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Removing EFM rights for those desysoped under a cloud
Should the following be added to the user right section of the policy;
Any administrator who has the edit filter manager right and is desysoped under a cloud should also have their edit filter manager right removed, regardless if they held it prior to becoming an administrator. They may regain it through the normal process at edit filter noticeboard.
Support
- Support as proposer. Regardless of the current practices, I feel this should be in writing, as we all know the power (and room for abuse) that exists with edit filters. If an admin is no longer trusted by ARBCOM or feels the need to resign under a cloud, it seems reasonable that no longer hold the trust of the community to be an edit filter manager. Kharkiv07 (T) 20:33, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
- Support, sort of. I don't agree with "regardless if they held it prior to becoming an administrator" - if they gained it prior to becoming an admin then they evidently have the trust of those who understand the edit filter from a primarily technical standpoint. I support removal of the user right if it was self-granted though; this implies that it was trusted to them through the same means as the rest of the admin toolkit, for which they no longer have the community's trust. Sam Walton (talk) 23:31, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
- Support (or neutral I guess) – I agree with others that it really varies case by case. If the admin has been desysoped for behavioural reasons, I would hope the abusefilter right is removed... without question. I also agree with Sam that self-granted rights should be removed, as they added it only because they had the admin bit, which they've now lost. Another thought is to first see if they've even modified any filters. If they haven't, it might be because either they thought they needed it to view filters, or they just added it when they were an admin because they could – such people probably account for most of our edit filter managers. Very few are actually doing anything with it. I wrote a tool to report which EFMs haven't made any filter modifications, but alas that effort was cut short by a security flaw which WMF is now working on. We should be able to report this information again soon, though, and I think we should look to it moving forward, perhaps even for our current admins — MusikAnimal talk 16:54, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
- Support. The idea is sound, the wording is atrocious. The closing person will need a great wisdom to extract what is supported in both the support and oppose sections. The main fact is that there are circa 1300 administrators and only 166 Edit Filter Managers. There are so few EFM because an EFM must be trusted for: (1) technical skills; (2) good judgement. The actual rules are (R1) any admin can grant the right to any admin (even herself) ; (R2) a non-admin must go before the EFM noticeboard. Rule R1 is absurd and R1+R2 should be changed into: "any admin+EFM can grant the right to any admin (checking skills); EFM noticeboard can grant the right to any non-admin (checking skills+good judgment)". And now the desysop rule is obvious: "when an admin+EFM is desysopped then (1) if the EFM status was granted by an EFM (either the noticeboard or a single other EFM+admin), the EFM status remains, except if explicitly revoked by the Arbitration (2) if the EFM status was granted by a non EFM admin (old deprecated rule), the EFM status is revoked (but can be obtained again, without delay, following the rules for a non-admin)". Pldx1 (talk) 12:07, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
Oppose
- Oppose per the Rich Farmbrough precedent; they were demopped in 2012 and kept the EFM access (to be precise, it was removed during the desysop, but another admin immediately restored it, inducing a discussion on the administrator noticeboard here) - and from what I know they do good work there. I don't think a desysop necessarily implies that one is unsuitable for holding edit filter manager access, especially since IMO technical proficiency is a more important component to EFM than to adminship while complaints about bad judgment seems to be far less common there. I also think we need a much better case before creating yet more policies.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:46, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
- Oppose If an editor has the EFM right granted as a separate request per the normal process at EFM this would have been based on their ability and knowledge of the area not their ability to use administrator tools. If they weren't granted per the normal process then that's a different matter but blanket removal of permissions shouldn't be carried out unless they were given in the same manner. We'd need to potentially remove things such as file mover or rollback that are both for "trusted users in that area". Amortias (T)(C) 21:01, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
