Extension:AbuseFilter

The AbuseFilter extension allows privileged users to set specific actions to be taken when actions by users, such as edits, match certain criteria.

For example, a filter could be created to prevent anonymous users from adding external links, or to block a user who removes more than 2000 characters.

User rights
Once you installed the extension, you'll have to set up the user rights in "LocalSettings.php".

For example, the following sample configuration would allow sysops to do everything they want with AbuseFilter, and everyone to view the log and see public filter settings:

Parameters

 * Emergency throttling

AbuseFilter comes with a feature that automatically throttles (disable) filters that have been edited recently and match a certain theresold of the latest actions.

This is done to prevent harmful edits on the filters to block every user that performs an action on the wiki or similar.

The condition to disable the filter depend on those variables:
 * - Percent of matches over the total amount of actions in the observed period.
 * - Count of matches of the filter in the observed period.
 * - Age of the filter to take it into account. If the last edit of the filter is older than this number of seconds, the filter won't be throttled, unless it's already throttled.
 * - Maximum number of recent actions to count against the threshold. Note that each action increments a counter, and once this counter reaches this configured value, this counter and the number of recent actions that matches all filters are reset to 0.

Throttled filters can be identified in the list of filters (Special:AbuseFilter) with the state , . Throttling happens silently, and there's no way to see when a filter got throttled.

When a filter gets throttled, it doesn't perform any dangerous action (the ones specified in ), and only "safe" actions are allowed. Throttled filters don't get enabled automatically. To disable the throttling, you need to edit the filter. Note that you need to actually change something from the filter: changing somethin from the filter's notes is sufficient.

Note that editing the filter updates its age, and can cause it to be disabled if it reaches again the conditions to be throttled in a short period since the last edit, leading to a unusable filter if your wiki has more abuse edits than legitimate ones. Filters can also get randomly throttled if the action count reaches, causing all filter matches count to reset to 0, and then someone repeatedly makes a filter to hit.

Creating and managing filters
Once the extension has been installed, filters can be created/tested/changed/deleted and the logs can be accessed from the Abuse filter management page Special:AbuseFilter.


 * RulesFormat>Special:MyLanguage/Extension:AbuseFilter/Rules format|Rules format - The basics of how to write a filter
 * Actions>Special:MyLanguage/Extension:AbuseFilter/Actions|Actions
 * Global>Extension:AbuseFilter/Global|Global Rules
 * Conditions>Extension:AbuseFilter/Conditions|Guide to optimizing condition limit usage
 * To import filters from Wikipedia: When you have installed the extension, go to w:Special:AbuseFilter, choose a filter (say w:Special:AbuseFilter/3), then click "Export this filter to another wiki", copy the text, go to "Special:AbuseFilter/import" on your wiki, paste the text.

API
AbuseFilter adds two API list modules, one for details of abuse filters ("abusefilters") and one for the abuse log, since it is separate from other MediaWiki logs ("abuselog"). It is not possible to create or modify abuse filters using the API.

list = abusefilters
List information about filters


 * Parameters :
 * - The filter id to start enumerating from
 * - The filter id to stop enumerating at
 * - The direction in which to enumerate (older, newer)
 * - Show only filters which meet these criteria (enabled|!enabled|deleted|!deleted|private|!private)
 * - The maximum number of filters to list
 * - Which properties to get (id|description|pattern|actions|hits|comments|lasteditor|lastedittime|status|private)

When filters are private, some of the properties specified with  will be missing unless you have the appropriate user rights.


 * Examples :

list = abuselog
List instances where actions triggered an abuse filter.


 * Parameters :
 * - The timestamp to start enumerating from
 * - The timestamp to stop enumerating at
 * - The direction in which to enumerate (older, newer)
 * - Show only entries where the action was attempted by a given user or IP address.
 * - Show only entries where the action involved a given page.
 * - Show only entries that triggered a given filter ID
 * - The maximum number of entries to list
 * - Which properties to get (ids|user|title|action|result|timestamp|details)


 * Example :

Possible errors
If the Wiki is using SSL certificates, this error could possibly be because of the value, which might be using "http://" instead of "https://". An indication of this error will be, the browser giving https warning for Special:AbuseFilter pages. (Topic:T23dyyih0ofjada5)
 * Some users might experience that creating new filters or modifying old filters fail and the user just gets redirected to the original page.