Wiki hit by spam

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Chris Messina

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Nov 24, 2009, 6:03:05 PM11/24/09
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Looks like the wiki's been hit by spam:


My talk page was hit too — can we do mass revert?

Chris

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Chris Messina
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David Recordon

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Nov 24, 2009, 6:07:01 PM11/24/09
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I'm not sure about mass reverting, the help page is http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Reverting.  I think Nate has an admin account, maybe others do too?

uncl...@gmail.com

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Nov 24, 2009, 6:16:23 PM11/24/09
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I'll correct this right now.

-- Sent from my Palm Prē


DeWitt Clinton

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Nov 24, 2009, 10:30:51 PM11/24/09
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+1 

I subscribe to the recent changes feed for a several wikis via Google Reader and I make a habit of reverting spam and blocking IPs several times each day as needed.  Sign me up.

That said, does it really need to be an anonymously writeable wiki?  Why not just have people ask first before getting write perms?  We'll say yes to everyone.

-DeWitt

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 7:23 PM, Tantek Celik <tan...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
I have some experience with keeping up with RecentChanges on open web related mediawikis along with other admins in those communities (whatwg, microformats), and would be more than happy to help with the revert/banning of spammers on the owf wiki as well if someone with admin privs is willing to make me an admin.

Actually, I think it's probably reasonable to make all the board members admins on the wiki as well.

Thanks,

Tantek

From: David Recordon <reco...@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:07:01 -0800
Subject: [Open Web Board] Re: Wiki hit by spam
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uncl...@gmail.com

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Nov 24, 2009, 10:37:36 PM11/24/09
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FYI, I've locked things down to disallow anonymous editing amongst other things. I spent some time correcting the content and I'll need to finish it up tonight.

-- Sent from my Palm Prē


uncl...@gmail.com

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Nov 24, 2009, 10:51:05 PM11/24/09
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I think we're good at the moment regarding tightening privledges. I'll take responsibility for fixing this one since I unintentionally missed adding some basic lockdown. I also need to add the OpenID and CAPCHA modules, any other suggestions?

I'm happy to add Board members as admins, but I'd also wouldn't want to see it tjrn into a free for all.

-- Sent from my Palm Prē


Chris Messina

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Nov 24, 2009, 11:45:10 PM11/24/09
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Running the Twitter Fan Wiki (twitter.pbworks.com) I've found that the registration barrier is insufficient. Spammers were still able to get through and trash various pages or upload nefarious content and whatnot. I had to move to an ask-for-edit permission policy — and only approve people if they can give me a hint as to what they want to edit.

Now, it's probably a result of Twitter's meteoric rise in popularity that I've seen this kind of abuse, but it's still smart to be careful about being too generous with permissions — especially if we don't expect the pool of editors/contributors to be all that wide.

But, if there are many people watching for abuse, I'll defer to others' judgment.

Chris
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