OESF Portables Forum
Everything Else => Site Specific Forums => Site Suggestions, Requests, and Updates => Topic started by: sdjf on July 08, 2007, 11:45:05 pm
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Many of our wiki pages have been destroyed by one or more spammers.
People who care about our site, if you have time to fetch copies that you've saved or to retrieve copies from Google's cache or archive.org, please let's restore the wiki to sanity.
I can't do anything myself...have written a separate post about my personal difficulties getting edit access to the wiki. Did also PM an admin about this, but no response so I'm starting this thread.
I wish people's first few posts were moderated...someone in our midst may have been caught and stopped, but the wiki needs restoring. Can any admins do it from backups?
There is a lot of basic reference material there which has been replaced with drug spam. IIRC, two examples are Card Formatting instructions and a Serial How-TO.
sdjf
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Backups aren't necessary; the wiki is revision controlled. I'm going through and reverting any pages I find that have been hit. Moderator approval for newly registered users would be good... there appear to be a lot of bot logins making these changes.
Edit: make that moderator approval is *desperately needed* - I can revert pages pretty quickly but there are lots of wrecked pages and the bots will just do them all again in the next pass.
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Okay, nailed them all.
But I really don't want to do that again.
My eyes! The goggles, they do nothing!
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Thank you! But there's got to be a way to prevent it.
But how do we get bots doing this when things are supposedly set up to prevent bots from getting approved. Is wiki membership done differently from oesf membership? I sure can't post/edit there.
sdjf
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The forum and wiki are completely independent - which means your forum login does not work and the forum validation measures don't apply to the wiki. I just clicked through to the wiki login page and registered no questions asked!
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i cleaned up a page a few days ago, didnt think of reverting...
as for prevention, membership of the wiki and thus write permission should be by application only and not open as it is now...
simple.
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I had to do the same thing months ago. Spam bots are ruuuddeee.
I'm not sure about the admin approval process for the wiki. I think we just need to find a good enough CAPTCHA system that these bots can't figure out. My main priority is getting us up on the latest version of IPB, but I'll see what I can do about the Wiki software.
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Can you also see if we can make our aliases there all lowercase, without the first letter automatically getting capitalized? It used to be that way, judging from the old entries that are there.
Thanks,
sdjf
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Consider installing reCAPTCHA http://recaptcha.net/ (http://recaptcha.net/)
but it requires updating MediaWiki to 1.8
I use it on most of my MediaWikis and it's easy to install, and impossible to crack.
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There is a TON of spam in the wiki again. I created a wiki ID way, way too easily, but got in but did not have time to figure out how to revert pages to spam-free.
Please do something about the spam.
sdjf
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Grrr. Wiki help pages are also now filled with spam. How do we revert pages to sanity? No documentation...could that part be locked (once it's restored) so spammers can't destroy our ability to get access to the wiki documentation (i.e., pages about the editing the wiki)?
sdjf
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Reverting isn't hard:
1. Click the page's history link (these are available from the "recent changes" page for convenience)
2. Click the date of the last good version of the page to display it
3. Click "Edit this page"
The edit page will contain the contents from the revision you were on, along with a warning that you are not editing the most recent version (this is what you want.)
4. Enter a reason for the edit into the Summary box
5. Click "Save Page"
...
6. Repeat 500 times to fix every vandalised page (aaarrrgghh)
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Thanks. It's easy once you know what to do.
I had figured out steps 1 and 2, but was looking for a "Revert" button.
I like clicking on "Page History" for a specific page that I know has spam in it. It's a little easier, but still a lot of work. I wish they would fix access. Hmmm. :} I wonder if one of us could install recaptcha on the newbie sign-up page instead of waiting for an admin to do it. Hehehe.
sdjf
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Is there any point, until there is a more complicated sign up procedure ?
I reverted a few changes but there are already another 20,
It's the same spambots again and again. Deleting their accounts and automatically reverting their changes would be a good thing.
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Is there any point, until there is a more complicated sign up procedure ?
I reverted a few changes but there are already another 20,
It's the same spambots again and again. Deleting their accounts and automatically reverting their changes would be a good thing.
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Just spent an hour or so reverting spam.
1. Is anything being contemplated about the spam in the wiki issue?
2. Are there any useful anti-spam bots?
3. Does that cesspit Wikipedia have any useful bots we could beg/borrow?
Appreciation to the likes of pelrun, sdjf, koan etc who have been reverting spam.
