Re: Spam in FahWiki.net

[Clodoaldo Neto]

I just disabled account creation by non sysops. A sysop can follow the steps in

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Preventing_access#Restrict_account_creation

to create one:

1. Go to Special:Userlogin, when logged in as a sysop.
2. Click on "Create an account" link to get to the account creation form.
3. Enter a username and an email address, and click the "by email" button. Note you need $wgEnableEmail=true or else the sysop must pick a password and send it to the user.
4. The account will be created with a random password which is then emailed to the given address (as with the "forgot password" feature). The user will be requested to change password at first login; when he does this, his e-mail address will also be marked as confirmed.

This is very easy to revert in case it is considered not the best option now or later.

Regards, Clodoaldo

2013/7/13 Jesse Victors <jvic...@jessevictors.com>

Thank you for CCing it on to the appropriate folks. I wasn't sure who was really behind it.

I wasn't suggesting pulling the plug on it (whois.com indicates that registration expires 2015, no need to waste that) so much as just freezing it to prevent spam, thus essentially locking it in as an archive. If anyone is still maintaining it, please let me know. We do have a pretty good team who put down all the documentation on the main website (which was overhauled and converted to WordPress recently) but I don't know of anyone who makes changes to fahwiki. I'd like to see the community step in and help clean it up too, not sure if that'd be a reality though without a good call-to-arms on the forum or something. There are some valuable pages on FahWiki, and it is unfortunate that almost all of the references go out to the old FCF, which crashed and burned a while back, and no archive of it exists to my knowledge.

Jesse V.

On 07/13/2013 09:22 AM, Bas Couwenberg wrote:

On 07/13/2013 06:54 PM, Jesse Victors wrote:
> Hey Bas,

Hi Jesse,

I've taken the liberty to CC the others that took care of the FAH Wiki
in the past.

> Hopefully this gets to you encrypted like you indicated. I had a
> bit of difficulty finding Thunderbird's per-recipient encryption
> rules, but I think I got it.

The message is unencrypted, but that's not a problem. This
communications is not that private, and could also be held on the
Google Group for the FAH Wiki:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/foldinghome-wiki

> Anyway, yesterday I checked the Recent Changes page on FahWiki and
> noticed that all of the changes were people/bots making accounts
> and then spamming their userpage. You've been banning them all, but
> I'm just wondering if it's worth it. What's the long-term plans for
> FahWiki? I can see how it was once a very valuable resource, but
> despite the efforts of the few maintainers, most of the pages are
> now quite dated. Should user account creation be disabled, and
> should we just freeze FahWiki as it is? From time to time a few
> users will post a link to a FahWiki page, but there are only one or
> two pages that we reference. I've always appreciated the work that
> you and others have put into FahWiki, but I'm just wondering what
> the plans are for it now that it's being used more by spammers than
> by the folding community.

I'm not the one to ask about the future of the FAH Wiki, my
involvement in FAH is quite minimal these days. Clodoaldo is the one
who operates the server, and can speak authoritatively about it.

I still have the wiki in my default bookmarks for FAH, so I visit the
Recentchanges once or twice per day. When I notice vandalism I revert
it, I've automated the process for the current Talk page spammers so
it's not much trouble.

Pulling the plug on the wiki would be a shame, but I think most of it
is preserved for posterity on archive.org, so it less a loss than FCF
IMHO.

Better would be for the community to step up and breathe some fresh
air into the wiki, but I think that if the motivation existed it would
have happened already.

> Jesse V.

Regards,

Bas

>
>

[7im]

I agree with the kabosh on new user account creation.  Any new users who want to contribute will be motivated enough to ask for an account.  Maybe add a note somewhere on the main page to this end.

 

FAHWIKI usually comes 2nd to keeping the Install Guides and FAQs updated on the Stanford web page, at least for me.  And with the new V7 client being such a moving target, and my being out of commission for 6 months late last year, it's been hard to keep up.

 

Plus any spare time recently was put towards the new web site design update.

 

That said, there are some V7 "common errors" that I will eventually be adding to the WIKI again, like we did with some of the obscure v6 client errors.

 

The FAHcores page is still relevant, and a few others.  I don't see FAH WIKI going away any time soon.