Board Thread:Support Requests - Getting Technical/@comment-1036245-20150309152516/@comment-452-20150311135053

Yeah, what's even more confusing is that even when you know regular expressions, it doesn't use the normal format.

I mostly worked out how it works by just trying different things.

As I said, just add File:HNI, that's how I block "file names starting with...", and it works fine.

I'm fairly sure that this will match anything with File:HNI anywhere in the filename. So you would be unable to create User_blog:Taliseth/Why_is_File:HNIasdf_blocked? (I checked, this is correct)

In practice, no-one is likely to create a page containing the name File: anyway, so it's a non-issue.

But if you want to allow that example, use ^File:HNI instead. ^ means "starts with" - a wildcard is automatically added to the end, so you do not need to add .*

If you care about being strict, the first page I link contains some information about the syntax.

edit: Fun fact which I wish I knew a lot sooner: you don't need to upload a file to test, just go to File:HNItestwhatever?action=edit

By default, the blacklist doesn't apply to admins - but you can request that the "tboverride" right be removed from the administrators group. I've done this for 2 reasons:
 * So I can spot problems with the blacklist rules
 * Because blacklist entries exist to enforce local policies, and admins who think they are above local policies are not good admins.
 * ...and so I can remember to obey the local filename policies.

edit: Unfortunately, some of the things on Extension:TitleBlacklist aren't quite true.

For reasons unknown to me, MediaWiki:Titleblacklist-forbidden-upload is not shown when an upload is blocked. I informed Wikia Staff of the problem, but I have no idea if it's been fixed. You can work around this by creating a custom message using errmsg= (details on that page.)

Unfortunately, all popup uploaders display MediaWiki:Badaccess instead of custom messages. Only Special:Upload displays the correct message. I have also informed Wikia Staff of this problem in August 2013, and as far as I know it still hasn't been fixed.