This would still be useful for me. In the past I believe I've written some SQL for this to run on the replicas, but I just discovered that, due to T375751, that workaround is no longer possible.

Change #1109841 had a related patch set uploaded (by Mdaniels5757; author: Mdaniels5757):

[mediawiki/extensions/AbuseFilter@master] Add IP range support for Abuse Log special page and query API.

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1109841

I filed T391322: Special:AbuseLog: Support search by IP and IP range when temporary accounts are enabled which is the temporary accounts version of this. I'd suggest we focus on that task, as temporary accounts are in the process of being rolled out everywhere during this calendar year.

Change #1109841 abandoned by Mdaniels5757:

[mediawiki/extensions/AbuseFilter@master] Add IP range support for Abuse Log special page and query API.

Reason:

Per T256823#10720333

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1109841

With T391322 completed, the wildcards and legacy IP logs are left.

Range search for legacy IP logs could work if we had afl_ip_hex copied over from afl_user_text and made sure we don't purge the field for legacy rows that reveal the IP address anyway. But this cannot be done in a simple SQL query because some rows with afl_user = 0 don't have the IP address in afl_user_text. (Note that we'd be touching code that makes the sites fulfil legal requirements.)

Wildcards are a nice feature, but they are not supported by any common interface (Contributions, Logs, etc.). We would probably make DBAs unhappy, as they don't perform well with our databases.

Association: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist/W354.