Keeping the Spambots at Bay

I've been whacking the spambots with a hammer whenever I have a few minutes (waiting for code to compile, or a long boring meeting that drones on...) but it's quite a bit of work to keep up with the spambots -- around 10 minutes a day every day to keep them at bay. Seems to be 5-10 posts and 20-50 user accounts per day.

Any chance we could get something like this onto the wiki?

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SpamBlacklist

There might be other things in this list that would help:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Anti-spam_features

wow how do you catch these.... I never find that happening. That is a great idea though to implement something like that. It would make sure that there is less spam going around.

Easiest way to spot spam activity is to look at "Recent changes".

is it possible to report the spam bots for removal? or to remove them.... and I have a feeling I found a spam bot....

I found this interesting:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Check_Spambots

also I think we will need a good capcha system for account creation.... (although it`s not fool proof it will help)
I also think we should have audio in case someone was visually impaired.

also if possible it would be nice if we can remove the picture at the bottom and any piece information that states what source we are using for our wiki because it attract bots since they can make source specific bots where it will work across many wikis.

I deleted what the spambotst wrote but I can't ban a spambot and I can't delete the page so may someone do so.

Yea now I see what you means. There are lots of spam bots... way to many....

Hopefully Shane or Tristan can make you an admin so you can delete bot pages and block spambots. Blanking the page works and defeats the link spam, but there's still a weird spam article title lying around in the wiki.

yeah I know, but it's the only thing I can do for now and it's better doing that then nothing.... I will wait till I can see them online.

I have a suggestion to at least get rid of some bots.....
we have a media wiki picture on the right corner.... that attracts bots because they know that they can make one bot that will work for all mediawiki powered wiki's. By removing the picture it will reduce the number of bots. Because we have way to many bots creating pages.... it's ridiculous.

2nd.... we might have to manually add users to the group that allows them to edit pages.....
that would make it more difficult for spambots..

Bots don't find out it's mediawiki from the picture. They use scripts that auto-crawl the web and look for certain PHP files that identify a site as a mediawiki, then add it to a "known site" list and start hammering it. Disguising it wouldn't work.

Oh well at least not to make it so spambots know we are using mediawiki... I thought they use the hyperlink, it's what I found.
Thanks for the info....

I think we need to disable account creation, personally.

Then, if people want to add/edit tutorials on the Wiki (that's the only thing you really need an account for, to be honest), they can ask us here on the forums.


I'm just going to go ahead and disable account creation. I'll write something on the Wiki to that effect later, and add instructions for creating an account.

That's probably for the best. I hate to see barriers going up that would make people a little less likely to jump in and contribute, but those bots will ruin everything if you give them a chance.

agreed.... until we can find ways to limit bots without bothering real human contributors.

Account creation on the wiki has been disabled. Interested parties will need contact Team Wiki for edit access.

Shane