Feature summary
There should be a grace period to prevent abuse.
Use case(s) (list the steps that you performed to discover that problem, and describe the actual underlying problem which you want to solve. Do not describe only a solution):
Abuse Example
Benefits (why should this be implemented?):
This prevents long-term interference with new accounts.
I don't think that's possible. Account vanishing got introduced because both Apple and Google require such an option for apps listed in their app store. Therefore the option must be available for all accounts (at least in the app – but it doesn't make sense to limit the feature just in the web interface).
Or, we can let users with log entries (except creation/autocreation of self account in any wiki) ineligible for automatically vanishing (i.e. require manual approval).
The log entries in your screenshot are account creation logs, and they have already been hidden (I would suggest deleting the screenshot). I don't understand how restricting vanishing would help prevent this abuse. Can you clarify?
(The vanishing log entry you linked doesn't have anything abusive in it, but if it did, it could also be hidden in the same manner.)
The goal is to prevent the vanishing of vandalism accounts, as in the example. LTAs are now specifically creating accounts for short periods of time and make a Account vanishing.
Some LTA create sockpuppets and then use account vanishing to obfuscate their activities. They are getting automatically approved because their account has 0 edits. @Bugreporter's suggestion to require manual approval or accounts with certain log actions (similar to accounts with 1+ edits) might be an idea.
Yes, manually approving new users would also be a solution, rather than imposing a limit. In any case, neither of these situations usually comes up very often, since very few people create an account and then delete it right away.
I assume there could be cases where someone created an account using their real first name, later created another account, and then requested vanishing. So not all vanishing requests from newly created users are problematic, and we cannot forbid this entirely (not only because of Google and Apple requirements, but also because such requests can legitimately happen).
It sounds like @Bugreporter's idea would work well, and it would make sense to revoke automatic approval for users who performed log actions other than account creation - there is no real difference between that and making edits.
Since the current procedure was approved by vote by the global-renamers and stewards, would it make sense to notify them about this discussion on their mailing list? If you think so, I can do that myself.
Thanks for explaining it.
I had a look at the code, and we already check whether the account has any log actions before it's approved for automatic vanishing:
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/g/mediawiki/extensions/CentralAuth/+/ad6418078868ac56aa3d85a1e13ddb52602c0705/includes/Special/SpecialGlobalVanishRequest.php#339
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/g/mediawiki/extensions/CentralAuth/+/ad6418078868ac56aa3d85a1e13ddb52602c0705/includes/User/CentralAuthUser.php#1070
The bug is that this excludes the account creation log – intending to exclude just the account's own creation, but also excluding logs about other accounts created by that account.
This should be a straightforward fix.
Change #1294414 had a related patch set uploaded (by Bartosz Dziewoński; author: Bartosz Dziewoński):
[mediawiki/extensions/CentralAuth@master] Make accounts that created other accounts not eligible for automatic vanishing
Change #1294414 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/CentralAuth@master] Make accounts that created other accounts not eligible for automatic vanishing