[website-dev] Managing Wiki spam - another thing we can do to limit the spam

We're doing OK with managing the OOoWiki spam, but I'd like to do a little more 
to stop the repeat offenders.  A lot of the most recent Wiki spam that has been 
deleted has been links to specific external sites.. essay writers and others. 
There is at least one extra step we can take for winning the spam war...

If you are moderating the Wiki, and removing the spam by deleting or doing a 
rollback, take a quick look at the spam content and if there is anything unique 
- for example a URL, or a commercial product name - let me know and I'll add it 
to the Spam RegEx.

The RegEx already contains many product names (medical, clothing, books, movies 
etc) and is pretty effective at blocking spam that uses these specific terms. If 
you want to test it, try editing your User Talk page and add the words "Harry 
Potter", or "essay writers" and try to save your edits (hard to find words form 
the RegEx that won't be trapped by the mailing list spam filters too :-) ) With 
this test you'll see what the potential spammers will see when they try to add 
these links to external websites.  Basically they are prevented from saving the 
edits if they contain the blacklisted words.

The more complete we make this list of blacklisted URLs and keywords, the harder 
it is for the spammers to pollute the Wiki, and the less work we have to do long 
term to manage the spam.

C.
-- 
Clayton Cornell       [email protected]
OpenOffice.org Documentation Project co-lead