Can we simply take the Wiki down until it's cleaned of all spam and spamming users? The authors of the Wiki software should be shot, too. - blocking users doesn't give an option to revert all their edits - there's no "list of users" page that I can see - there's no fscking "revert change" button in the history The MediaWiki site claims that those features exist for moderators. Am I missing something, or is the site running a really old version of the software? Alan DeKok.
Alan DeKok wrote:
Can we simply take the Wiki down until it's cleaned of all spam and spamming users?
After some searching on the fscking media wiki site... (Searching for "list users" doesn't get you the list users page first, but another one) There are over 1600 users registered with the Wiki. This is intolerable. The wiki needs to come down. Alan DeKok.
Alan DeKok wrote:
Alan DeKok wrote:
Can we simply take the Wiki down until it's cleaned of all spam and spamming users?
After some searching on the fscking media wiki site... (Searching for "list users" doesn't get you the list users page first, but another one)
There are over 1600 users registered with the Wiki. This is intolerable. The wiki needs to come down.
Theres no revert button , instead your meant to list the pages history select a previous revision, edit it and save it. A possible solution would be moderated edits ? if media wiki supports this .. Where nothing goes live until it's been approved by a moderator. I think the wiki is a pretty vital resource ... and it's destruction would lead to a great increase in the amount of stupid questions on the list.. think of your own sanity before making snap decisions :P
Alan DeKok. - List info/subscribe/unsubscribe? See http://www.freeradius.org/list/devel.html
Arran Cudbard-Bell wrote:
Theres no revert button , instead your meant to list the pages history select a previous revision, edit it and save it.
That's retarded.
A possible solution would be moderated edits ? if media wiki supports this .. Where nothing goes live until it's been approved by a moderator.
Moderated edits would be best.
I think the wiki is a pretty vital resource ... and it's destruction would lead to a great increase in the amount of stupid questions on the list.. think of your own sanity before making snap decisions :P
The existing Wiki with spam and spam accounts needs to come down. Once we have Wiki software that isn't retarded, we can re-deploy it. Alan DeKok.
On Sunday 08 July 2007 06:24:36 Arran Cudbard-Bell wrote:
Theres no revert button , instead your meant to list the pages history select a previous revision, edit it and save it.
You can go into Recent Changes, click on the diff link, and rollback to the previous revision. Some spammers have figured this out and do multiple edits which make the rollback feature pointless, so you must edit+save an older version of the page to restore content.
A possible solution would be moderated edits ? if media wiki supports this .. Where nothing goes live until it's been approved by a moderator.
They would be nice. I've been cleaning up changes that others miss or get overwhelmed with... just hide patrolled edits in the RecentChanges page (may be sysop only?). That is how I have identified and resolved most of the spam leftovers that fall through the cracks. Kevin Bonner
Alan DeKok wrote:
Alan DeKok wrote:
Can we simply take the Wiki down until it's cleaned of all spam and spamming users?
After some searching on the fscking media wiki site... (Searching for "list users" doesn't get you the list users page first, but another one)
Alan DeKok wrote:
Alan DeKok wrote:
Can we simply take the Wiki down until it's cleaned of all spam and spamming users?
After some searching on the fscking media wiki site... (Searching for "list users" doesn't get you the list users page first, but another one)
There are over 1600 users registered with the Wiki. This is intolerable. The wiki needs to come down.
Alan DeKok. - List info/subscribe/unsubscribe? See http://www.freeradius.org/list/devel.html
The names are pretty easy to spot, but wow how many ?!? I think deleting every username exactly 6 characters long would get rid of nearly all the auto generated accounts, we may lose a few genuine people in the process but all the spam accounts would be gone.
On Sun 08 Jul 2007, Arran Cudbard-Bell wrote:
Alan DeKok wrote:
Alan DeKok wrote:
Can we simply take the Wiki down until it's cleaned of all spam and spamming users?
After some searching on the fscking media wiki site... (Searching for "list users" doesn't get you the list users page first, but another one)
There are over 1600 users registered with the Wiki. This is intolerable. The wiki needs to come down.
Alan DeKok. - List info/subscribe/unsubscribe? See http://www.freeradius.org/list/devel.html
The names are pretty easy to spot, but wow how many ?!?
I think deleting every username exactly 6 characters long would get rid of nearly all the auto generated accounts, we may lose a few genuine people in the process but all the spam accounts would be gone.
mysql> delete from user where user_email='' ; Query OK, 715 rows affected (0.08 sec) Seems to have gotten most of them :-) Lets see how it goes now... Anyone who doesn't have a wiki account and needs one will have to ask one of the admins on the list. Cheers -- Peter Nixon http://www.peternixon.net/ PGP Key: http://www.peternixon.net/public.asc
Anyone who doesn't have a wiki account and needs one will have to ask one of the admins on the list.
