Spam

[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!'

[Antikx]

thanks for all your hard work, tux!

[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.

[tux]

Welcome back David!!  

Over the last month or so an increasing number of IP editors have been creating new pages with walls of text. I assume there is some 'payload' in there? I think it might well be time to bar IP editing for a period of time.

Also editors are registering and doing the same thing. They are also uploading various images. Again I presume there is some 'payload' in there. Has the 'captcha' for registering been turned off? I don't have that many calls on my time but the amount of blocking and deleting I am doing at the moment is very tedious!

Is there some connection with the obvious robot registrations for forum membership? Any forum admin care to comment there?

Cheers