User:ThatIPEditor/Essays/On AF

Abuse filter: Good at preventing vandalism, but also deters good-faith editors.

"You have been blocked from editing."

- My first edit...

On my first edit to the wiki, I was blocked by the abuse filter, which I successfully appealed, after panicking for 10 minutes. In that appeal, I have stated that having auto-blocking abuse filter is not a very good move, and I have carried that all the way to being an administrator.

"Even if someone made an edit that needs to be reverted, it does not mean that their intention in making that edit was anything less than honorable."

- FANDOM guideline on assuming good faith

Firstly, an auto-blocking abuse filter is a blatant violation of our policy on blocking, and our policy on assuming good faith. We should only block users to prevent further damage to our wiki. False positives happen a lot, too, which is also a violation of our blocking policy, because that it does not meet any of the criteria. We should not rely on users appealing. This is crazy. Assuming good faith means that not all edits that need to be reverted need a block, but it appears that the abuse filter cannot tell. The blocks are also indefinite, which is simply, in one word, absurd.

"Hello! I am ThatIPEditor! I noticed that the Abuse Filter blocked you mistakenly. Don't worry, I have unblocked you, and I have reported the incident to the Abuse Filter people. Thanks!"

- Template for processing false AF blocks

Secondly, the abuse filter has a lot of false positives, to the point where I believe that is unacceptable to be used. When I go to the Abuse log, I can usually see more than 5 false blocks per page, which is absurd. From my Wikipedia experience, a warning generally stops most vandals, and a level 3 stops an additional 60%. Why don't we just template the vandals? We should not let a computer program block people, based on how they phrase edits.

"I'm used to wikis having a rhetoric of: "We shouldn't do this, it may hurt newbies." The idea here seems to be: "The few newbies we lose aren't worth it, we have too much vandalism""

- Hunterjd27 on Discord channel #staff-talk

We have a lot of users. We can manually revert vandalism, and give 2 or 3 warnings like how Wikipedia does. I can even run a ClueBot on our wiki, which automatically removes, and warns vandals. It can even report them to administrators. Instantly blocking newbies who mess up is not good in my opinion. In addition, we should treat newcomers as users, and not vandals. I have made multiple good-faith edits on my IP by accident, and my IP has been blocked multiple times because of it. As you can tell by my user page, I am an Administrator, and nearly none of my edits on my account have been reverted for bad-faith editing, but, if I make my edits on my IP, it would be considered bad-faith editing. This also applies to new users. We should not think that new users are vandals and bad-faith editors, and instead think them as future good-faith editors.

"Remember that the apparent test editors have the potential to be tomorrow's editors. By giving a polite, honest and noncondemning answer to newcomers, you have the opportunity to teach them Wikipedia policy. By being calm, interested, and respectful, you do credit to your dignity, and to our project."

- [[WP:WP:BITE|Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers|undefined

Another thing is that many of the abuse filters depend on the edit count, such as the “New users removing templates”, “New users removing/modifying section titles”, “New users removing/modifying crafting table template parameters”, “New users Modifying stat numbers”, “New users adding categories to pages”, and more. Why should new users not be able to do them? Why should they be blocked for it? I don’t see why. From what I know, there are IPs from Wikipedia, who have been nominated for Adminship, just to find out that IPs cannot hold user rights for technical reasons, after a full pass. New users should not have any less “social” rights than Administrators. We are all equal. We need to also remember that new users may not understand our policies as well as we do, so we must not bite the newcomers, and we should treat them with kindness and respect, and again, not like vandals.

"Hypixel SkyBlock Wiki's Abuse Filter has detected possible vandalism, and the edit has been disallowed. If you believe this is an error, Please contact an administrator and inform them of what you are trying to do."

- MediaWiki:Custom-abusefilter-vandalism, feels like a level 4im warning in my opinon The abuse filter notices feel like that it is assuming bad faith. Imagine, a new user, in good faith, contributing, and after pressing the save button, that message pops up. If it was me, and I did not have any Wikipedia experience, I would have gone into a panic attack, and be gone forever. This is one of my main concerns, and I think that we should implement more friendly messages, with nice words, such as "please", "sorry", "thank you", etc. In my opinion, these are the more minor things. I think that the first three concerns are way more important than this one.

"The first edits of many users who are now experienced editors were test edits, or unsourced and unencyclopedic additions to articles. Communicating with newcomers patiently and thoroughly is integral to ensure they stay on Wikipedia and ultimately contribute in a constructive manner."

- Lead of Please do not bite the newcomers

We need to ensure that even the newer, inexperienced editors, who make bad quality edits stay. A lot of these users then become bureaucrats, even on Wikipedia. Initially, users may not understand our policies, or even vandalize without knowing it; they should not be blocked for that. Blocks should all be made in bad-faith cases, where it is done to prevent further damage to the wiki. The Abuse Filter does not follow that principle.