Delay renaming updates by 1 cycle to fight renaming vandalism #7

New Issue

FWDekker · 2023-02-10T09:35:53+01:00

FWDekker commented

2023-02-10 09:35:53 +01:00

Recently, someone renamed the "Joe Biden" article to "Stolen election". Death Notifier picked up on this and renamed "Joe Biden" to "Stolen election" as well. Unfortunately, when an editor undid the renaming vandalism, Death Notifier did not undo the renaming.

I added a feature to Death Notifier where, when an article is deleted, Death Notifier finds out if another article was recently renamed to the now-deleted article, and if so, renames the now-deleted article to the old name. This worked fine when "Ben Shapiro" was moved to "MILK FART", so why did it not work this time? Because Wikipedia editors decided to remove this vandalism from the logs, so Death Notifier couldn't find out that vandalism had occurred.

It looks like the editors took about 5 minutes to undo the vandalism, and then probably a minute to remove it from the logs. I don't think there is any systematic way for Death Notifier to detect an undo of a renaming, so the only way to handle this is probably to, once a move is detected, wait one more cycle (= 5 minutes), see if the renaming is still there, and if so, actually do the renaming.

This is not fool-proof; what if it takes editors 11 minutes to figure out vandalism, and then they remove it from the logs? Or if it takes 16 minutes? I have to trade off accuracy and speed here, and I think setting it waiting 1 cycle is sufficient for most cases.

Additionally, I should consider:

doing the same for death notifications, to prevent false positives
sending notifications about renamed articles

Recently, someone renamed the "Joe Biden" article to "Stolen election". Death Notifier picked up on this and renamed "Joe Biden" to "Stolen election" as well. Unfortunately, when an editor undid the renaming vandalism, Death Notifier did not undo the renaming. I added a feature to Death Notifier where, when an article is deleted, Death Notifier finds out if another article was recently renamed to the now-deleted article, and if so, renames the now-deleted article to the old name. This worked fine when "Ben Shapiro" was moved to "MILK FART", so why did it not work this time? Because Wikipedia editors decided to remove this vandalism from the logs, so Death Notifier couldn't find out that vandalism had occurred. It looks like the editors took about 5 minutes to undo the vandalism, and then probably a minute to remove it from the logs. I don't think there is any systematic way for Death Notifier to detect an undo of a renaming, so the only way to handle this is probably to, once a move is detected, wait one more cycle (= 5 minutes), see if the renaming is still there, and if so, actually do the renaming. This is not fool-proof; what if it takes editors _11_ minutes to figure out vandalism, and then they remove it from the logs? Or if it takes _16_ minutes? I have to trade off accuracy and speed here, and I think setting it waiting 1 cycle is sufficient for most cases. Additionally, I should consider: * doing the same for death notifications, to prevent false positives * sending notifications about renamed articles

FWDekker added the

enhancement

label 2023-02-10 09:35:53 +01:00

FWDekker self-assigned this 2023-02-10 09:35:53 +01:00

FWDekker changed title from ~~Delay renaming updates by 1 cycle~~ to Delay renaming updates by 1 cycle to fight renaming vandalism

2023-02-10 09:36:12 +01:00

Sign in to join this conversation.