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Place temporary blocks on temporary account creation for IPs with high rate of reverts
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Description

When a logged-out user makes an edit, they'll get a temporary account. If the user disables cookies or writes a script, they can make up to 8 edits per minute, and each edit will have its own temporary account.

We have automated tooling like Cluebot, and, in the future, Automoderator, that means we should have pretty quick feedback in working out how many temporary accounts have edits reverted from the same IP address.

If we see X number of reverted edits from an IP address (regardless of how many temp accounts are connected with those edits), we could place a temporary block on temporary account creation for that IP address.

Event Timeline

I think the mechanism for this could be something like:

  • look at edits that are reverts of other edits
  • check if the reverted edit was made by a temp account
  • check a configuration value for threshold to take action
  • place a system block on temp account creation for that IP address for a configurable period of time

I am not sure if AbuseFilter makes sense for this use case (cc @STran @Daimona) or if we would be better off coding this in MediaWiki-extensions-IPReputation

I am not sure if AbuseFilter makes sense for this use case

Assuming that the mechanism would work automatically and without user configuration, I think it should be elsewhere... Where exactly I don't know.

I am not sure if AbuseFilter makes sense for this use case

Assuming that the mechanism would work automatically and without user configuration, I think it should be elsewhere... Where exactly I don't know.

MediaWiki-extensions-IPReputation + community configuration for adjusting settings is probably fine.

@STran, @Dreamy_Jazz and I discussed this and think that we can decline this task, given:

  • the relatively low number of temp accounts created per IP address per day
  • amount of work required to implement
  • potential for unintended side effects of automatically creating blocks