2025:Program/Debugging abuse filters with ease

Session title: Debugging abuse filters with ease

Session type: Demonstration

Track: Hackathon

Language: en

AbuseFilter is a powerful tool that can be used to reduce the amount of vandalisms and disruptions. However, it doesn't provide admins with a friendly interface for checking why a given action triggerred the filter. It's troublesome especially for complex filter with elaborate rules. In this session, I'm going to show you how to easily examine filter hits with AbuseFilter analyzer.

Description

In 2024, I've written a tool, called AbuseFilter analyzer, that facilitates analysis of abuse log entries. Using it, it's possible to quickly discover whether a given edit was actually meant to trigger the filter or whether it was a false-positive.

The tool was developed to help wiki functionaries to work with abuse filters and better resolve issues that might arise around them. Have you ever stared at dozens of regular expressions and had no clue, which was matched to the content? Or wondered, whether a given rule is still needed after 10 years? If yes, it's a perfect tool for you.

I'm going to show you what are the benefits of the tool and how it can improve your wiki workflows. We can also discuss the directions of its development to make it even more useful.

Tool description: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Msz2001/AbuseFilter_analyzer

How does your session relate to the event theme, Wikimania@20 – Inclusivity. Impact. Sustainability?

It happens that misconfigured abuse filters are triggerred on good-faith edits by newcomers. Such situations often lead to them feeling frustrasted or harmed in a way. Being better at rejecting/blocking vandalisms while allowing for good-faith contributions is crucial for the project's sustainability and inclusivity. The easier the discovering issues with edit filters is, the better our filters will be. Consequently, it'll be less likely that we discourage novice users by automatically rejecting their good edits.

What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?

This session is for an experienced audience

Speakers

• Msz2001

Administrator-technician on Polish Wikipedia. My primary activity is doing technical things, be it templates, gadgets or activity closer to MediaWiki repo and Phabricator. I've been an author of a few successful gadgets and I try to spread awareness of technical things in the local community.

As a member of Wikimedia Poland, I also participate in its activities directed at partners, usually by delivering presentations on diverse topics related to Wikimedia projects. I've been a co-organizer of Wikimania 2024 and WMPL's 100-hours-long edit-a-thon (Guinness World Record).

Since July 2025, I've been working as a software engineer in the Trust & Safety Product team at Wikimedia Foundation.