WikiProject:Junking bots

Currently we observe very special spam attacs -- only IPs -- that place single nonsense words in existing pages. John stated that we are not the only wiki that ist annoyed. They are testing the terrain before putting in real spam, said Felix.

Turns out I was right, too. Recently, I deleted several dozen links to adult content from a page. -- Felix Pleşoianu | talk 08:55, 13 October 2007 (EDT)

We found it useful to block them for 3 days or for the first and even longer if we observe them junking after that.

If YOU are blocked

If you, as a normal user, feel blocked due to a blocked IP, please contact one of the administrators. They will unblock you.

Lists of blocked IPs

Maybe we should make blocked IPs visible and describe why we have blocked them.

MediaWiki has two build-in functions for keeping track of blocking actions on IPs and user accounts

• the Special:Ipblocklist shows the current blocked ones (reach,expiry time)
• the block log shows each particular block action

This is the list of IPs blocked by User:Peu as a starting point.

Block the "bad" IPs

• 1 day - that's nonsense, they spam for short one day and paus 1 day (1 day is to little)
• 3 days, anon only, for the first
• 1 week, anon only, for the second

and make further comments on former blockings, for instance 3d .. 1w, that means 3 days last, 1 week now.

Maybe I'm too radical, but in the case of a spammer returning for a third time or so I'd block the IP for a longer time. Several months, at least. -- Felix Pleşoianu | talk 08:55, 13 October 2007 (EDT)

Felix, an IP is not a user, it's a internet cafe or company or it's dynamically assigned to a user. You should consider this aspect. --87.160.141.40 15:47, 13 October 2007 (EDT)

What's the difference, if the icafe's computers are infected and part of a botnet? Hopefully, in a few months they'll reinstall their OS. In the meantime, humans who want to edit can still make accounts. -- Felix Pleşoianu | talk 01:48, 14 October 2007 (EDT)

Ok, Felix, keep in mind to uncheck "block account creation" when you are about to block an IP, ragards --87.160.138.221 06:30, 14 October 2007 (EDT)

Make shure to uncheck "account creation". We are mostly spammed by IPs.

After having blocked an user, look at the contributions again. Review all edits marked with top

Think about watching pages. All unwatched pages will be edited without any automatic email notifications. Note for sysops: you don't watch pages automatically, that you [rollback].

Should we create IP-Pages?

Logged in users have their home spaces, why not bots=. We could protect IP-pages against anon contributions and elaborate the blocking policy for each IP like this:

• spammer
• useful contributions
• shared

How about protecting certain pages?

I noticed that some pages that are otherwise seldom changed (such as TourBusStop) are spammed repeatedly. Maybe we should consider protecting those from anonymous edits?