The Sims Wiki talk:Community Portal

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Abuse Filter
I wasn't sure whether to put this here, in a forum post or on the Admin Portal talk page but I felt the community deserves a say in this too. In the wake of several recent spam/vandalism attacks, I contacted Wikia asking that provided we gained consensus, we could be allowed to have the Abuse Filter activated here. It is a MediaWiki extension and a tool which can prove valuable if configured correctly. I received a reply stating that as long as we have users here with experience with the tool (I myself have a little bit of experience in addition to a few IRC users I know), we can have it enabled.

The tool can be used to block suspicious edits, which we can limit by a specific usergroup if we wanted to, tag suspicious edits on Special:RecentChanges and in the page history, such as section blanking, without actually stopping them, block/warn a user who triggers a specific filter based on how we set it, throttle certain types of edits, for example, if someone went to say blank a page, they would be stopped the first time around and they would trigger a term listed in Special:AbuseLog (which doesn't exist here yet as we don't have the AbuseFilter) and Administrators can check this to see if the user in question has triggered the filter and so forth. How it works depends on how we choose to configure it.

For us we could say, program it to combat gibberish page names/edit summaries (which one particular spammer has used frequently) and many more things - it is a powerful tool. This and this show what the AbuseFilter has been programmed to do on another wikis and I feel it could be good for us too and is better than locking down a whole wiki just because of one spammer. I realise most of our administrators may be new to this tool and over time, we'll become more acustomed with it. If anyone needs help with the tool, they can always ask around on Wikia.

Given how powerful this tool is, I would like to know if the community would be comfortable having this tool enabled via a community discussion. I think that it would be very beneficial and I don't see any major downsides to this. I'll reply to an email I received from Wikia depending on how the consensus went down. What do you guys think? 10:21, May 30, 2012 (UTC)
 * As long as the Abuse Filter is not abused, I believe it can prove valuable in decreasing vandalism, but when it comes to its use, we should not overreact. By this I mean it should be used only when dealing with major spammers and vandals rather than a single vandal who creates a few spam pages. In that case, good old revert-block-ignore can prove more useful and easy. But anyway, I support. Andronikos sig.png 10:36, May 30, 2012 (UTC)
 * FWIW, we can actually configure it against everyday problems, such as blanking a whole page, meaning if someone tries it - it won't be allowed. I'll also suggest that if the feature is enabled, we don't set it to block users for every little thing - there's no point setting it to ban someone who tries to do something when they couldn't actually do it. It's all very customisable - it's best to wait until we actually get it (if we get it) before pre-emptively deciding on what extent we'll use it. Though I do agree it's not worth adding everything to the filter just because some forms of vandalism/spam vary; AbuseFilter performs best with the common things. Also I don't think it can really be abused as only administrators will be able to control it. 10:47, May 30, 2012 (UTC)
 * This would definitely be a better alternative than locking down the whole wiki. I support this as well. Ѧüя◎ґ 18:31, May 30, 2012 (UTC)
 * Per Auror. 18:41, May 30, 2012 (UTC)
 * Fine by me. I might see if I can set it up on my test wiki if someone needs to test using it or something.
 * Support. Dharden (talk) 04:35, May 31, 2012 (UTC)
 * Btw WH, you won't be able to use it on your test wiki as Wikia need to enable the extension. There is however a testing function inside the filter which will allow you to test a specific filter without disrupting anything else on the wiki. Seeing as the support has been overwhelmingly positive, I've asked Wikia to enable the extension so we should get it at some point today. 06:31, May 31, 2012 (UTC)
 * Hm, could have sworn I'd just be able to send a Special:Contact in to get it :/ Anyhoo, I'm glad we're getting it and I'll try doing a little research on it later.
 * The AbuseFilter is now enabled and can be controlled via Special:AbuseFilter. I've added a couple of general countervandalism filters and one experimental anti-Meep sheep filter. 16:52, May 31, 2012 (UTC)
 * Maybe I didn't quite catch in the middle of this discussion, but what will this filter do if someone manages to abuse, like spamming? Is the edit just reverted somehow or it just disallows suspicious edits? Or maybe I should try it to understand?  Nikel  Talk  14:50, June 1, 2012 (UTC)
 * Alright, I've "tried" it and hoped that other vandals will only blank the pages, because I can't. Seeing from the abuse filter log, does "Disallow" action mean a temporary block or something?  Nikel  Talk  14:58, June 1, 2012 (UTC)
 * From what I know, it disallows the edit as is if the page was protected. I think it can also be configured to warn or block the editor who attempted it as well. Andronikos sig.png 15:00, June 1, 2012 (UTC)
 * Andronikos is right, it will stop the edit from being published. "Warn" doesn't give an explicit talk page warning to the user but they'll be warned when they hit publish and if they really want to make the edit then they have to hit publish again. "Tag" will just tag the edit when viewed in the page history, the user's contributions or Special:RecentChanges. "Throttle" will pretty much continuously stop the edit from being published a few times, it's mainly used as a deterrent to put the user off of trying. "Block" is pretty self-explanatory and "block /16" blocks the user's IP range. 15:15, June 1, 2012 (UTC)

