major wiki-spam alert !

[psema4]

On 7/18/05, Sy <sy1235-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> There is blacklisting functionality built into MediaWiki...[snip]

> 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.

Time to join the darkside.  ;)  Learning Apache takes a while (after 3
yrs, I'm still finding stuff out all the time) but it's time well
spent.

Actually, I prefer to look at linux/open source as the light side, and
closed-source as the dark, but I guess it's all about point-of-view. 
:)

> ...
> 
> 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.

I'd argue the difference between "can be bold and change it yourself"
and /should/ be bold and change it yourself.  Again tho, that's just
me.  ;)

> 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.

Not sure that mod_rewrite is what u want.  If it is, then u'r ahead of me.

> 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.

I'm fairly certain there's enough talent around to find a solution. 
I've been away on vacation for the last lil bit, but in some
not-so-distant posts, some folks asked how they could help GTALUG.

(hint-hint-nudge-nudge?  Knowledge is one of the biggest assets this UG has.  ;)

-- 
- SGE
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml