Some specific questions and issues for this deployment that are different from usual:

• Translation. Presumably we can't expect to get translated strings on each of these wikis, so do we just go ahead with the English fallbacks and not worry about this?
• False positive reporting page - should we put this on Meta so we have a single location to track false positives across all these wikis?
• Which wikis should we select? The following Wikipedias have zero local administrators:

map_bmswiki, mwlwiki, amiwiki, adywiki, hawwiki, tywiki, iiwiki, aawiki, gcrwiki, gotwiki, gurwiki, xhwiki, hakwiki, snwiki, rmywiki, tumwiki, bugwiki, srnwiki, guwwiki, rnwiki, fjwiki, roa_rupwiki, jbowiki, kgwiki, zuwiki, nqowiki, chrwiki, trvwiki, xalwiki, dsbwiki, amwiki, kjwiki, mhrwiki, sgwiki, muswiki, szywiki, nawiki, stwiki, dgawiki, tpiwiki, tnwiki, pihwiki, ikwiki, kbpwiki, piwiki, vepwiki, dagwiki, aywiki, kvwiki, taywiki, mnwwiki, pdcwiki, kuswiki, bmwiki, mhwiki, dinwiki, wowiki, mrjwiki, ltgwiki, krwiki, ugwiki, omwiki, chowiki, angwiki, smwiki, vewiki, bowiki, nsowiki, ngwiki, nrmwiki, pagwiki, lrcwiki, tenwiki, awawiki, kabwiki, lgwiki, tiwiki, iewiki, zawiki, lfnwiki, tyvwiki, pwnwiki, koiwiki, sowiki, jamwiki, kiwiki, chwiki, biwiki, howiki, blkwiki, extwiki, avwiki, hzwiki, rwwiki, chywiki, akwiki, pntwiki,

Since the CommunityConfiguration (test.wiki example) will presumably be the same on every wiki we could also discuss that here:

• Threshold (I recommend starting on 'Most cautious' and decreasing over time)
• Minor edits - should Automoderator's reverts be marked as 'minor'?
• Bot edits - should Automoderator's reverts have the Bot flag?
• Talk page message - should Automoderator send a talk page message (examples) to reverted users? It's worth noting, per my point above, that this will be in English if there are no local translations.
• Limiting reverts per user per page? Automoderator can optionally only revert a given user a specific number of times per page per 24 hours. Should this be configured, and if so how many reverts?
• Are there any user rights, beyond the default bot and sysop whose holders Automoderator should never revert? In practice, Automoderator primarily (95%) reverts unregistered users, and rarely ever reverts users with more than 100 edits, but this can be configured for peace of mind.

In T388254#10618675, @Samwalton9-WMF wrote:

• Presumably we can't expect to get translated strings on each of these wikis, so do we just go ahead with the English fallbacks and not worry about this?

Agree

• False positive reporting page - should we put this on Meta so we have a single location to track false positives across all these wikis?

Yes, reporting on meta seems like the best way to notice false positives. It's very likely that local reports won't get noticed in wikis without active admins / with almost no active community members at all. Perhaps we can create a sub-page of https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_sysops/Requests?

• Which wikis should we select?

Of those wikis without any local admins we should select the ones with the largest number of active editors to increase the chance of anyone noticing if there are issues with Automoderator. Looking at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias I recommend amwiki, angwiki, iewiki, sowiki, rwwiki, guwwiki, zuwiki

• Threshold (I recommend starting on 'Most cautious' and decreasing over time)

Agree on starting with most cautious

• Minor edits - should Automoderator's reverts be marked as 'minor'?

Yes (but it doesn't really matter as there are just a few edits per day in those wikis)

• Bot edits - should Automoderator's reverts have the Bot flag?

Short answer: It doesn't really matter for the 5-10 small wikis per answer above, there are only a few edits per day anyway.
But I still believe (T372280#10061955) there should be global system users which should also have a global bot flag. Having hundreds of local accounts which are not connected via CentralAuth will make it a nightmare to check Automoderator's edits as a volunteer. Is there a better way to find the current accounts than looking at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Moderator_Tools/Automoderator#Usage?

• Talk page message - should Automoderator send a talk page message (examples) to reverted users? It's worth noting, per my point above, that this will be in English if there are no local translations.

