Editing WikiIndex:Anti-spam measures

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Place your favorite AntiSpam measures here, organize by [[:Category:Wiki Engine|Wiki Engine]]

Mettez ici vos mesures AntiSpam préférées, organisées par [[:Category:Wiki Engine|Moteur Wiki]]

Please use [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SpamBlacklist_extension SpamBlacklist extension] ! [[User:Marc|Marc]] 08:18, 17 July 2006 (EDT)

==MediaWiki==
*The [[:Category:Active administrators of this wiki|admins]] at [[This Might Be A Wiki]] have a bot crawl the wiki constantly searching for spam and automatically blocks offenders.  I'm not sure how they got it to do that, but it seems to have a low rate of false positives. &mdash;[[Sean Fennel|<span style="font-family: Kristen ITC, Times New Roman;">User:Sean Fennel</span>]][[User talk:Sean Fennel|<span style="font-family: Kristen ITC, Times New Roman;">@</span>]] 15:02, 27 Mar 2006 (EST)
*Spam blacklist
*WikiIndex is being overwhelmed by spam bots. Please install the [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Asirra Asirra extension] to stop this.

==OddMuse==
*First measure

==PhpWiki==
*First measure (Première mesure)

==Human users==
Spammers regularly targetted [http://liberapedia.wikia.com/wiki/Old_Liberapedia Old Liberapedia], (now no longer a wiki) and the Wiki had out of date software.  [[Sysop]]s deleted articles that were entirely spam and blocked spammers.  Ordinary users replaced spam with delete templates and aleted sysops.  Spam in good articles was  reverted.  Over about 2 months spammers decided targeting Liberapedia wasn't worthwhile.  Spam reduced to a trickle.  New [[Liberapedia]] (Currently online) has better software and should be less vulnerable. If humans guard their Wiki systematically this helps even with bad software.  [[Vandal]]s were a regular problem in Old Liberapedia and are less easily detered.

==Spamming the spammers==
As Wikiindex has grown spammers have started spamming this wiki and it's becoming annoying.  [[User:Proxima Centauri|Proxima Centauri]] has started replacing spam with the message below.  Afterwards the page is protected so the spammer can't do anything about this message which they don't want potential customers to read.  See [[Opportunityreview]] 

'''Wikiindex users are free to copy this for their own wiki.  If you are not an administrator you can ask one of the admins on your wiki to protect the page.'''
:''I find this to be a very interesting strategy.  Not sure how I feel about it yet.  What is the thought around using a template or category to be able to keep track of these pages?  Best, [[MarkDilley]]''
::''adding [[:Category:SpamFighting]] to the pages I see this tactic used on.''

===Who is unreliable?===
Among others firms that ''"spam"'' advertising to other web sites are exploiting those other sites for free advertising.  Before buying anything from any ''"spamming"'' website you should ask yourself, "Will this business try to exploit '''me''' the way the website exploits the site where the advertisement appears".

''(This page is protected.  Please put suggested modifications onto the talk page.)''

===Specific targets===
Specific spam was also targeted.  For example when a spammer advertised garden ornaments the page was modified to show that such products are considered Kitsch.  A link to the Wikipedia article on  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsch Kitsch] gave readers the chance to look at a beautiful example of a Kitschy garden gnome.  See [[User talk:Susy Lunardi]].

==Discussion==
Interested in the anti spam measures in development from [[WikiSym]]2005
:Sure am! Any interesting developments??? [[User:John Stanton|John]] 12:44, 27 October 2006 (EDT)

::I've come to the conclusion that even good editors occasionally accidentally make bad edits, such as page-blanking good pages. What I really want is a spam filter that can tell the difference between "good edits" vs "bad edits". Alas, that seems far more difficult than distinguishing between "editors who know a password" and "editors who don't know any password". --[[User:DavidCary|DavidCary]] 12:42, 16 March 2009 (EDT)

::''"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago "The Gulag Archipelago"] (1973)''. --[[User:DavidCary|DavidCary]] 23:06, 18 March 2009 (EDT)

::''Excellent video regarding [[wiki]] culture, long'' [[MarkDilley]]
::: Well - it would be good for me to link it! [http://www.archive.org/details/3_sa_t1_15h_3-Shah here]. ~~ [[MarkDilley]]

==New template==
I created a new template to put on spammers user page.  See if you like it [[Template:Spammer]], rgds, [[User:Hoof Hearted|Hoof Hearted]] 07:13, 20 June 2011 (PDT)

[[Category:Browse]]
[[Category:Spam| ]]
[[Category:Spammed| ]]
[[Category:SpamFighting| ]]

== WikiIndex is being overwhelmed by spam bots ==

Please install the [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Asirra Asirra extension] to stop this. --[[User:Bachsau|Bachsau]] 00:08, 27 June 2012 (PDT)
:I don't think we are being "overwhelmed" per se, spam pages tend to be deleted by me or other admins fairly quickly. That being said, Asirra is the most interesting anti-spam extensions I've ever seen. It won't make us immune (see [[Referata]] which has this extension installed fighting spambots [http://www.referata.com/wiki/Special:RecentChanges here]) but it it might reduce spam. '''[[User talk:Elassint|Elassint]]'''  27 June 2012
::[[mw:Extension:QuestyCaptcha|QuestyCaptcha]] is working well too, I use it on the [[Semantic Stargate Wiki]], I see many spam attempts in my configuration space, but none on the wiki. --[[User:LIMAFOX76|LIMAFOX76]] 04:07, 27 June 2012 (PDT)
:::Questy captcha will definitely always work, as long as your site is not very popular and you sometimes change the questions. <small>—The preceding [[wikipedia:Help:Using talk pages|unsigned comment]] was added by [[User:Bachsau|Bachsau]] ([[User talk:Bachsau|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/Bachsau|contribs]]) 14:16, 27 June 2012 (PDT)</small>

::::WikiIndex is nowhere ''near'' being "overwhelmed" by spam bots; it's &mdash; unfortunately &mdash; standard spambot activity. Unlike some wikis out there, WikiIndex has active admins and therefore the best the spambots can do is submit a spam page which stays up for a couple hours until it's deleted by an admin.

::::That being said, WikiIndex is once again running an outdated, unsupported release of MediaWiki and not using any other anti-spam extensions than ConfirmEdit and SpamBlacklist. Installing [[mw:Extension:SimpleAntiSpam|the SimpleAntiSpam extension]], and preferrably customizing the MediaWiki:Simpleantispam-label message (I have a feeling that spambots know what text to expect and therefore can skip this trap easily), would most likely help a bit...but in time an all-in-one solution, like Phalanx, should be deployed. Phalanx is an anti-spam extension that combines the features of [[mw:Extension:SpamRegex]], [[mw:Extension:RegexBlock]], [[mw:Extension:TitleBlacklist]], [[mw:Extension:SpamBlacklist]] into one and even adds some additional features. It needs to be generalized a bit to work on more standard MediaWikis, as it was written with a wiki farm setup in mind.

::::For now, QuestyCaptcha and/or Asirra would be good solutions; though experience shows that Asirra is not as easy to use as one would think; I had users clicking on all images and wondering why the CAPTCHA fails... --[[User:Jack Phoenix|Jack Phoenix]] 08:14, 27 June 2012 (PDT)