Bernhard ,
I have found questycaptcha to be the most successful at blocking bots from adding users. Basically it asks a question such as "Where is Tokyo?" and the answer is "Japan". This has been working pretty well but lately I have noticed that some bots are still getting through so I might need to change my question. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:QuestyCaptcha Adrian ________________________________ From: "Scheid, Bernhard" <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, August 1, 2012 3:36 AM Subject: [MediaWiki-l] spam users Hi, I am running a couple of relatively small academic Wikis mainly for educational uses at university. Thus there is relatively little traffic apart from course time. Nevertheless, some two years ago I noticed more and more spam and thus reduced editing rights first to registered users, then to users of a special group that need my personal acknowledgement. Now, in recent months there is an increasing number of new users (robots?) obviously attempting to write spam which they do not do but they are kind of spamming the lists of registered users. I could reduce the registration rights but on the other hand I want students to register freely in order to obtain their editing permissions. Is there a decent way to detect and prevent harmful would-be spammers from setting up an account without preventing that option for serious users? Best Bernhard *************** Dr. Bernhard Scheid Austrian Academy of Sciences Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia Apostelgasse 23 1030 Vienna, Austria Tel.: +43-1-51581 6424 E-mail: [email protected] _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
