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Add support for CentralAuth to Special:Nuke (ability for stewards to cross-wiki delete all pages created by a user)
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Description

Special:Nuke makes it possible to fight attacks that result in large-scale new page creation. Currently we experiencing more and more that spambots are doing such attacks from one IP on a lot of Wikimedia wiki at once, but on every wiki only one page. This costs a steward a huge amount of work.

Please expand the functionality of Special:Nuke such that a steward can delete all the created pages from one IP on every wiki at once. especially after SUL is introduced, I think this should no longer give problems with the logs. I could imagine that the logs currently would say something like ''[[m:user:Effeietsanders]] deleted [[PageSpam]] with the reason: "spammer" with Special:Nuke.''

Details

Reference
bz11069

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Low.Nov 21 2014, 9:49 PM
bzimport set Reference to bz11069.
bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

axel9891 wrote:

The Nuke function would be useful for ordinary admins as well - I used it for the first time yesterday, on Meta on 56 pages created by a spammer, and it cleared them in seconds. If it had been on any other wiki I'd have either left it, or been annoyed at the extra time it would have taken to clear up.

bugs wrote:

(In reply to comment #1)

The Nuke function would be useful for ordinary admins as well - I used it for
the first time yesterday, on Meta on 56 pages created by a spammer, and it
cleared them in seconds. If it had been on any other wiki I'd have either left
it, or been annoyed at the extra time it would have taken to clear up.

Yes, I agree, but this would need separate discussion on the individual wikis. Perhaps bring it up on WikiEN-l?

bugs wrote:

(In reply to comment #0)

Special:Nuke makes it possible to fight large scale new page creation as a
spambot attack. Currently we are more and more experiencing that spambots are
doing such attacks from one IP on a lot of wiki's within WIkimedia, but on
every wiki only one page. This costs a steward a huge amount of work.

Please expand the functionality of Special:Nuke such that a steward can delete
all the created pages from one IP on every wiki at once. especially after SUL
is introduced, I think this should no longer give problems with the logs. I
could imagine that the logs currently would say something like
''[[m:user:Effeietsanders]] deleted [[PageSpam/w/index.php]] with the reason:
"spammer" with Special:Nuke. ''

Like global blocking, a good idea. :-)

axel9891 wrote:

(In reply to comment #2)

(In reply to comment #1)

The Nuke function would be useful for ordinary admins as well - I used it for
the first time yesterday, on Meta on 56 pages created by a spammer, and it
cleared them in seconds. If it had been on any other wiki I'd have either left
it, or been annoyed at the extra time it would have taken to clear up.

Yes, I agree, but this would need separate discussion on the individual wikis.
Perhaps bring it up on WikiEN-l?

I imagine it being shot down on enwiki rather fast. I suggested once we could add it to Simple English Wikipedia, but the user I spoke with (a Bureaucrat) didn't really like the idea - and I generally trust him to be right. But it'd certainly be useful.

bugs wrote:

(In reply to comment #4)

(In reply to comment #2)

(In reply to comment #1)

The Nuke function would be useful for ordinary admins as well - I used it for
the first time yesterday, on Meta on 56 pages created by a spammer, and it
cleared them in seconds. If it had been on any other wiki I'd have either left
it, or been annoyed at the extra time it would have taken to clear up.

Yes, I agree, but this would need separate discussion on the individual wikis.
Perhaps bring it up on WikiEN-l?

I imagine it being shot down on enwiki rather fast. I suggested once we could
add it to Simple English Wikipedia, but the user I spoke with (a Bureaucrat)
didn't really like the idea - and I generally trust him to be right. But it'd
certainly be useful.

Dang communitites... :-)

But giving the special page to bureaucrats only might possibly be better? Even though the whole bureaucrat paradigm relies on tasks that are not as urgent as deleting a bulk of pages, but this way potential abuse would be prevented.

axel9891 wrote:

Bureaucrats, to me = users who change rights of users. Renames are an additional thing, but everything a Bureaucrat does, in some way affects an account's status. It doesn't suit Bureaucrat only, imo. I think admins should have it, they'd only have to delete pages the hard way.

Alright, but there should at least be Special:Unnuke or whatever that can just as easily undelete all of the articles, if worst comes to worst.

axel9891 wrote:

(In reply to comment #8)

Alright, but there should at least be Special:Unnuke or whatever that can just
as easily undelete all of the articles, if worst comes to worst.

Yes, and admins might make a mistake.

bugs wrote:

(In reply to comment #9)

(In reply to comment #8)

Alright, but there should at least be Special:Unnuke or whatever that can just
as easily undelete all of the articles, if worst comes to worst.

Yes, and admins might make a mistake.

Oh noes, we're talking about a whole 'nother extension here.

Why? Why not unify the two (add the extra code, which can't be much)? Just like bot status is dealt with with only one special page.

bugs wrote:

(In reply to comment #11)

Why? Why not unify the two (add the extra code, which can't be much)? Just like
bot status is dealt with with only one special page.

Either way it will be changing the extension. :-( We've started to move too far from the main issue, that this should be enabled for stewards for all wikis. If we want to continue discussions for this being enabled on other wikis, that should be a different bug. :-)

mike.lifeguard+bugs wrote:

This should be installed for /sysops/ on all wikis - stewards would already have the appropriate rights on every wiki to use it.

mike.lifeguard+bugs wrote:

(In reply to comment #0)

Special:Nuke makes it possible to fight large scale new page creation as a
spambot attack. Currently we are more and more experiencing that spambots are
doing such attacks from one IP on a lot of wiki's within WIkimedia, but on
every wiki only one page. This costs a steward a huge amount of work.

Please expand the functionality of Special:Nuke such that a steward can delete
all the created pages from one IP on every wiki at once. especially after SUL
is introduced, I think this should no longer give problems with the logs. I
could imagine that the logs currently would say something like
''[[m:user:Effeietsanders]] deleted [[PageSpam/w/index.php]] with the reason:
"spammer" with Special:Nuke. ''

Probably won't be necessary after Nuke is installed more widely.
*bug 15685 -> small wikis
*bug 15783 -> enwiki
*bug 15927 -> plwiki

bugs wrote:

(In reply to comment #13)

This should be installed for /sysops/ on all wikis - stewards would already
have the appropriate rights on every wiki to use it.

No, it's about stewards being able to control all of that from *Meta*. Not installing it on all wikis for sysops to be able to use it.

mike.lifeguard+bugs wrote:

(In reply to comment #15)

(In reply to comment #13)

This should be installed for /sysops/ on all wikis - stewards would already
have the appropriate rights on every wiki to use it.

No, it's about stewards being able to control all of that from *Meta*. Not
installing it on all wikis for sysops to be able to use it.

I understand what this request is about. I'm saying it may not be necessary after Nuke is enabled more widely. If Nuke is available on more wikis then the need to control such things from Meta is reduced or eliminated. I should also point out there is very likely no clean way to implement nuke-from-meta currently, since we have no global contribs in MediaWiki. This is possibly a pipe dream, and an unnecessary one at that.

@Aklapper what team/department should be poked to look at this ?

@Aklapper what team/department should be poked to look at this ?

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/231/ does not list any members, https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developers/Maintainers lists @JeroenDeDauw (not sure how up to date that is), https://git.wikimedia.org/log/mediawiki%2Fextensions%2FNuke.git shows last committers. So I'm not sure here either, it might just be one of those many areas that do not have clear maintainers.

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