Extension:Phalanx

Phalanx extension is an integrated special control mechanism. The integrated means that it integrates several (mostly Wikia) extensions into one, ultimate anti-spam tool: BadWords, FilterWords, regexBlock, SpamBlacklist, spamRegex, TextRegex and TitleBlacklist.

Phalanx was originally developed by and for Wikia; this page documents the fork of Phalanx that ShoutWiki uses, which was originally forked in June 2010 and is currently based on r57731 of Wikia's SVN.

Installation

 * 1) Dump the files into
 * 2) Create the two new database tables via something like
 * 3) Add  into the wiki's LocalSettings.php
 * 4) Installation can now be verified through the wiki's Special:Version

Parameters
The $wgPhalanxDisableContent global can be set to true to disable the ContentBlock module (checks related to page content, edit&move summaries).

User rights
Phalanx extension adds three new user rights, phalanx, phalanxexempt and phalanxemailblock.

The phalanx user right is required to access Special:Phalanx and Special:PhalanxStats; to add, modify and remove filters and to view statistics.

Users with phalanxexempt user right are exempt from Phalanx filters.

The phalanxemailblock user right is required to view blocked e-mail addresses on Special:Phalanx and Special:PhalanxStats, to block e-mail addresses and to view the log at Special:Log/phalanxemail.

Logging
Filter additions, modifications and deletions are logged at Special:Log/phalanx, which is a private log accessible by users with the phalanx user right.

E-mail address filter additions, modifications and deletions are logged at a separate log, Special:Log/phalanxemail. Accessing this log requires the phalanxemailblock user right.

Testing filters
Users with the phalanx user right can test currently active filters by choosing the "Test Filters" tab on Special:Phalanx, entering text (such as a spam phrase, a username or something else that is or should be blocked in Phalanx) and pressing the button. If there is a match, you'll be informed what filter the text triggers; if there isn't a match (and you know there should be), try changing the options of a block. One of the most common problems is using the "exact" option with text, such as content or summary blocks; you should almost always use the regex option, because the "exact" option is too dumb and it can easily be fooled.

Technical notes

 * See Extension:Phalanx/Writing a new module for information on how to add additional blocking options to the extension
 * Number of i18n messages: 108 (as of 9 August 2012)
 * GUI for Special:Phalanx is in extensions/Phalanx/templates/phalanx.tmpl.php
 * CSS changs:
 * wikia-tabs has been renamed to phalanx-tabs
 * accent &rarr; phalanx-accent
 * clearfix styles copied from Monaco's root.css; required for proper GUI display
 * Requires jQuery 1.4.2 or higher
 * Actual blocking classes are in blocks/</tt> (for example, ContentBlock.class.php</tt>) and are loaded in Phalanx.php</tt> for users who do not have the phalanxexempt right
 * Hooks used by Phalanx specific to the Wikia codebase, and which are not present in MediaWiki core:
 * AutoCreateWiki::checkBadWords
 * ApiCreateMultiplePagesBeforeCreation
 * CreateDefaultQuestionPageFilter
 * CreatePageTitleCheck
 * DefaultQuestion::filterWordsTest
 * ProblemReportsContentCheck
 * SpecialMovepageBeforeMove
 * the functionality hooked into this hook has been moved to ContentBlock module (extensions/Phalanx/blocks/ContentBlock.class.php, function onAbortMove); the hook used is AbortMove