NetHackWiki:Abuse filter

The abuse filter is a MediaWiki extension that allows administrators to automatically flag potentially abusive activity and (optionally) prevent it.

A list of filters can be found at Special:AbuseFilter; this is also where administrators can configure filters. Special:AbuseLog shows actions that have triggered filters.

Actions

All abuse filters will log the matched action to Special:AbuseLog. This cannot be disabled. In addition, a filter may have more user-visible results:

• The user may be warned about the change they are trying to make. This warning message can be customized. The user will be able to click the submit button again to bypass the warning; this may trigger further actions.
• The action may simply be prevented entirely. A generic message is displayed to the user.
• One or more change tags may be applied to the edit. This will show up in user contributions, article history, and Special:RecentChanges, but by itself is purely informational.
• The user may be stripped of their auto-confirmed status (which is normally given automatically to users who have been around for a few days) for up to a week. This will cause the software to present them with CAPTCHAs on edits and stop them from editing semi-protected pages. Other filters may also check whether a user is autoconfirmed.
• The user may be blocked indefinitely from editing. This is typically used for spam and other clearly malicious edits.
• The user's privileges (as an administrator etc.) may be revoked. This action is not currently used on NetHackWiki.

While the abuse filter interface allows to revert actions taken by any given filter, it is usually desirable to avoid false positives before they happen. To this end, the management interface provides excellent tools to test filters against recent edits before actually applying them.

False positives

If a filter matches erroneously, you should contact an administrator. In case you were mistaken for a spammer, you might have been automatically blocked by the filter; in this case, you can edit your own talk page or poke someone in #nethackwiki on IRC.