(adding people mentioned in the description as (almost) maintainers of the parts)

It probably goes without saying that AbuseFilter is indispensable. Especially on larger wikis, it automates a great deal of work for us, and I hear horror stories of what the patrollers went through before AbuseFilter was a thing. Ongoing maintenance and support of this extension should be paramount.

performance has always been a concern with AbuseFilter. If we ever want to replace it with a more robust tool, it may need more hardware resources.

By design there's always potential for performance implications, but I would argue that under the current or a similar system, the primary responsibility of keeping it efficient lies with the filter author. The issue here is that often the author is unaware they are slowing anything down. T177017 and T161059 helped us on enwiki, but the this profiling is still absent on many other wikis. Ideas for further improvements can be found at T176895, T102903, T179604, and T175954.

I would like to also stress that the extension seems to be slowly degrading, or has had regressions introduced over time. On enwiki at least, we've found malfunctions are more common these days, and nearly something we've come to expect. See T175933 for a parent task.

100% agree with @MusikAnimal on the critical level of this software. Left comments on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_stewardship_reviews/Feedback_solicitation/AbuseFilter

Adding myself, as someone who has contributed a bit to AbuseFilter. Also echoing what @MusikAnimal said above.

I think what we need is not an owner, or a faster turnaround time for the bugs. It is a "vision". We need someone to plan a road map as to what AbuseFilter needs to look like in 12 months. I am most certainly not the person for that. Legoktm or Matěj might be.

Just per previous comments, this extension needs to be kept. Apparently, Anti-Harassment team has brought some new features to it recently and AFAIK it's still working on eg. making its performance better.

Maintainers should at least listen to wiki administrators what they think could be better and doesn't work and try to fix that. Of course, with greater human resoures we can make greater changes.

Also adding @Jackmcbarn who seems to be added automatically as a review on gerrit whenever an AbuseFilter patch is submitted.

My impression was that the Anti-Harassment team was doing analysis of AbuseFilter use and needs so as to take ownership, or at least to do some significant work, on it. Is that no longer the case?

I'd also like to echo the above, AbuseFilter is a vital component of Wiki maintenance, and should absolutely be given more time/resources than it currently has.

In mid 2017 the WMF's Anti-Harassment Tools team investigated if the AbuseFilter could be used to log/prevent identifiable harassment as it does for spam and vandalism. We determined that AbuseFilter is not the correct tool for this job (and that logging identifiable harassment is a weak product idea, given the nuances involved in harassing language and the high likelihood for false positives.

We did some minimal work during our product investigation (including add some performance monitoring, made some small fixes/changes to AntiSpoof, and added a new ccnorm function for AbuseFilter.)

The Anti-Harassment Tools team is 2 developers, and while they are rockstars we have grant obligations to accomplish. Ownership of the AbuseFilter would dominate our roadmap.

And I'll echo the echo: AbuseFilter is a vital component of Wiki maintenance, and should absolutely be given more time/resources than it currently has. Not just for maintenance but also for the possibilities of adding new functionality to make it more powerful. Here is our project page, on which we've documented new feature requests and other information: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_health_initiative/AbuseFilter

I'd like to echo what @MusikAnimal and @Xaosflux said wrt AbuseFilter being a critical extension. I've left comments here as well but I'd be horrorized to see this feature removed. As administrator on some local wikis and as steward I can vouch about the usefulness of this extension. The introduction of global filters have improved the crosswiki vandalism and spam prevention a lot.

Yes, AbuseFilter needs more resources, as CheckUser does, and not just for fixing UBN bugs. We need active development here. I propose that WMF funds a team of people to take care of this kind of critical extensions. We can't afford loosing the support of this tools.

Somewhat related.... T186256: Investigate training ORES with AbuseFilter conditions

Feedback also at: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_stewardship_reviews/Feedback_solicitation/AbuseFilter

Proposal is for Platform Team to be the stewards for this extension due to knowledge and scope of team. Anti-Harassment Tools team is a potential candidate due their activity on the extension, but it is thought to be outside their scope. jrbranaa working with Platform team to see if they are willing to be this extension's steward.

Are there any recent discussions somewhere else other than in this ticket and here?
We all agree that this is extremely vital and in need of direction and it's been almost 4 months since this was created so is there a way to escalate this issue?

@dmaza: Discussions have been ongoing among product and tech leadership since February (mostly over email). Unfortunately, finding stewards for orphaned code isn't an easy task, but I think we're making progress. Stay tuned.

In the meantine, @Daimona, @matej_suchanek and I have been actively working on AbuseFilter over the last 2-3 months with many patches created and merged. Most of our work is "patchwork" (as opposed to major overhaul) for now. It is best to postpone major overhaul to when either we have stewards or we become seasoned enough in this code to be the stewards,

Yeah, Huji is right. For the moment we're focusing on sanitization of corrupted outputs and enhancing the interface, plus adding some useful missing features. However, a major overhaul is highly desirable and should be done, sooner or later, when the context will allow it.

@dmaza I'm in active discussions with the Platform team. It looks like they will be taking on the stewardship of AbuseFilter. We're in the process of defining what that will mean in-terms of task/review responsiveness. However, we do agree that the Platform team is the right home for it. More to come.

In T185154#4123113, @Huji wrote:

In the meantine, @Daimona, @matej_suchanek and I have been actively working on AbuseFilter over the last 2-3 months with many patches created and merged. Most of our work is "patchwork" (as opposed to major overhaul) for now. It is best to postpone major overhaul to when either we have stewards or we become seasoned enough in this code to be the stewards,

And you all have been doing a fantastic job! Since both you and Matej have +2 rights, I'd consider you to be the de facto maintainers at this point. There's still value in having a "responsible WMF team", but I don't believe that should stop or hold you back from future improvements you'd like to make :)

In T185154#4128547, @Legoktm wrote:

And you all have been doing a fantastic job! Since both you and Matej have +2 rights, I'd consider you to be the de facto maintainers at this point. There's still value in having a "responsible WMF team", but I don't believe that should stop or hold you back from future improvements you'd like to make :)

Thanks. We don't think (or at least I don't think) things are held back because of lack of WMF-assigned team. But having the support of such can certainly boost things up.

Well that's great hear (All of the above). And +1 to what @Legoktm said and kudos to @Daimona, @matej_suchanek and @Huji for the work and improvements.
Btw, feel free to hit me up for code reviews. I'll try to help whenever I can.

@dmaza we have a few patches that are more than minimal improvements, and we need someone more daring to +2 them, so I'm going to add you as reviewer on those in the next day or so.