wiki spam
 

Today a spammer defaced our wiki to put ads for porn & pills. If I could only catch this guy, I'd tie him and force him to eat only Viagra and watch pr0n until the end of his life or until his dick explodes. Anyway, that poses the question: do you think the main page of our wiki should be locked ? (i.e. only modifiable by administrators)

Pros: less problems with spammers
Cons: people need to ask an admin when they want to create a new section

That would be only for the main page, I precise.

Re: wiki spam
 

I voted no. Even though I have no better idea, I don't like it: a wiki should remain open to anybody.

Re: wiki spam
 

I vote 'no', at least for now. If its only an isolated incident, then there should be no need for much concern.


If this keeps up, then yes, I would say it'd be best to lock it.


In the meantime, its not like there was much damage done. It can be easily reverted.

Re: wiki spam
 

I vote no, for the above reason.

Re: wiki spam
 

What about using something like a "trust" system??

i.e. people who we know, or have been here a while are "trusted" and get acess. This prevents the ass who registers, then 5 minutes later is defacing wiki for something stupid.

They have to be here so long or have so many posts, or be admitted by an admin before they can use wiki. They have to invest some time and energy in the community before they can use wiki.

We're not a big enough community yet to be self moderating, like some of the other wiki communities. This way there is a built in protection, so that there doesn't need to be one of us watching wiki every 5 minutes to make sure some ass doesn't abuse it.

TBH: its stuff like this that makes me VERY reluctant to use wiki for Fritz, simply because I don't want the aggravation. ;)

btw: a bit OT - is it possible to use wiki but restrict access for a specific page?? I know thats a bit of a contradiction of the spirit of wiki, but I'd love to use wiki, but I don't want the annoyance of having to clean up my pages every time some 12 yr old uses his mom's computer. :P

Re: wiki spam
 

True, but one thing you DO have damaged is reputation.

Imagine if some fellow bot coder out there in internet land came to check out BU, and went to the wiki in the hopes of getting some help, then came across a bunch of porn/pill ads.

He'd probably walk away thinking we're full of shit, and write us off. For the community who knows us, they'd understand this was not our intention, but for the passer by on the street, it can look pretty odd.

Re: wiki spam
 

maybe make them register in order to edit?

Re: wiki spam
 

Heyyo,

I think sPlO's idea's the best. At least this way if they mess with the wiki or anything, we can just give them a swift boot. ;)

Like the filebase? note how it's very clean. This is freedom with minimal moderation. It works great, and so far no problems, so I don't see why our wiki would end up suffering if this was to be implemented. :)

Re: wiki spam
 

best way is to restrict page edits (on every page) only to registered members and make registration harder for spam scripts, e.g. insert some verification picture, like yahoo has here
This way we keep wiki free to edit for everyone seriously interested in contribution.

Another solution is to lock main page, create subpages like General bot coding, C++ stuff, ... and move links to articles to these editable subpages. This way we protect main page and allow to create new articles (in subpages). Navigation could be a bit less complicated, but sooner or later we would have so many articles ...

Also try to consider this : http://www.uesp.net/wiki/ Look at their menu on left :)

Re: wiki spam
 

@plo, MarD and KoraX... well, I like your idea. Quite. Make the people register at the forums before they can use the wiki, like it is for the filebase. I don't say it's possible yet but I'll look into it (this involves PHP coding again, grmbl).

Re: wiki spam
 

I agree 100%. But how to make automatically system giving access to the wiki, to prevent admin (PMB) and safe his time checking manually every 2828 mambers?

Re: wiki spam
 

Heyyo,

Well, I'm pretty sure I'd be setup so I'd log which username did what change and at what time. the Filebase shows who uploaded which file.. so I'd be a matter of looking at the "modified by" info. ;)

Re: wiki spam
 

The wiki does that already, the "Recent changes" page on the left sidebar lists what pages have been changed recently and by whom.

Re: wiki spam
 

I voted no, but I think Splorigon's idea is a very good one.

[EDIT]400th post! w00t! :P[/EDIT]

Re: wiki spam
 

First of all only registered users should be allowed to edit pages. If you dont care to register, then your submissions probably aren't going to be worth anything.

The admins(=the council) should be able to set some kind of flag for the important and already big pages. This flag should allow only certified people to edit them.

Thoose fairly simple rules would give the best value of a wiki imho.

Re: wiki spam
 

I agree with Zacker, you shouldn't be able to edit any of the pages as a Anonymous user. So if they can't put bad stuff on the Wiki main page they will put it in the section(s) of the Wiki and who's going to clean up that mess?

Re: wiki spam
 

As a wiki owner myself, its an issue that has to be addressed, It probably wasn't a person defacing your forum, that a script that google wikis, spiders them, and shoves the ads on, without the machine owners knowledge. (A backdoor and a simple perl script / exe could do this). Our solution was to 'protect' all important pages, which wouldn't be changed in a while. Other than that, we can only hope (With regards to 'Require registration', its not hard to register, login and use cookies to gain access to the pages :/)

With regards to the poll, i'm gonna have to go against the general population and vote YES. Its one thing to deface a wiki, its another to give a website a bad name because of it :(