Page MenuHomePhabricator

Disable some parts of the editing interface from IPs and newbies because we don't trust them to use them correctly
Open, LowPublic

Description

From a bunch of days visual editor started adding INDEX NOEDITSECTION {{displaytitle:}} etc tags, here an example: https://it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ospedaletto_(Istrana)&diff=prev&oldid=74775174
here some more:
https://it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Speciale:RegistroAbusi&wpSearchFilter=318

Event Timeline

Vituzzu raised the priority of this task from to Needs Triage.
Vituzzu updated the task description. (Show Details)
Vituzzu added a project: VisualEditor.
Vituzzu subscribed.
Jdforrester-WMF changed the task status from Open to Stalled.Aug 26 2015, 3:49 PM
Jdforrester-WMF subscribed.

Can you explain why you think this is anything other than the user making these changes?

Aklapper renamed this task from Crappy code additions from visual editor to Unwanted tag additions (__NOEDITSECTION__, __INDICE__, etc) from visual editor.Aug 26 2015, 6:04 PM
Aklapper set Security to None.

This isn't a bug; VE offers to change "advanced settings" while editing an article.

The only problem Vituzzu is implying is that maybe they shouldn't be easy to reach, especially for newbies, since they don't need to be used except for rare circumstances outside the main namespace (some are literally never used).

IMHO this tab ("advanced settings", "impostazioni avanzate" in italian) should be disabled in VE, or at least disabled for IPs and new users and/or in the main namespace (even if some tags may be problematic in other namespaces too and if used in sandboxes eventually they could reach ns0 anyway).

Jdforrester-WMF renamed this task from Unwanted tag additions (__NOEDITSECTION__, __INDICE__, etc) from visual editor to Disable some parts of the editing interface from IPs and newbies because we don't trust them to use them correctly.Sep 11 2015, 11:16 PM
Jdforrester-WMF changed the task status from Stalled to Open.

I've re-titled the task, based on your comment? Is this correct? If so, I would decline it. There are no features that we would implement in the wikitext editor but not in the visual editor like this. If instead you can think of a way to educate users before they use these tools in the visual editor which are also available to them in the wikitext editor, I'd be happy to discuss, however.

Apologies but I missed commenting this further. As Supernino says those additions comes from unexperienced users and they are pretty useless.

An IP editor is not necessarily a newbie.

You could at least give better instructions into the VE interface. Eg It should be mentioned that all articles are automatically indexed and no user intervention is required; other tags have questionable descriptions like I explained here without getting any response: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Commenti#Mini_feedback

On the same page I noted the new "Auto-fill feature" for citations (that, forgive my POV, shouldn't be put before "manual" ways to add references since ignores relevant infos like date and author, sometimes repeats the website name into the title and doesn't allow you to fix it before putting it into the article) generates an access date with a very obsolete format (yyyy-mm-dd).

An IP editor is not necessarily a newbie.

Did I ever mention anons? ;)

[Citoid] ignores relevant infos like date and author

Those sound like issues with the set-up of the wiki's template data? Have you modified them?

sometimes repeats the website name into the title

Often websites insist that their name includes their title, yes.

and doesn't allow you to fix it before putting it into the article

Yes, this is intentional.

generates an access date with a very obsolete format (yyyy-mm-dd

I'm sorry, when did ISO 8601 get obsoleted, and by what?

Yeah, obsolete wasn't the right term. ISO 8601 was never used in italian language publications, but maybe VE is trying to be visionary.

Maybe the auto fill-in feature would work better integrated in the others "manual" citing templates. It would facilitate the user's edit without discourage him of adding other relevant parameters (and the title could be fixed if needed).

About magic words, at least their description could be more clear (eg. maybe less "newbies" would put INDEX in ns0 if it was indicated that articles's indexing is automatic).

That's just my feedback. No intents of discrediting the job made.

Keep up the good work, bye.

Jdforrester-WMF moved this task from To Triage to Freezer on the VisualEditor board.

To have less emphasis on these advanced option, the "Advance settings" tab could be positioned after "Categeries" and "Languages".

en wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Edit_filter_noticeboard&oldid=864548831#VisualEditor) has created an edit filter to stop the rampant misuse of indexing in user space, that upon review we think is from this tool.

en wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Edit_filter_noticeboard&oldid=864548831#VisualEditor) has created an edit filter to stop the rampant misuse of indexing in user space, that upon review we think is from this tool.

Do you have evidence of that, or is it a guess?

It would be relatively straightforward to figure that out, by seeing how many of the edits that add the magic word have the "Visual edit" tag on them.

en wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Edit_filter_noticeboard&oldid=864548831#VisualEditor) has created an edit filter to stop the rampant misuse of indexing in user space, that upon review we think is from this tool.

Do you have evidence of that, or is it a guess?

It would be relatively straightforward to figure that out, by seeing how many of the edits that add the magic word have the "Visual edit" tag on them.

Right now, the filter is set to "Disallow", so there's no way to be certain which are visual edits. But from from 14 September to 8 October it was allowing edits. Checking the first 20 that I can see (most were deleted as spam), 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20, all of them are tagged "Visual edit".

@Deskana we certainly had evidence of misuse of INDEX but didn't look in to the cause, but as @suffusion_of_yellow 's investigation shows, we had a 100% rate of issue with VE over a small sample size

Checked over deleted edits, 10 for 10 got their index directive from VE as well. Even being able to hide the advanced control would help and then could be managed by communities - however it appears to not use a distinctive ID, instead using generated OOUI--nn ID's that could possibly also be used elsewhere.

@suffusion_of_yellow, @Xaosflux, thanks to both of you for the extra information. As you say, there's no way to be conclusive here, but it does seem there's a link to the visual editor.

I'm really surprised there's a link here, because those settings are (intentionally) buried, but there you are. I wonder if people are reading some kind of tutorial published by a third-party on how to get spammy pages into Wikipedia, or if it's one person (or a small number of people) sockpuppeting, or something else? (I'm speculating, it's not really important right now.)

You noted the edit filter that's preventing this, which seems to solve the immediate problem. I also see that you've changed the system messages on the English Wikipedia to warn people that adding this may prevent them from saving, which I very much appreciate. In terms of changing other things, is there something else you have in mind?

@Deskana, if the advanced control panels could use a named identifier, I suspect enwiki would likely just hide it with css for newbies based on the autoconfirmed or other group membership css's - and that would likely address itwiki's concern as well, right now the naming appears to be dynamic (e.g. id="ooui-28")

@suffusion_of_yellow, @Xaosflux, thanks to both of you for the extra information. As you say, there's no way to be conclusive here, but it does seem there's a link to the visual editor.

I'm really surprised there's a link here, because those settings are (intentionally) buried, but there you are. I wonder if people are reading some kind of tutorial published by a third-party on how to get spammy pages into Wikipedia, or if it's one person (or a small number of people) sockpuppeting, or something else? (I'm speculating, it's not really important right now.)

You noted the edit filter that's preventing this, which seems to solve the immediate problem. I also see that you've changed the system messages on the English Wikipedia to warn people that adding this may prevent them from saving, which I very much appreciate. In terms of changing other things, is there something else you have in mind?

FYI it.wiki's relevant edit tag: https://it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Speciale:UltimeModifiche&tagfilter=Inserimento tag INDEX o altre direttive