Re: wiki spam

Drew Perttula wrote:
> Claus Cyrny wrote:
>   
>> Kai-Uwe Behrmann wrote:
>>     
>>> Some places contain spam. For instance:
>>> http://cinepaint.bigasterisk.com/WhyMigrateFromGTKToFLTK
>>>
>>>
>>>   
>>>       
>> This is really  ridiculous, and I'm frankly tired of this myself.
>> Imho, in the long run, filtering out is not an option, because
>> despite the filters, spam is increasing steadily.
>>     
>
> I put some time into spam cleanup on the wiki, and I have turned off the 
> easy add-a-comment feature on some pages. This doesn't stop robots who 
> know how to edit the full pages, though.
>
> Though it's far (FAR) from a solution to the worldwide wiki spam 
> problem, I bet the cinepaint site would stay a lot cleaner if it had the 
> simplest "Type the word 'paint' into this box:" guard on the edit pages. 
> I may add that next time I work on the site. Another way people add this 
> kind of non-intrusive protection is to put password protection on the 
> wiki and the print the password on the front page.
>
>   

So I wrote all that without actually -looking- at the wiki today, and 
given that robots are indeed replacing pages instead of just adding 
comments, I added a password to the whole wiki. Instructions are on the 
CinePaintDocumentation page.

I also recovered an older version of 
http://cinepaint.bigasterisk.com/WhyMigrateFromGTKToFLTK but didn't look 
for other pages that need similar recovery. Regardless of the 
security/password scheme that we use, I really wish I could search for 
remote IPs that just add linkspam and instantly remove all changes made 
by those IPs. zwiki isn't built for that, unfortunately. I'm not sure if 
it even keeps the IPs with the edit records (although theoretically they 
could be built from the http logs).

I hope my new password plan hits a good balance between what the wiki 
needs and what I have time to implement. If it's decided that the new 
inconvenience or the spam problem are still too uncomfortable, maybe we 
should look at moving the wiki to a better-managed site, perhaps 
http://pbwiki.com/. I haven't used pbwiki, but I use 
http://superhappydevhouse.org which is run by pbwiki. Note how the SHDH 
site does not contain any mention of ringtones.



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