No doubt we'll have to keep repeating the process until some effective measures are taken to kill the spam accounts and keep new ones out!
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I have no access to the wiki :-(, I'm sorry
Late
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I have no access to the wiki :-(, I'm sorry
Late
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=167453\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
Thanks for the interest ISO, I knew that you weren't a Wiki admin.
I another hour or so reverting spam today and exploring the features of the wiki. There are 5 sysops/bureaucrats listed:
DZ, Ev1l, Offroadgeek, Tapjpa and Tumnus.
I'm going to research this wiki business and see if I can come up with some suggestions. From a quick scan, DZ suggested upgrading to the current version of MediaWiki and some extra helpful software. Don't know how far he got with that.
I'm going to see when the 5 people above last posted to these forums also...
When looking at the user lists there seemed to be an enormous number of spurious ones, obvious spambots. Would the best thing be 'bans' until 2020, or simply deleting them? It would probably take my spare time for a week to do the banning.
On a similar tack I've found a large number of 'spurious' pages. Would it not be possible to delete those pages?
But then I'm not an admin! So I can't do anything about those two suggestions. Yes I suppose I'm volunteering for that tedious position. Yes I'll even read RTFM and be cautious in what I do.
Any chance of that being helpful?
Oh well, I'll go and lose some more sleep by checking the latest spam!
PS Just spent a few minutes reverting myself!!!
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I will see what I can do with getting you moderator privileges to the Wiki... I personal would disable all r/w to the general public (even if you are registered) and only allow writing to those who ask... I had to kill ALL writes to the general public for pdaXrom.org due to the amount of spam that came in there...
But that is just my .02 ... I will work on it
Late
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Disable "all r/w"???? Or just all w except on approval????
sdjf
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I personal would disable all r/w to the general public (even if you are registered) and only allow writing to those who ask
Disable all w is overkill IMHO; what is needed is a decent CAPTCHA and registration system.
Writing for those who ask: That might work but if you go this way it's better if people can submit changes so that those with write permission can approve them.
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Recoding to include RECAPTCHA might take too long to implement immediately. I agree that disabling all w is pretty heavy duty but maybe they might have to do it as a stop-gap measure so that the wiki isn't continuing to get trashed while the better solution is getting worked on.
I do believe there are some human spammers, not just bots, as well, so Recaptcha alone might cut down time-consuming robot activity, but won't eliminate all spam by itself, IMHO.
sdjf
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Recoding to include RECAPTCHA might take too long to implement immediately. I agree that disabling all w is pretty heavy duty but maybe they might have to do it as a stop-gap measure so that the wiki isn't continuing to get trashed while the better solution is getting worked on.
I do believe there are some human spammers, not just bots, as well, so Recaptcha alone might cut down time-consuming robot activity, but won't eliminate all spam by itself, IMHO.
sdjf
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I agree; it might be better to switch off w access to all who haven't asked for it until better registration is implemented. Most of the spam seems to be from the same source so I'm surprised it's not possible to kill w from certain IP addresses.
I saw a simple captcha recently: a mathematical question; e.g. What's five plus six ? It seemed to work well.
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I saw a simple captcha recently: a mathematical question; e.g. What's five plus six ? It seemed to work well.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=167630\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
It's so simple... First time I saw something like this I tried more than 20 times writing "11" xD
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If you missed it, Recaptcha is a official project of Carnegie Mellon Univ. that has it's own website:
http://recaptcha.net (http://recaptcha.net)
They provide free code to use that links back to their word recognitions, whether to get access to a website or hide an email address or whatever.
It's quick and easy to install on standard webpages, just a question of whether our admins can get access here to install it on the wiki or wherever, and THAT's not so quick and easy.
sdjf
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Definitely need to do something about the spambots. I tried a round of reversions, but it's a futile as cutting down every tree in the forest with a herring.
Concerning screening technology, I know capchas are poplular and may be the only practical choice, but I'd prefer something that didn't create new problems for users with vision problems or text-based clients.
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How about running Wikipedia's AntiSpamBot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AntiSpamBot/FAQ) on the wiki?
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How about running Wikipedia's AntiSpamBot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AntiSpamBot/FAQ) on the wiki?
[div align=\"right\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=167923\")
I'm in the process of upgrading the entire Wiki software system and linking the accounts table with the IPB accounts table. Check the following thread for info:
[a href=\"https://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=24041]https://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=24041[/url]
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Which thread? That link's a 404.
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Which thread? That link's a 404.
Just take the s off forums for now!!