Yes please. :) I spent quite a while last year working on spam defenses in MW. Here's a few suggestions: 1) The most common one is ConfirmEdit at: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ConfirmEdit This provides some extra CAPTCHA options, by default only triggered if the new text includes any URL's, and an optional 'stronger' CAPTCHA module. Whatever your personal feelings about CAPTCHA, it remains one of the most effective defenses, although the serious Black Hats are getting pretty sophisticated with OCR techniques to defeat it. But it'll still prevent about 70% of your basic pharmacy and penile extension type bullplop. 2) To address Alan's pet hate of the "no cleanup method", there's a pretty good script at: http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/SpamBlacklist/cle anup.php This script attempts to revert any pages posted to by a subsequently blacklisted entity. 3) The SpamBlackList extensions, at: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SpamBlacklist This allows you to import blacklists from a variety of sources, including the 'official' Meta Wiki blacklist. 4) Another extension I've heard good things about is Bad Behaviour, at: http://www.bad-behavior.ioerror.us/2007/01/08/bad-behavior-209/ Originally developed for WordPress, it has since been integrated into MW. It uses a variety of techniques to identify spam, and is said to be very effective, and will typically catch anything ConfirmEdit doesn't. I haven't actually tried this one though. 5) A standard trick for MW spam is the "hidden CSS spam" technique. This can be blocked by adding this to the LocalSettings.php: $wgSpamRegex = "/\<.*style.*?(display|position|overflow|visibility|height)\s*:.*?>/i"; ... which blocks most of the suspect style attributes used by spammers (i.e. those to do with hiding a div, which almost never get used in 'normal' usage). 6) Another useful trick is to block connections with blank User-Agent (99.999% of the time this will be a spambot). Just add this to a .htaccess file: SetEnvIf User-Agent ^$ spammer=yes Order allow,deny allow from all deny from env=spammer There are dozens of other extensions, and some good 'best practice' docs I can point you at if you are interested. -- hugh
On Sun 08 Jul 2007, Alan DeKok wrote:
Alan DeKok wrote:
Can we simply take the Wiki down until it's cleaned of all spam and spamming users?
After some searching on the fscking media wiki site... (Searching for "list users" doesn't get you the list users page first, but another one)
There are over 1600 users registered with the Wiki. This is intolerable. The wiki needs to come down.
I have already blocked all user creation several weeks ago. (For the second time) but there seems to have been some spam bots which create hundreds of users, wait a few weeks, and then start using a new user each day to spam. Aside from deleting all users and starting again I am not sure what to do :-( -- Peter Nixon http://www.peternixon.net/ PGP Key: http://www.peternixon.net/public.asc
Peter Nixon wrote:
On Sun 08 Jul 2007, Alan DeKok wrote:
Alan DeKok wrote:
Can we simply take the Wiki down until it's cleaned of all spam and spamming users?
After some searching on the fscking media wiki site... (Searching for "list users" doesn't get you the list users page first, but another one)
There are over 1600 users registered with the Wiki. This is intolerable. The wiki needs to come down.
I have already blocked all user creation several weeks ago. (For the second time) but there seems to have been some spam bots which create hundreds of users, wait a few weeks, and then start using a new user each day to spam. Aside from deleting all As stated earlier the spam accounts are easy to spot, they consist of 6 random alpha numeric characters or 10 random numeric characters, there are hundreds ...
I suggest you run a delete query against your authentication database, looking for usernames that match those criteria... you'll get a few proper users, but it'll stop the spam..
On Sun 08 Jul 2007, Alan DeKok wrote:
Can we simply take the Wiki down until it's cleaned of all spam and spamming users?
The authors of the Wiki software should be shot, too.
- blocking users doesn't give an option to revert all their edits
Yes. That is an issue.
- there's no "list of users" page that I can see
http://wiki.freeradius.org/Special:Specialpages http://wiki.freeradius.org/Special:Listusers
- there's no fscking "revert change" button in the history
There is for admins. You account _should_ be an admin. Do you have 2 accounts?
The MediaWiki site claims that those features exist for moderators. Am I missing something, or is the site running a really old version of the software?
No. it is current. -- Peter Nixon http://www.peternixon.net/ PGP Key: http://www.peternixon.net/public.asc
participants (5)
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Alan DeKok -
Arran Cudbard-Bell -
Hugh Messenger -
Kevin Bonner -
Peter Nixon