Special:RecentChangesCleanup hidden

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rainwarrior
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Special:RecentChangesCleanup hidden

Post by rainwarrior »

So, the Wiki has an extention that allows RC patrollers to "hide" edits from the recent changes timeline by marking them as bot edits. This is useful for keeping Spam rollbacks from cluttering the view. I was interested in using this feature to help revert spam, but until today I was under the impression that only administrators (i.e. tepples) could do it. As it turns out, I have had the ability to do it for a long time, but the Wiki has just been incorrectly hiding this feature from me (and presumably most others).

The feature works, and is available to 100+ edit users at: Special:RecentChangesCleanup
Documentation here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extensio ... es_Cleanup

However, the extension seems to be failing to appear on pages for such users. It should apparently have a link appear on Special:SpecialPages and Special:RecentChanges, but this does not seem to appear for anyone but administrators?

This question came up in a recent unrelated thread: viewtopic.php?f=13&t=14474&start=15#p174654
Koitsu proposed some guesses about the cause: viewtopic.php?f=13&t=14474&start=15#p174668
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koitsu
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Re: Special:RecentChangesCleanup hidden

Post by koitsu »

Looks like we can rule out "old version" as a possibility: version 1.3 is being used per: http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/Special:Version

It makes me wonder if maybe a different constructor name is being used than what the docs specify. I started digging into MediaWiki's SpecialPages documentation (a perfect example of how utterly disorganised and chaotic wikis are) and found the Restricting page access section possibly relevant.

The only other thing I can think of is that the docs say the entry in the SpecialPages area won't show up for someone unless they've done at least 100 edits. I'd like to think Rainwarrior has, but still:
* Sysops and users will see a special page at the bottom "Other special pages" section called "Recent Changes Cleanup". ...
* Currently, any user with at least 100 edits is able to access this page (the number 100 can be edited in the file "RecentChangesCleanup_body.php"). This should not be a concern because if an editor has at least 100 edits, they are most likely "safe" and will not abuse the system. In any case this only hides a line in the RC so its not a serious issue. If you have problems with this, you can change the number to a higher number.
(Off-topic: if the >=100 number turns out to be the cause for the extension not showing up in SpecialPages, then lowering it to a more sane value also concerns me: would spammers posting tons of crap on Talk pages classify as an Edit? AFAIK talk page chatter on MediaWiki is done *exactly* like an Edit, so uh, this feature seems like it would make the RecentChangesCleanup option available to spammers, no? Maybe the user rights trump that. I don't know. Welcome to the importance of clear/concise documentation!)

I also can't figure out how to submit PRs/issues/support requests to the author of the RecentChangesCleanup extension. There's apparently two authors (one named "Anon" (wonderful...), the other "Choshi"), and there's no Talk page for that extension, so I'm at a loss there.
tepples
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Re: Special:RecentChangesCleanup hidden

Post by tepples »

Did you mean an IP spammer or a spammer with an account? An IP spammer has 0 edits by definition and isn't posting external links. A spammer with an account got past the CAPTCHA, in which case one of us needs to rotate the CAPTCHA inventory.
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koitsu
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Re: Special:RecentChangesCleanup hidden

Post by koitsu »

tepples wrote:Did you mean an IP spammer or a spammer with an account? An IP spammer has 0 edits by definition and isn't posting external links. A spammer with an account got past the CAPTCHA, in which case one of us needs to rotate the CAPTCHA inventory.
I have no idea what "IP spammer" means (if IP means intellectual property then that makes no sense, if IP means IP address then that also makes no sense -- I've never heard this term before). I'm talking about this specifically -- "Talk page editing is open to IPs, but adding external links to a talk page as an IP requires (again) solving a CAPTCHA."

If that constitutes as an edit (I would imagine it does), then depending on how the model of this extension works, lowering the number (to see if it resolves the issue rainwarrior and others have) means we risk giving said spammers a way to use the feature, which defeats the purpose of the extension, no? Consider the last "mass spam" we had on there -- how many edits and talk pages was that? It surely was in, or nearing, the 3-digit range.
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Myask
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Re: Special:RecentChangesCleanup hidden

Post by Myask »

I doubt the number's the issue; I certainly have more than 100 edits.
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Re: Special:RecentChangesCleanup hidden

Post by tepples »

koitsu wrote:
tepples wrote:Did you mean an IP spammer or a spammer with an account? An IP spammer has 0 edits by definition and isn't posting external links. A spammer with an account got past the CAPTCHA, in which case one of us needs to rotate the CAPTCHA inventory.
I have no idea what "IP spammer" means (if IP means intellectual property then that makes no sense, if IP means IP address then that also makes no sense -- I've never heard this term before). I'm talking about this specifically -- "Talk page editing is open to IPs, but adding external links to a talk page as an IP requires (again) solving a CAPTCHA."
The latter. I meant a spammer editing the wiki without logging in. Contributions from contributors who are not logged in are marked with the contributor's IP address. (See WP:IP.) I tried to make it clear by contrasting it to "with an account".
koitsu wrote:If that constitutes as an edit (I would imagine it does)
No matter how long Special:Contributions is for a given IP address, the "edit count" for any IP address as measured by authorization formulae is zero. Thus only logged-in users are allowed to use RCC.
koitsu wrote:Consider the last "mass spam" we had on there -- how many edits and talk pages was that? It surely was in, or nearing, the 3-digit range.
The last mass spam was by 199.15.233.162, almost exactly a month ago. Because 199.15.233.162 is an IP address, not a logged-in user, it has 0 edit count ergo no RCC access.


P.S.: I'm not in the habit of using the term "intellectual property" due to confusion. See Richard Stallman's article, Mike Masnick's article, and my article full of backronyms.
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koitsu
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Re: Special:RecentChangesCleanup hidden

Post by koitsu »

Okay cool, thank you for the clarification and explanation! Possibly we can try lowering the number from 100 to something smaller (say, 10?) and see if that makes a difference?
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rainwarrior
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Re: Special:RecentChangesCleanup hidden

Post by rainwarrior »

The ability to hide and show posts works, and that's supposed to be tied to the edit count already, at least from what I understood by the documentation.

I don't think the problem has anything to do with the specific number of edit counts, it's something to do with whatever's supposed to reveal the interface to the user.
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