On Nov 17, 2012, at 4:26 PM, TJ Frazier <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 11/17/2012 15:56, Max Merbald wrote: >> Hi, >> >> disabling new registrations is one thing which might, however, stop >> sensible people from participating. I think it must be very frustrating >> when you're trying to register somewhere in order to constructively >> contribute to a project and you can't. >> >> Won't it be possible to ban some of the more aggressive spammers instead? >> >> Max > > Hi, Max, > > Indeed, we sysops are banning every single spammer, but they seem to have a > large supply of user names to burn. We need to find out what they have in > common, and ban /that/! > Motivation? Aren't they doing this for Pagerank love? If we can make all links in the wiki be rel="nofollow" then that might remove the motivation. I've had success disincentivizing link spam on other sites that way. Also, would a CAPTCHA on registration and/or in first posting be possible? Or, has anyone made an MWiki plugin for SpamAssasin? We already use SA for the lists. -Rob > /tj/ > >> >> >> Am 17.11.2012 21:49, schrieb TJ Frazier: >>> On 11/17/2012 08:28, Regina Henschel wrote: >>>> Hi, >>>> >>>> TJ Frazier schrieb: >>>>> Since 05:00 (UTC+5) this morning, I have blocked over 150 spammers; the >>>>> deleted-pages count is higher. Normal would be about half a dozen. And >>>>> still they come. >>>>> >>>>> In the short run, I can probably handle it, though help from any >>>>> committer sysops would be useful. >>>>> >>>>> In the long run, some site-maintainer work is needed. The additional >>>>> powers available in later Mwiki versions might be enough to control >>>>> this >>>>> sort of thing. Clayton has advised that upgrading is a non-trivial >>>>> problem, due to a possible encoding foul-up. Whatever we do, we need to >>>>> do it sometime soon. >>>> >>>> Is it possible for you, to disable any new registrations? Then you >>>> should do it. We can then discuss long run solutions. >>>> >>>> Kind regards >>>> Regina >>> Hi, Regina, >>> >>> Thanks for the idea, but most of the spammers are already registered >>> (not brand-new). A site maintainer (not me) could disable new >>> registrations easily, but that would not be much help. >>> >>> We need to know how these spammers are registering (their email >>> addresses) and how they are accessing the wiki (their IP addresses). >>> The information is in the MySQL database, but it is only accessible >>> from root-level MySQL commands; Wp is paranoid about user secrecy. >>> >>> For instance, are they using those "open reply" email addresses, where >>> the email waits to be picked up by anybody? Clayton had a code snippet >>> to block their use, but it may not have survived. >>> >>> I have promoted one dedicated and careful user to sysop; between us, >>> we are keeping up with the flood. But they are still coming. >>> >>> /tj/ > >
