diy wiki - time to protect pages?

[John Stumbles]

Following up from discussion of spam in

looking at the current level of spamming I think it's time we protected all the wiki so that only registered users can edit pages.

Earlier I had hoped/suggested that keeping the wiki open would encourage casual visitors to start contributing with little edits such as typos, clarifications etc, and maybe move on to becoming more heavyweight contributors. However this doesn't seem to be happening anyway, and the quantity of spam is getting unmanageable.

The quality of the wiki would probably be improved more by having less spam and less work for regulars to do patrolling it, than any notional contribution from unregistered users. Also when/if unregistered users do contribute there's a danger their input may be mistaken for spam and their IP get blocked.

Interested parties may follow up on the discussion page

here

[Colin Wilson]

Is there a way to set up a generic password for the site to allow editing - perhaps only give it out to regular contributors of the site upon request ?

[John Stumbles]

Sorry, I'm probably not being clear. All I'm proposing is that we prevent anonymous edits. If someone wants to contribute they can create an account for themselves and edit away. One or two occasional contributors have already done this.

There are also a few spam contributors and it may be that if we prevent anonymous edits the spammers will spend the extra effort to create accounts so that they can continue their evil work. I don't know. I daresay it will happen in the longer term and we'll have to respond as that becomes more of a problem

[John Rumm]

Probably becoming necessary, however it is worth noting that the number of obvious spammy registered users has grown enormously recently. There were for a long time about 30 registered users - this has recently shot up to 80:

could probably ban a bunch of those on spec... anyone reading this lay claim to:

1. ActarOlvar 3. AloloAlviv 8. BasdaRtrsi 9. BasouCalar 10. BolarIclio 12. C4tvaRdron 13. CaletOlicr 14. CavarEltal 16. ChichImonb 17. ChipaSleto 18. CnacoDarol 19. CobocTrocs 20. CrolnOacli 21. CvielPasac 22. DarcaBasol 23. DeldaRerri 24. DelriCouol 28. DomboCleto 29. DomleTotrs 30. DomorCnoor 31. DomroLorel 32. DronaCelno 33. DronbOtrva 34. DronlEtola 35. DrontAtroc 36. EltrbOcc4t 37. GetdaRroli 38. GetriCchir 39. GetsiTmona 47. LetotRolod 49. LibodRonze 50. LinobOlimo 56. MonalLiget 57. MondeLelda 64. OloalPasde 65. OroloVarco 66. Oulic4tdro 69. RacerBasno 71. RelvaRlicc 72. RobocSitda 73. RolaoRracc 75. SitlaAcell 78. VarvaRcdom 80. ZelsiTdron

(interesting what you notice when you list them in a non proportional font huh!)

We could do with email confirmation for new users really - i.e. convince a sysop they are human and helpful before getting write access.

It has happened a little - some of the regulars here (Andy W springs to mind) usually tweak without loging in, but by and large you are right not much happens in the way of helpful edits.

Yup, I would go for a global registered user only policy - either implemented as such or by protecting each page if it gets attacked.

[John Stumbles]

...

Easily spotted in this case but it'd be useful if the Wiki gave us better info pages showing at a glance e.g. how many edits and how recently each user has made so one can spot obvious spammers, and also disused accounts (e.g. one edit shortly after creation, not used for 6 months - what's the chance of the owner even remembering their login?)

You mean like a moderator? Trouble with that is it'll put off the genuine contributors who may have to wait hours or even days to make their first contribution. I know that's a vanishingly small number of people but given how few there are of us I'd hate to lose any potential extras.

What we really could do with is capcha, for which we need someone who's got more time than Grunff has to manage the system.

The latter is more work, more error prone and doesn't deal with the increasing incidence of spammers creating pages (sometimes with authoritative-sounding names)

[Dave Liquorice]

Another way that doesn't take time froma sysop is to have one of those graphics that you have to type the code in from on the "create account" page. I think there is a wiki plugin to do that.

If the d-i-y FAQ wiki is suffering spam edited into pages then the only cure is to stop anonymous edits and clean up the user database.

[John Stumbles]

Called CAPCHA (or CAPTCHA?) Unfortunately it requires a more recent version of the wiki than the one we're running, and Grunff hasn't had time to update it.

[John Rumm]

Supposedly from "Completely Automated Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart" but it seems to lack "T"s...

[meow2222]

Sounds good to me John, the spam is a real problem, and unregistered editors from elsewhere are rare. What happens isnt guaranteed, but it will most likly put some off, and some it wont, which would be a win.

BTW, how does one dl all the articles in one go in wikicode? Special dl files seems to only point to pics, and only one at a time, which is no use.

NT

[Pete Verdon]

I don't know how easy it might be to integrate (the one time I tried to hack about with MediaWiki it seemed unnecessarily hard to understand) but the Recaptcha thing from a US university looks good.

Pete

[John Stumbles]

I think that's probably a Grunff thing. I did it with wget but it was horribly inefficient: dled *every* possible page (think of all the _edit_ links within articles!) and threw away most of it. Not very server friendly. Maybe there's some tool already out there, otherwise it should be relatively trivial (ha!) with Perl and one of the HTML:: modules or suchlike.

[meow2222]

Cheers. Its odd that it lacks some quite basic features, eg spammers have to be reverted and blocked one by painful one. Still, it works.

NT