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den-wald-vor-lauter-baeume 2.08 KiB 
# What is important??

* filters allow for regex based handling of edits and other editors' actions
* filters check every edit at its publication; they are triggered *before* an edit is even published; effect is immediate
* bots and semi-automated tools review edits *after* their publication. it takes time (however short it might be) till the edit is examined
  -> Q: Why are there mechanisms triggered before an edit gets published (such as edit filters), and such triggered afterwards (such as bots)? Is there a qualitative difference?
     * One answer is certainly: *before* makes sense for very blatant clear cases that take up a lot of time to be cleaned up afterwards

* filters were introduced (according to discussion archives) to take care of particular cases of rather obvious but pervasive vandalism that takes up a lot of time to clean up. time the corresponding editors could use better for examining less obvious cases for example

* filters are part of the core software whereas bots are run on diverse dispersed decentral infrastructure (and potentially could go down at any time, see ClueBot NG paper)

## filters are an "old-school" rule based system. why do they still exist in a time of fancy ml tools?

* they were introduced before the ml tools came around.
* they probably work, so no one sees a reason to shut them down
* hypothesis: it is easier to understand what's going on than it is with a ML tool. people like to use them for simplicity and transparency reasons
* hypothesis: it is easier to set up a filter than program a bot. Setting up a filter requires "only" understanding of regular expressions. Programming a bot requires knowledge of a programming language and understanding of the API.
* still, there are probably far more bot developers/operators than there are people in the edit filters managers group (check?)

## edit filter managers are (at least sometimes) also bot operators. how do they decide for what they should implement a bot and for what a filter?

* guidelines say: for in-depth checks and problems with a particular article bots are better (don't use up resources)