WikiIndex:Anti-spam measures

Place your favorite AntiSpam measures here, organize by Wiki Engine

Mettez ici vos mesures AntiSpam préférées, organisées par Moteur Wiki

Please use SpamBlacklist extension ! Marc 08:18, 17 July 2006 (EDT)

MediaWiki

• The 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. —User:Sean Fennel@ 15:02, 27 Mar 2006 (EST)
• Spam blacklist

OddMuse

• First measure

PhpWiki

• First measure (Première mesure)

Human users

Spammers regularly targetted Old Liberapedia, (now no longer a wiki) and the Wiki had out of date software. Sysops 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. Vandals 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. 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 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 WikiSym2005

Sure am! Any interesting developments??? 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". --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, "The Gulag Archipelago" (1973). --DavidCary 23:06, 18 March 2009 (EDT)

Excellent video regarding wiki culture, long MarkDilley

Well - it would be good for me to link it! here. ~~ MarkDilley