Spam Options

[dz]

Hey Gents,

I'm not that great with Wiki stuff. I can barely figure out how to message someone on there (it's the talk page, right?). Anyway, could you guys try and find out what anti-spam measures are available to us and I'll implement them? A captcha would be convenient if it's there. I'm looking into merging the accounts tables, but that might take a little bit.

Thanks,
Roy

[Meyer]

Which PDF documentation?

[tux]

Which PDF documentation?

Hi Meyer,

dz posted some links when he was talking about the new software. There are pdf manuals for download. I'll try putting them here.

Sorry these are for the forum software!

http://www.invisionpower.com/community/board/index.html
http://www.invisionpower.com/community/downloads/index.html
http://forums.invisionpower.com/index.php?showtopic=226814

I don't know how much help they are, I haven't had time to sit down and read them yet.

I think after a quick browse I'll think about printing out the bits and go off to town and the library and study them the old-fashioned way. I've given the computer screens far too much eyeball to be sensible this last ten days or so.

Cheers

[tux]

Hi dz and Meyer,

just looked at the documentation on the mediawiki site. In the FAQ I found the following which I think is relevant to disallowing anonymous editing. This is one that dz would have to do.

Here is the section I found immediately relevant: Help - User Rights

I've cut and pasted an example:

Anonymous users cannot edit

This example will disable editing of all pages, then re-enable for registered users only.

$wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;
$wgGroupPermissions['user']['edit'] = true;

HTH.
HAND

[tux]

Hi Roy, Dave,

I know that changes to the Wiki setup are taking place this weekend. I hope that blocking anonymous/unlogged in edits is high on the agenda. The last few bits of banning and reverting that I have done have been to anonymous/unlogged users putting little snippets of gibberish in. This looks like the Wiki is beginning to be a target again. Not very much at the moment,let's knock it on the head now.

With the captcha helping out against robot registration, we should be pretty much immune from vandalism and spam if anonymous editing is blocked.

We can always reinstate anonymous editing later on, when all the defensive bots, filters etc come into play. Or not, if nobody much complains about it!

Me I'm going to spend some time looking at how Redirect works on pages and how to cope with pages that involve Redirects. I think I've only got a very small number of spambot created pages to finally remove all trace of. I even found time to try and write some pages.

See you later.

[tux]

Hi Roy, Dave,

I know that changes to the Wiki setup are taking place this weekend. I hope that blocking anonymous/unlogged in edits is high on the agenda. The last few bits of banning and reverting that I have done have been to anonymous/unlogged users putting little snippets of gibberish in. This looks like the Wiki is beginning to be a target again. Not very much at the moment,let's knock it on the head now.

The anonymous gibberbots are increasing in number. I really hope the captcha and the anonymous editing changes are going well.

It is 23:11 my time and I went to bed about 05:30 this morning. No it wasn't wiki business, this TitchyLinux is getting quite engrossing!

So 'Goodnight Each!'

[Meyer]

The anonymous gibberbots are increasing in number. I really hope the captcha and the anonymous editing changes are going well.

It's disappointing what some people think of as fun.

1-word gibberish edits are at least an improvement over the link spam, but I agree we need to get rid of them, too.

If disallowing anonymous edits is the only way to do it, I don't think that will be much of a loss in practical terms. However, in principle I think it's better to keep the wiki as open and free as we can.

The ConfirmEdit captcha extension is configurable to trigger a captcha on edits by anonymous users while leaving registered users alone. I'd like to see if that's enough to block the gibberish.

Of course, if it's not bots but people sitting at their PCs typing "klsdfoisdf" into wiki pages, the captcha won't do much good. In that case blocking all anonymous edits is probably the only thing we can do.

[adf]

The anonymous gibberbots are increasing in number. I really hope the captcha and the anonymous editing changes are going well.

It's disappointing what some people think of as fun.

1-word gibberish edits are at least an improvement over the link spam, but I agree we need to get rid of them, too.

If disallowing anonymous edits is the only way to do it, I don't think that will be much of a loss in practical terms. However, in principle I think it's better to keep the wiki as open and free as we can.

The ConfirmEdit captcha extension is configurable to trigger a captcha on edits by anonymous users while leaving registered users alone. I'd like to see if that's enough to block the gibberish.

Of course, if it's not bots but people sitting at their PCs typing "klsdfoisdf" into wiki pages, the captcha won't do much good. In that case blocking all anonymous edits is probably the only thing we can do.

How really difficult is it to register? Is there a mail address available so someone with a brilliant insight who can't be bothered to register to post it can mail it to the admin? What do you think would be lost by requiring a simple free registration, and possible posting an easy way for a human to mail the admin? I'm obviously a fan of open stuff, but making things easy on assholes seems like a bad idea...

[Meyer]

How really difficult is it to register? Is there a mail address available so someone with a brilliant insight who can't be bothered to register to post it can mail it to the admin? What do you think would be lost by requiring a simple free registration, and possible posting an easy way for a human to mail the admin? I'm obviously a fan of open stuff, but making things easy on assholes seems like a bad idea...

I think we're largely in agreement, except I would say you can't tell who's an asshole and who's not at least until they make their first edit.

Registration is not difficult, and it is hard for me to imagine why someone would be reluctant to do so. But it is also possible that someone with a legitimate reason I have failed to imagine wants to contribute to the wiki, and I'd prefer we let them without interference if it's possible to do so without making the wiki a spam dumping-ground.

If it's not possible to do both, then, yes, loss of anonymous edits will be a low-impact sacrifice. I just think "no stricter than necessary" is the better policy.