Talk:Spammers

There has to be a way to block those spammers - perhaps you could validate the email address of new users before they are allowed to post something? Satan Claus 14:43, 12 December 2005 (GMT)

Do we have a spammer problem now? I've only seen a couple of new, but blank talk pages? -no_skill 17:44, 12 December 2005 (GMT)

They're not blank, they have drug ads at the bottom and considerable amounts of hidden text. I told snaff (Mike) about it earlier yesterday. Emails or more wiki contributors with semi-administartor rights would stop much of this vandalism. Iignotus 19:50, 12 December 2005 (GMT)

Now I've seen some of the deleted things - really bad stuff happening. I'm the crap was detected and removed that fast. Admin rights for some users might really help.

The blocker seems to be working, the spambot turned up at the same time again last night and the log shows it was denied access to about 50 requests. On the down side there have been a few pages denied to what looks like a legitimate user - it might be a quirk with the version of Opera they're using or some proxy or firewall they're behind. If anyone has problems please say. -- Mike 09:34, 14 December 2005 (GMT)

Removed some blocks, spammers returned, put lowercase 'via' header test back in. Mike 08:53, 20 December 2005 (GMT)

Fighting back

The spammers are operating from IPs all over, so they're probably compromised hosts that they've installed proxies on.

As of 13/12/05 the Bad Behaviour MediaWiki extension is installed. Hopefully this will catch them, but we'll have to keep an eye on things and see. See Talk:Spammers for discussion.

As of x/03/05 the spam problem is pretty much back. Please help reverting pages and/or killing spammers.

I've reverted 10 pages today, but we need a more effective system. Can we just block a user and revert all of their edits in one click somehow? Yono 09:14, 15 March 2006 (PST)

That'd be cool. But in the long run blocking spammers right away would be even cooler. I wonder how wikipedia handels this. Btw: I think what the world needs is... an open source anti-spammer ddos tool/network ;) -no_skill 15:14, 15 March 2006 (PST)

Haha, yeah, we all could use something like that. I'm suprised the Bad Behaviour extension is letting them in. I think wikipedia just has a large number of admins which take out spam brute force style. Yono 15:43, 15 March 2006 (PST)

Enter Letters in the Image Approach

I just took out like ten pages worth. HomestarRunner wiki has an extension that adds a "enter the letters in the image" box at the end of the edit page... a inconvenience, but it would get rid of the bots, and maybe it could be uninstalled after a while and the bots hopefully would continue to ignore the site... --Mudi 15:51, 15 March 2006 (PST)

I would be careful with such extensions. While they certainly do TEH JOB for beating spam users could get quite upset and stop contributing. Hmm.... is there an extension that requires a letter-image thingy on login? Everyday users would only be bothered once (I assume a reasonable person always chooses -keep-me-logged-in-) and bots would be, well, screwed. -no_skill 15:54, 15 March 2006 (PST)

We don't need it after every edit, just on the signup page. Problem solved. :) Yono 16:29, 15 March 2006 (PST)

Email address confirmation

Confirmation of email address is now required before new users can edit pages.

 A message to the spammers is in place, indicating to them the folly of their endeavours.

Spammers are back

May need something else to protect the wiki.... An email address to confirm is not enough!