- Oppose. I would support an automatic removal of EFM only if arbcom directs this or they have only held the right through self-granting it (if they gained it through a discussion, returned it for reasons other than misuse, and then later self-granted it again then it should not be considered a self-granted right for this purpose). In all other cases I would say a review of whether they are still suitable is recommended. Thryduulf (talk) 22:31, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
- Oppose per Thryduulf. -- KTC (talk) 23:37, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
- Oppose Existing policy allows us to give and take away this right. We can go on a case by case basis. HighInBC 15:53, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
- Oppose - EFM != sysop. EFM only covers technical ability and/or basic common sense. Sysop requires a lot more. Reaper Eternal (talk) 23:19, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
- Oppose as written. Removing self-granted EFM is reasonable, but if they were given EFM through some other process, it should not automatically be removed. --Carnildo (talk) 01:10, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
- Oppose in principle. I agree with Thryduulf, that self-granted EFM rights should be removed. Editors who were granted the right prior to adminship hold EFM as a separate right, and should retain it (unless obviously the case found they had abused EFM). This may have to be put into the ArbCom procedure, to check to see if the user has self-granted the right, and include its removal in future remedies (as appropriate per above). So while I would support removal for self-granted rights, I oppose this as a blanket "thou shalt have EFM removed upon desysoping". --kelapstick(bainuu) 20:35, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
- If there is significant abuse or misuse of the edit filters then it is very likely that arbcom will resolve the right should be removed, as happened with Kww. In other cases, the clerks will now leave a note at WP:EFN if a user with self-granted EFM rights is desysopped. I'm not sure more is needed from arbcom than that as the right can be added or removed by administrators. Thryduulf (talk) 21:50, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
- Oppose It is up to ArbCom to be precise in the language they use. There are many bits which could be removed along with the admin bit: if more than the admin bit is meant then it should be so specified. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:33, 29 January 2016 (UTC).
- Oppose per Rich Farmbrough's points immediately above: removal of rights other than adminship should depend on the individual case. Rubbish computer (HALP!: I dropped the bass?) 14:08, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
Comments
- I think it depends if it was self-administered or not. In general, EFM is considered a restricted right, but it can be given to non-admins after discussion at Wikipedia:Edit filter noticeboard. Admins can self-apply the right at will, in which case we are relying on the trust they have as admins. Therefore, if the admin is desysopped for cause, that trust is no longer extant and the EFM right dissipates along with it. However, if they had the right prior to their being an admin, then their ability to maintain it is dependent on a different trust, and may extend beyond the desysopping, although, I would recommend that the EF noticeboard make some mention of that fact. -- Avi (talk) 21:44, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
- Not so. De-sysopping "for cause" does not necessarily stem from lack of trust. I might mention a case where "lack of responsiveness" was cited. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 10:41, 2 February 2016 (UTC).
- Not so. De-sysopping "for cause" does not necessarily stem from lack of trust. I might mention a case where "lack of responsiveness" was cited. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 10:41, 2 February 2016 (UTC).
- I think this situation should require a review to determine if this flag is still needed, but not necessarily require the removal. The key factors should include the same as for non-admin appointees:
- Does the editor maintain a standard of "good judgement"?
- Does the editor have demonstrable "technical proficiency"?
- Is the editor "highly trusted"?
- Was the editor actually active in this area?
- Support the idea of a "review" of continued EF rights holding on a desysop "case by case" basis. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 17:23, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
Looking to help
I'm a long term editor who also happens to be a computer programmer (25 years of flipping bits, mostly embedded stuff but with a bit of web things here and there - resume here). I often poke around on informal anti-vandal patrol now and then and have been looking for a way to contribute more to Wikipedia, preferably something that leverages my technical skills. I don't have a huge amount of time to spare, just a few hours a week, so applying to be an Administrator seemed a bit of overkill. User:KrakatoaKatie suggested I look helping out with Edit Filters.
Is this something I could help out with? If so, how would we proceed? I'll watch this page for a response.