Not sure, is there already some feedback on the talk page messages from the projects currently testing Automoderator? I wouldn't expect much from sending those talk page messages, but I guess it won't hurt?

• Limiting reverts per user per page? Automoderator can optionally only revert a given user a specific number of times per page per 24 hours. Should this be configured, and if so how many reverts?

Probably something like 3 reverts per user per page per day? If it's a good faith editor, there's the risk of no one appearing for timely help if Automoderator wouldn't stop reverting. If it's a vandal, it should get reported to global sysops / stewards, so it's probably better to stop reverting in order to allow xwiki patrollers (e.g. SWViewer users) to notice the vandal.

• Are there any user rights, beyond the default bot and sysop whose holders Automoderator should never revert?

Ideally there would be an option to whitelist all users with a certain global editcount (e.g. 1000+). In absence of such a feature we should at least add rollback to make sure global rollbackers are not affected by Automoderator. This configuration option is about user rights, not user groups, correct?

• Limiting reverts per user per page? Automoderator can optionally only revert a given user a specific number of times per page per 24 hours. Should this be configured, and if so how many reverts?

Probably something like 3 reverts per user per page per day? If it's a good faith editor, there's the risk of no one appearing for timely help if Automoderator wouldn't stop reverting. If it's a vandal, it should get reported to global sysops / stewards, so it's probably better to stop reverting in order to allow xwiki patrollers (e.g. SWViewer users) to notice the vandal.

Wouldn't it be possible to direct Automoderator to report these cases on a page on Meta to notify GS/S about possible vandalism?

In T388254#10620349, @Johannnes89 wrote:

In T388254#10618675, @Samwalton9-WMF wrote:

• False positive reporting page - should we put this on Meta so we have a single location to track false positives across all these wikis?

Yes, reporting on meta seems like the best way to notice false positives. It's very likely that local reports won't get noticed in wikis without active admins / with almost no active community members at all. Perhaps we can create a sub-page of https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_sysops/Requests?

Great - I just verified on test.wiki that the false positive reporting page can use interwiki links (e.g. meta:Report page). I wasn't confident that would work!

• Which wikis should we select?

Of those wikis without any local admins we should select the ones with the largest number of active editors to increase the chance of anyone noticing if there are issues with Automoderator. Looking at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias I recommend amwiki, angwiki, iewiki, sowiki, rwwiki, guwwiki, zuwiki

That's a good idea. Presumably we should notify these wikis in advance of deployment.

• Bot edits - should Automoderator's reverts have the Bot flag?

Short answer: It doesn't really matter for the 5-10 small wikis per answer above, there are only a few edits per day anyway.
But I still believe (T372280#10061955) there should be global system users which should also have a global bot flag. Having hundreds of local accounts which are not connected via CentralAuth will make it a nightmare to check Automoderator's edits as a volunteer. Is there a better way to find the current accounts than looking at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Moderator_Tools/Automoderator#Usage?

I think we will definitely aim to have Automoderator be an SUL account if we go ahead with the full deployment, but I'm not sure of the workload required to do so for these test wikis. @jsn.sherman could we simply manually register an account called Automoderator, and then have the software username be Automoderator on these wikis, and therefore have its edits attached to the manually-created global account? This is only for the case where Automoderator has the same username on these wikis, I understand this isn't feasible for the wikis where Automoderator is locally configured, where it has a local username. Though I suppose it's worth noting that it's called Automoderator on some of those wikis - perhaps we'd need a unique name for the small wiki deployment.

• Talk page message - should Automoderator send a talk page message (examples) to reverted users? It's worth noting, per my point above, that this will be in English if there are no local translations.

Not sure, is there already some feedback on the talk page messages from the projects currently testing Automoderator? I wouldn't expect much from sending those talk page messages, but I guess it won't hurt?

I'm not sure we have much in the way of specific feedback. Of the 8 wikis Automoderator has been deployed to, 5 use the talk page message. I agree that it shouldn't hurt - it just notifies the user about the revert and links to the false positive reporting page. It doesn't, for example, provide a link to undo the revert.

• Are there any user rights, beyond the default bot and sysop whose holders Automoderator should never revert?

