The time correlates to the last edit on https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:AbuseFilter/37

(Perhaps more details is even shown on https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Special:AbuseFilter&sort=af_timestamp&limit=50&asc=&desc=1 )

I'm not sure what we're supposed to do here on phabricator. This is evidently a misconfigured abuse filter, and should be fixed by the local AF editors.

In fact, looking at AF 37 which was pointed out above, I can see the following warning being displayed by the editor:

This regular expression matches the empty string, at character 821

which is easy to confirm, since the first regexp has a leading pipe.

Besides, keep in mind that & has higher precedence than |, so if you write A & B | C, that is parsed as ( A & B ) | C, not A & ( B | C ). I think the intention in filter 37 was the latter and the OR expression should be parenthesized, although it shouldn't matter too much, practically speaking.

(Local enwikivoyage admin here) I removed the part of the regex that matches an empty string, https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:AbuseFilter/history/37/diff/prev/982 (for those who have access to see) - hopefully that'll fix it.

Is it possible to escalate warnings like This regular expression matches the empty string, at character 821 to *prevent* saving the filter, or at least add a confirmation step of "are you sure you mean to do this" before saving?

(Tagging as a site request because this shouldn't have 0 tags, and its the closest to what would be appropriate since its a request to change something onwiki)

In T287436#7239164, @DannyS712 wrote:

Is it possible to escalate warnings like This regular expression matches the empty string, at character 821 to *prevent* saving the filter, or at least add a confirmation step of "are you sure you mean to do this" before saving?

It should be possible, yes. Preventing seems to much, but adding a warning could be a good idea; I've filed T287458.