Extension:Nuke/2024 Moderator Tools project

As part of the WE1.3 Key Result (Increase user satisfaction of 4 moderation products by 5pp each), the Wikimedia Foundation's Moderator Tools team embarked on a project to make improvements to the Nuke extension. Nuke is used by administrators to mass-delete pages created by another user, or matching a title pattern, saving time which would otherwise need to be spent on manual page-by-page deletions. It has received relatively little attention over the years, and a substantial number of feature requests have accrued. During interviews with administrators at the Wikimedia Hackathon 2024 we found that there was scope for improving the tool and increasing administrator satisfaction.

With this project we experimented with contracting a volunteer developer to expand our team's capacity for a short-term project. We are hoping that this model will help us provide support for tools that we might otherwise not prioritise, while working more seamlessly with developers who are already familiar with Wikimedia technologies.

Please let us know on the talk page if you have other frustrations with or feature requests for the Nuke extension, or feedback on any of the changes we deployed.

Work completed

As of March 2025, focused work on this project has concluded. We would like to thank Chlod for all his great work!

Below is a summary of work completed on the Nuke extension during the course of this project:

Filtering

We made a number of changes to the way that users can filter for pages to delete in Nuke, including:

Multiple namespaces can now be selected, rather than just one (T376379)
The flow of Nuke's pages has been improved so that filters and results are now shown on the same page (T380297)
Non-admins are now able to use Nuke's page listing feature, so that they can better understand which pages are able to be deleted with the tool (T376378, with thanks to MolecularPilot for the patch!)
Users can now filter by page creation date (T378493)
Users can now filter by page size (T378488, also with thanks to MolecularPilot!))

Deletion behaviour

Nuke now uses the revision table instead of recentchanges when filtering on a specific user, enabling it to fetch pages created up to 90 days ago, up from 30. We plan to investigate raising this cap further (T380846)

Administrators can now have Nuke also delete associated talk pages and redirects for targeted pages (T364222)
When temporary accounts are enabled on a wiki, Nuke can act on all pages created by temporary accounts originating from a given IP address (T342785)

UI improvements

Deletions made by the Nuke tool are now tagged, to improve transparency and make it easier to analyse usage (T366068)
After queueing pages for deletion, users are now presented with a list of pages which they did not select for deletion, in case they need to perform manual actions on those pages (T364223)
After queueing pages for deletion, relevant user links are now provided for the user targeted by Nuke (T364225)
Substantial design and implementation work was completed to migrate Nuke to the Codex design system, including using a table to present the list of pages which can be deleted, though this work is ongoing (T381660)

Design mockups

Early design mockups and feedback

To enable us to include more information about each page to be deleted in a comprehensible manner, we are exploring designs which replace the list of page links with a table, in which we could add additional columns.

Showing some information about the pages in the table.
Showing table with additional information about the pages.

If you would like to give your feedback about these designs please visit the short survey here.

Usability testing

The goal of the usability testing was to gather feedback from a variety of admins to help improve functionality and UI of the extension. In person usability testing was conducted at the Hackathon and Wikimania. Additionally, feedback was gathered through Discord, Phabricator, and user interviews (moderated & unmoderated).

Participants were administrators and experienced editors from various languages (de, en, pl, tr, uk) Wikipedias, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata, who use the extension.

Summary of key results

Admins requested additional filters/changes to the filtering page:

Filter by page size, url, characters, IP range, date of creation, exit file, and strings. The ability to select multiple namespaces filter and increase the day limit eg. 90-180 days, 365 days.
Delete associated redirects & talk pages
View and have access to number of editor, number of edits, view page histories, author and source, block the editor. Additionally, have better deletion reasons eg. similar to single page deletion.

Project updates

Updates on the project will be posted here.

March 2025 - This project has now wrapped up! In the 'Work completed' section above we have provided a full overview of the improvements made during this project. The Moderator Tools team will continue to maintain the Nuke extension, and will happily review patches submitted by volunteers.
December 2024 - This project started in November, and we have been working on a few different aspects of Nuke. The first is improvements to the deletion confirmation screen. Relevant links for the user whose pages were deleted are now shown after page deletions are queued, along with links to the pages that were not selected for deletion, in case the deleting administrator has followup tasks to perform. We also enabled users to select multiple namespaces in a single filter, rather than being required to select just one. Additionally, we are working on increasing the length of time in which pages can be Nuked from 30 days to higher values (T380297).
October 2024 - We completed work to support acting on all temporary accounts used by an IP address (T366068).