Ideally there would be an option to whitelist all users with a certain global editcount (e.g. 1000+). In absence of such a feature we should at least add rollback to make sure global rollbackers are not affected by Automoderator. This configuration option is about user rights, not user groups, correct?

That makes sense - yes, the configuration targets user rights, so adding rollback should whitelist global rollbackers.

In T388254#10621114, @Ameisenigel wrote:

• Limiting reverts per user per page? Automoderator can optionally only revert a given user a specific number of times per page per 24 hours. Should this be configured, and if so how many reverts?

Probably something like 3 reverts per user per page per day? If it's a good faith editor, there's the risk of no one appearing for timely help if Automoderator wouldn't stop reverting. If it's a vandal, it should get reported to global sysops / stewards, so it's probably better to stop reverting in order to allow xwiki patrollers (e.g. SWViewer users) to notice the vandal.

Wouldn't it be possible to direct Automoderator to report these cases on a page on Meta to notify GS/S about possible vandalism?

Automoderator itself is not currently able to do so, but it should be fairly simple for someone to create a bot to do this independently.

Coming back to this - If folks are happy with @Johannnes89's answers then I think this is the only outstanding question I have:

@jsn.sherman could we simply manually register an account called Automoderator, and then have the software username be Automoderator on these wikis, and therefore have its edits attached to the manually-created global account? This is only for the case where Automoderator has the same username on these wikis, I understand this isn't feasible for the wikis where Automoderator is locally configured, where it has a local username. Though I suppose it's worth noting that it's called Automoderator on some of those wikis - perhaps we'd need a unique name for the small wiki deployment.

In T388254#11077951, @Samwalton9-WMF wrote:

Coming back to this - If folks are happy with @Johannnes89's answers then I think this is the only outstanding question I have:

@jsn.sherman could we simply manually register an account called Automoderator, and then have the software username be Automoderator on these wikis, and therefore have its edits attached to the manually-created global account? This is only for the case where Automoderator has the same username on these wikis, I understand this isn't feasible for the wikis where Automoderator is locally configured, where it has a local username. Though I suppose it's worth noting that it's called Automoderator on some of those wikis - perhaps we'd need a unique name for the small wiki deployment.

I don't see why we couldn't use a global account for this.

We'd definitely need to have a unique name as according to the docs for global accounts:

Registering a username on any public Wikimedia wiki automatically reserves that name on all the others; this means different users can no longer register with the same account name on different wikis.

so we wouldn't want to affect any of the existing wikis that already have it locally configured as Automoderator.

In T388254#11513387, @Kgraessle wrote:

We'd definitely need to have a unique name as according to the docs for global accounts:

Registering a username on any public Wikimedia wiki automatically reserves that name on all the others; this means different users can no longer register with the same account name on different wikis.

so we wouldn't want to affect any of the existing wikis that already have it locally configured as Automoderator.

Thanks! I actually think it might be even weirder than this, given some of the findings at T53837 that I was reading yesterday.

In terms of a username, what about something like AutomoderatorGlobal?

In T388254#10633639, @Samwalton9-WMF wrote:

In T388254#10620349, @Johannnes89 wrote:

In T388254#10618675, @Samwalton9-WMF wrote:

• False positive reporting page - should we put this on Meta so we have a single location to track false positives across all these wikis?

Yes, reporting on meta seems like the best way to notice false positives. It's very likely that local reports won't get noticed in wikis without active admins / with almost no active community members at all. Perhaps we can create a sub-page of https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_sysops/Requests?

Great - I just verified on test.wiki that the false positive reporting page can use interwiki links (e.g. meta:Report page). I wasn't confident that would work!

Hm, I just went to try this on test wiki again and now it's not working. Not sure if we changed something about the validation here. (I confirmed I get the same error even when the interwiki points to a real page on Meta).

Filed T414408.

OK, we're unblocked on moving forward with this. I've documented the 7 wikis @Johannnes89 suggested above, and started a ticket for analysis (with some datapoints about those wikis) at T420936.

Open tasks which still need to be completed:

• Notify these wikis of this plan, and give them the option of opting-out.
• Create Automoderator's SUL account
• Create Automoderator's Meta user page for that account
• Create a false positive page on Meta.

User:AutomoderatorGlobal now exists (thanks Rae!)

Ran the Global SUL tool to ensure the account exists locally everywhere.