[pydotorg-www] Python Wiki Spam

[M.-A. Lemburg]

On 10.06.2013 15:15, Paul Boddie wrote:
> On Friday 22 March 2013 12:19:05 M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
>> On 20.03.2013 15:30, Barry Warsaw wrote:
>>> On Mar 20, 2013, at 10:08 AM, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
>>>> If we can't get things under control, we will have to start
>>>> using such a group and disable public editing of pages :-(
>>>
>>> FWIW, we've long had this policy on the Mailman wiki.  It was the only
>>> successful way to control spam.  Sign up is open (and yes, we
>>> occasionally have to delete profile spam), but folks have to email the
>>> mailman-cabal to request write/edit access.  We don't get a lot of such
>>> requests, so the process is quite manageable, and we get almost zero spam
>>> now.
>>
>> Did this have an effect on the number of editors of the wiki ?
>>
>> The usual complaint when doing this is that you prevent quick
>> edits (e.g. typo corrections) by raising the bar in this way.
>>
>> After the recent updates to the textchas, the profile spam
>> has apparently stopped:
>>
>>     http://wiki.python.org/jython/RecentChanges
> 
> That no longer seems to be the case. I am also having to remove these stupid 
> profile spams from the Python Wiki two or more times per day.
>
>> So perhaps making the textchas a little more complicated and also
>> starting a process to accept people to the trusted editor group
>> would solve the problem.
> 
> It would be nice to know which textchas the spammers managed to solve, but 
> again I recommend non-trivial challenge questions. The MoinMoin Wiki doesn't 
> suffer from this.

Even though it may seem not to help as well as before,
the TextChas still prevent lots of attempts. The logs are
full of TextCha failures.

The ratio of success to failures in the current log file
(which was started yesterday at 6am UTC) is 16:9677 (!)

> P.S. I'm willing to work on more advanced anti-spam measures, but only if they 
> get used.

In the long run, this would be a good solution. I'd certainly
be willing to add such a solution to the wiki setup.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

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