major wiki-spam alert !

[Sy]

There is blacklisting functionality built into MediaWiki and it is
used when called for.  Generally speaking there's a month-long ban for
the IP which spammed.

One choice was to allow anonymous editing, which permits the vast
majority of spamming through.  This can be closed off if people are
generally ok with the idea of forcing people to add a user (no email
verification is necessary) in order to edit.

I had experimented with some blacklisting functions at the
apache-level, but that appears to be nonfunctional.  I have not had
the interest to look into it further, as it's voodoo which is darker
than I can handle right now.

However, banning IPs can be a touchy discussion.

So aside from requiring logins, which helps prevent but does not
eliminate spamming, administrators can also "lock" pages which are
commonly spammed.  This removes public editability from that page,
leaving it in the hands of the support volunteers who run the
mechanics of the wiki.

I began with this page-locking in mind, and relaxed it.. seeing that
there was enough interest in the general public editing those key
pages and also that there were many eyes watching out for and cleaning
up spam.

...

Which brings me to the obvious point.  With a wiki, if something
bothers you, you can be bold and change it yourself.  If ever anyone
sees spam, please feel privileged to be allowed to make the decision
to clean it up without hesitation.

...

Wiki-spam and its prevention is something of great interest to me. 
There are lots of tools out there which are used by other sites, but
the technology has not been adopted by wikis because of an
extraordinary rift between their cultures.  Wikis have spam prevention
concepts which are, frankly, rediculous to "real" sites.

I'm open to any ideas the community may have.. but honestly, it's not
hard to rollback pages and ban people.. and if times get desperate we
lock key pages down.. and if all else fails the entire places has
anonymous editing removed.  After that, we look into apache rewrite
rules to ban IPs.

Spam on the wiki is something that's going to happen now and again. 
I'm not worried about it, and I don't mind the occasional interest in
the topic as it flares up here.. but if anyone needs anything more
immediately from me, email me and also write a note on my talk page:
http://gtalug.org/index.php/User_talk:Sy


What I really would like is to have some sort of magical apache
rewrite rule generating auto-ban application which taps into a central
blacklist repository of generally accepted spammers.  Such a thing
exists for other arenas, but I don't know of anything build for apache
in general or for wikis / mediawiki.
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