Thanks KNHaw (talk) 23:40, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
- @KNHaw: Absolutely! I'd recommend you first take a look through some non-hidden edit filters at Special:AbuseFilter, look at the log of caught edits for those filters, and generally get a feel for how the filters are written and how they work. mw:Extension:AbuseFilter/Rules_format is a helpful reference page for how they're written, and of course feel free to ask me or any other active edit filter managers if you're not sure on something. If you're not familiar with regular expressions I'd also read up on them and have a play around with them in something like Debuggex. Once you feel like you're happy with how edit filters work we could primarily use some help responding to false positive reports, of which we get a lot. Then there's also the requests page, where you're welcome to help with creating new filters (if the request is related to a vandal you can submit a proposed filter to the mailing list and we'll create it hidden). If you want to get more involved than this (i.e. actually creating and editing filters), you can apply for the edit filter manager user right, for which you do not need to be an administrator; we'd just like to see that you know what you're doing first! Hope that helps and do feel free to drop me a message if you have any questions about the edit filter. Sam Walton (talk) 23:57, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
Citebomb?
What is with the pseudo-citations in the article linking to pseudo-random ArbCom decisions and what not? I count about 23 of them. Even if someone reverts a statement with basis in consensus, it is easy to revert, providing a link to the discussion. Esquivalience t 03:00, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
- Hi Esquivalience. The style of the quasi-citations is taken from the Admin policy. It's unusual I agree. They're, ahem ;), not really pseudo-random. It made some sense to place them there--at least initially--so the origin, basis in consensus, in policy and/or ArbCom decree'd be easy to find early on. I'm happy to take a look todayish to see if I can reduce them. –87.115.76.251 (talk) 07:36, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
-
- I'm not happy about linking to ArbCom "Principles". Though these are sometimes reused by ArbCom, they have (or should have) no force outside the internal logic of ArbCom decision making - even there, they need to be voted on every time they are used. ArbCom is explicitly not a policy making body, though they have on many occasions attempted to be one by various methods, with more or less success. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 10:46, 2 February 2016 (UTC).
- I'm not happy about linking to ArbCom "Principles". Though these are sometimes reused by ArbCom, they have (or should have) no force outside the internal logic of ArbCom decision making - even there, they need to be voted on every time they are used. ArbCom is explicitly not a policy making body, though they have on many occasions attempted to be one by various methods, with more or less success. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 10:46, 2 February 2016 (UTC).
Recent changes to guideline
87.115.76.251 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) has recently added a significant amount of content. A lot of it I wholeheartedly agree with, but some of it is disputable, and we shouldn't being drawing conclusions directly into a guideline without clear consensus. I also think we might be going a little overboard in general by bloating the same information that we already had beforehand. No need to be that thorough, we should be concise. I've reverted the content for now, and have informed 87.115.76.251 of this so we can discuss further. Thanks — MusikAnimal talk 21:17, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
Documentation
I have completed the documentation at Wikipedia:Edit filter/Documentation; feedback or fixes are appreciated. Esquivalience t 03:05, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
Which abuse filter would be good to assess the following?
Hello. I am an editor creating articles here. I have just expanded my scope to reviewing vandalism and other issues. I wanted advise on which filter will be good to review the following:
- . Coi cases of user name being the same as or similar to article name
- . Abusive usernames
- . Vandalism (that might not be reverted by Cluebot)
- . BLP vandalism
There are so many filters I see so I am confused.
Thank you. Xender Lourdes (talk) 04:26, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
- Special:AbuseFilter/148
- Abusive usernames aren't really tracked by the edit filter as this task is done by a bot which reports to Usernames for administrator attention directly. You can patrol WP:UAA/BOT to help out by removing obvious false positives or warning users with borderline cases.
- The "possible vandalism" tag is the best to patrol for this - [1]
- As above but the "possible libel or vandalism" tag - [2].
Hope that helps! Sam Walton (talk) 20:29, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
-
- Thank you Samwalton. Xender Lourdes (talk) 00:14, 23 March 2016 (UTC)