, how can one evade this filter? Some examples:

1. Take a page with a long title. Add your abusive text. Make sure the total length does not increase by more than 20 characters. Do not add any unusual characters in your title or summary. Make sure the new page title contains a ( with a ) somewhere after.
2. When adding spam to page titles, just make sure to add () to the end. Example: [1] Instead of moving Dordt College to Roland's Dordt College, this vandal could have moved it to (Roland's Dordt College) to evade the filter.

See also

• ClueBot
• AAB blocks

Abuse Filter is part of a series on Wikipedia Visit the Wikipedia Portal for complete coverage.