Top 10 lists
I've noticed that the Top 10 lists feature has been largely unused for quite some time. At an attempt of trying to make this place more interesting, I feel that we could try and shape the feature around our community a little bit more. If all else fails then we may as well deactivate it as there's no point housing a feature that's just going to be abandoned.

I'm open to ideas of what to do with the feature, how we do it and how to make the feature seem more attractive to users in the hope that they would embrace it. If we want to try and attract more users here then realistically we have to make do with what Wikia provides for us and the Top 10 lists can engage the community but when left unused, the feature is pretty worthless.

Ideas? 11:36, June 2, 2012 (UTC)


 * We could make lists of desired features in the games, a monthly list (like the Monthly Poll) or something alike. 11:39, June 2, 2012 (UTC)
 * I simply choose to disable it. I never really see the point of interest of it.  Nikel  Talk  –  Vote for Featured Media!  11:44, June 2, 2012 (UTC)
 * To be honest, I personally agree with Nikel. I only created this based on IRC opposition to disabling it. Plus desired lists have been done before, both as a Top 10 feature and a poll. 17:35, June 2, 2012 (UTC)
 * I believe monthly poles can work much better than Top 10 lists. Firstly, the polls can easily be used embedded in both the main page and the newsletter, while Top 10 lists have a page on their own. Secondly, has anyone here tried renaming a Top 10 list without breaking it? Thirdly, polls show more statistics than Top 10 lists. So I believe they should ultimately be disabled, since they remain unused and when used, they only cause trouble and disorder. Andronikos sig.png 08:53, June 3, 2012 (UTC)
 * Disable them per the above.
 * Given that 4/5 users have said we should disable it, I've gone ahead and made the changes. If anyone decides we should reactivate it later on, feel free to bring it up. 02:02, June 4, 2012 (UTC)

Revisited: Eliminating Player Stories
Last year, a proposal was put forward to eliminate player stories from the wiki however no action was taken due to hesitation from users, lack of consensus and the discussion eventually drying up.

Since the abuse filter has been enabled, I've noticed that the filter designed to disallow edits containing profanity has picked up an awful lot of what would seem like false positives, particularly on Player Stories pages. This is because the content that was added before we even had the filter enabled contained profanity and/or pejorative terms which is literally preventing anyone else from adding anything to those pages unless the offending terms are removed; that exact filter actually works effectively on every other part of the wiki. I've removed some terms from a couple of stories pages but I'm certain they aren't the only stories pages that contain profanity and even trying to moderate them is rather tedious and time consuming.

We may as well face facts:
 * 1) The vast majority of player stories are of below average quality and are left unsigned.
 * 2) Anonymous users can write to the Fanon namespace and create an account if they care enough about their fanon articles.
 * 3) Moderating the subpages in general can be quite tedious and annoying.
 * 4) Hardly any registered users actually actively contribute to these subpages and would much rather use the Fanon namespace as there is much more freedom.

I realise that last year's discussion on this didn't get very far but I now feel a lot less hesitant on eliminating player stories outright and I think it would be better for us if we did eliminate them as it would save administration headaches and such. What do you guys think? 15:43, June 10, 2012 (UTC)


 * I think they should be eliminated because what you said is true - most Player Stories places currently look like dumps (formatting errors, awful grammar and such). Also, there is an example of an awesome Fanon based on a pre-made Sim. On the other hand, the theories shouldn't be deleted - instead, I think the current ones should be archived (or the ones with poor quality should be deleted) and we could keep a monthly weekend or whatnot (like the ones we now have for Fanons) to check their quality, since the number of theory pages is way smaller. 16:04, June 10, 2012 (UTC)