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[Spam/vandalism] Raise $wgAutoblockExpiry noticeably
Open, LowPublicFeature

Description

$wgAutoblockExpiry might be unrealistically low for today's needs.
After gerrit change 23924, twn /seems/ to have experienced way less problems https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special:Log/block&dir=prev&offset=20111230070847&type=block
Autoblock is an effective measure, easier that CU+block and more flexible than rangeblocks, to reduce usage of bad IPs, so increasing it could be useful, especially until bug 17929 is fixed; cf. bug 25305.
This bug is just for tracking, to avoid forgetting this possibility, which has some big drawbacks on some wikis which have e.g.:

  1. legitimate users from dynamic IPs quickly "polluted" by vandals/spammers changing them continuously;
  2. sysops not aware of how autoblock works.

Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement
See Also:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25305

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Low.Nov 22 2014, 12:50 AM
bzimport set Reference to bz41479.
bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

shellpolicy -> needs community discussion (and URL in this report linking to it)

If the autoblock expiry can be configured for each wiki differently, before asking in a RFC to change this, we can test it at Meta first. @Nemo_bis FWIW how much time do you propose the new autoblock setting should be?

If the autoblock expiry can be configured for each wiki differently, before asking in a RFC to change this, we can test it at Meta first.

Sure, that's probably best.

@Nemo_bis FWIW how much time do you propose the new autoblock setting should be?

Sigh @ all bugzilla links broken. https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/23924 went for 2 weeks, but there is no special reason.

Declined per T124354. There is no consensus for this change yet. Please reopen the task if consensus reached.

Aklapper changed the subtype of this task from "Task" to "Feature Request".Feb 4 2022, 11:14 AM

Change 767912 had a related patch set uploaded (by Samtar; author: Samtar):

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Raise $wgAutoblockExpiry from 1 day to 3 days

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/767912

I've made 767912, which explicitly sets the default for wgAutoblockExpiry to 86400 (1 day), and modifies this to 259200 (3 days) for Meta—I picked 3 days as its a noticeable increase from a day, but isn't too much longer

Change 767912 abandoned by Samtar:

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Raise $wgAutoblockExpiry from 1 day to 3 days

Reason:

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/767912