so many new spam pages, what to do?

i usually check the recent changes page on the wiki, and it looks like there is a concerted spam attack going on with the wiki. i don't think just deleting the content and banning the user is the best approach. I don't want to discourage participation, but there's gotta be a better way to keep out bots. is there a better turing test we can use? or have users request on the forum before editing the wiki is allowed?

what about having admins review new pages before they go live? i don't know what's possible with the wiki software we're using, but the current level of spam sucks.

So...how to find out who the wiki-admins are and how to contact them?

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:-) good question. i was kinda hoping they'd just happen along to this thread...

Well, we're somewhat busy deleting spam.

I'll have a word with Buzz and Dave about deploying a new mediawiki extension; there may be a technical solution.

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-Sebastien, RepRap.org library gnome.

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Remember, you're all RepRap developers (once you've joined the super-secret developer mailing list), and the wiki, RepRap.org, [reprap.org] is for everyone and everything!

i was just thinking that it might be less work to have something like a user white list. Once a user posts a edit, it isn't displayed till someone (any other white-listed user, i.e. a human and not just admins) confirms the edit as not spam and the user gets added to the whitelist. After the user is white-listed, their comments won't need to be verified.

any spambot that slips through can be blacklisted as normally done by the admins.

i wish i could code, so that i could write up the extension myself.

anyway, just an idea. Thanks Sebastien!

The easiest way to stop automated spam is a captcha: Require the user to read text/numbers from an image and type them down.
Pro: Lots of ready to use solutions available.
Con: This won't stop vandals and dedicated spammers.

Mediawiki has a page on fighting spam: [www.mediawiki.org]

... this was tried and refined several times, but the spam-bot-programmers are clever enough to brake the normal captchas

One common methode is to copy the questioned captchas to another site and let unsuspecting human users solve them to generate access to a complete different site (most some casino games or such) ... then the answer is transferred to the spam-bot too, so it can penetrate the 'defense'

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Viktor
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