[[Special:AbuseFilter/21]]
I recommend that we keep it. What is the point in people creating userpages if they have never contributed to this project? See user:TCN7JM as an example - what use is that to anyone?
Because he, along with myself and many others (think m:Global rollbackers, m:Global sysops and m:Stewards for example), are crosswiki users who do things on many wikis, including this one. Having a userpage on all wikis, including this one, is helpful so that people know who we are.
Also, discouraging userpage creation like this definitely does not encourage people to contribute to this project.
If you "do things on many wikis, including this one" then you would already have contribs and the filter wouldn't do anything. But that's neither here nor there.
The real question is which is more important: not wasting more of committed volunteers' time, or not dissuading that subset of newbies who create an identity before contributing from staying.
Well, there are plenty of more advanced abuse filters on Meta, Commons, English Wikipedia, etc. that I am sure people would be willing to let you borrow and that would be more accurate... and besides, the filter you've written won't stop mainspace spambots either.
For reasons unbeknownst to me, the spambot operators seem to have a fixation on new userpages. I'm sure they'll learn. To the best of my knowledge, we have gotten no offers from larger wikis to help us fight vandalism. If you can put us in touch with someone who wants to import more advanced abuse filters to en.wiktionary and suit them to our needs, I for one would greatly appreciate that.
Just borrow one of the more advanced filters, or keep some kind of whitelist or something. I shouldn't have had to post here twice just to create my userpage. That's just a waste of time.</pointless rant>
Right, because ridiculous user pages are less of a waste of time than stopping spam and we should obviously spend the time to maintain a whitelist of every active wikipedia editor.
People who actually contribute to this wiki have no problems creating a userpage. people who don't contribute have no business wanting a userpage.
For the little that my opinion is probably worth, I would find it confronting and unwelcoming if I was an experienced wikimedian and was unable to create a user page at a new wiki, especially as it is one of the first things that I do at a wiki. Noting: It would be expected practice that stewards, global sysops, and global rollbackers have user pages on wikis on which they operate I perfectly understand the issue of spam and abuse, and have written filters to assist in the wholesale management, I just do not believe that this particular filter is the means to progress. If you tied it with something like a test that had & added_links and it gave a preliminary warning of what is expected, only then would I see that a DISALLOW was acceptable. I would also think that if someone was using a template like {{soft redirect}} or {{softredirect}} with a xwiki link that they would not get caught either.
With regard to abuse filter help, I can tell you that your checkusers have been offered filters through the checkuser community. Further any of your administrators who hang around in stewards' IRC channel should have heard the offer as it has been made, and I know that I have personally added some of my filters around the wikis.
I have been presumptive and gifted filter 23, though only set it to monitor, rather than do anything.
It's not without reason that en.Wikt is regarded as the grumpiest wiki... :P
To be fair, I myself have created brief userpages on other wikis after only one or two edits to them, so I can see why visitors to this wiki would want to do the same.
I note that filter 21 has caught a lot more edits (which appear based on their systematic usernames as though they would have been spam) than filter 23, though, i.e. filter 23 may have a low rate of false positives, but it also lets through a lot of crap.
Is there a way for a filter to check not only how many edits a user has made on this wiki, but how many they have made globally? Then we could block users with fewer than, N edits globally, and catch the spambots without catching global sysops.
Anyway, we should probably be having this conversation in the WT:BP rather than on CodeCat's talk page... see Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2013/July#Blocking_new_users_from_creating_userpages.