LeafLabs Garden

A place to share, learn, and grow...

1. 

   Adam
   Member

   There seems to be a lot of link spam in the wiki - pages created by spammers. For instance:

   http://wiki.leaflabs.com/index.php?title=I_wish_today_was_payday_19
   http://wiki.leaflabs.com/index.php?title=Omqq_Ex_Boyfriend_Alert_26
   http://wiki.leaflabs.com/index.php?title=They_already_launched_a_phone_before_the_One_97

   You can see a lot more here:

   http://wiki.leaflabs.com/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&days=30&limit=500

   Perhaps a spam filter or blocker is in order? Here is a page on combating spam in MediaWikis:

   http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Combating_spam

   Here's a MediaWiki extension that blocks edits that contain URLs on a black hole list:

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

   Posted 4 years ago #
2. 

   StephenFromNYC
   Moderator

   Hello-

   Good catch Adam.

   If you go slightly further back (more than 30 days) it appears the spam started on February 23, 2011.

   Stephen from NYC (full disclosure: I am not a member of the LeafLabs staff)

   Posted 4 years ago #
3. 

   mbolivar
   LeafLabs

   Adam,

   Thanks for the pointers!

   Posted 4 years ago #
4. 

   littlekoala
   Member

   There was also a spam in the main page. I am just wondering that everyone can make a change in wiki without having an account at all.

   Posted 4 years ago #
5. 

   mikep
   Member

   In the past few days most of the spam seems to come from IP 188.143.232.20 (appears to be St. Petersburg, Russia). Maybe at least IP addresses of spammers can be blocked by the Wiki software?

   Posted 4 years ago #
6. 

   mbolivar
   LeafLabs

   littlekoala,

   it's a tough tradeoff between encouraging anyone to contribute and keeping out the spammers. for now, we're trying to get more community contributions, so we're keeping things very permissive.

   mikep,

   yeah, that's a good idea. we'll look into it.

   Posted 4 years ago #
7. 

   mbolivar
   LeafLabs

   ok, 188.143.232.20 has been temporarily blocked.

   edit: and 173.208.18.213

   edit: and a whole ton of others: http://wiki.leaflabs.com/index.php?title=Special:Log/block

   blocking everyone for 1 month; if they come back, the block time will increase.

   Posted 4 years ago #
8. 

   gbulmer
   Moderator

   LeafLabs - The wiki is a bit broken.

   For example:
   http://wiki.leaflabs.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

   has been destroyed.
   "Main Page
   3gQh7n < a href="http://uyjfmgoeicio.com/" >uyjfmgoeicio< /a >"

   Posted 4 years ago #
9. 

   becker
   Member

   I reverted and erased a whole bunch of link spam / vandalism this morning.

   I took a bit of a risk doing this, as a Wiki edit log is easy to misinterpret. And my name is now the last one on pages with titles that are obvious spam. Try to remember that I was the one cleaning up, not one vandal.

   Posted 4 years ago #
10. 

    becker
    Member

    This spammer is persistent. He keep coming back and changing the just-repaired pages.

    Some of the changes seem to be simple vandalism: substituting nonsense and short mis-spelled sentences. But later the same pages used for link spam. So I suspect the two changes are coordinated to make the spam more difficult to automatically block.

    Posted 4 years ago #
11. 

    BruceF
    Member

    You're right becker, that's some persistent spamming, but I don't think it's difficult for the wiki-aware to understand your reversions. I think LeafLabs needs to promote a few wiki-wackers the same way they promoted some forum members to moderator status. That way the OCD community can clean the wiki and staff can focus on getting Oak out the door. ;)

    Posted 4 years ago #
12. 

    gbulmer
    Moderator

    Is it possible to restrict access to the wiki to members?
    I accept that might be a disincentive to add to the wiki, but right now, it may be an even bigger annoyance to have pages disappear.

    Posted 4 years ago #
13. 

    poslathian
    LeafLabs

    Thanks everyone for their vigilance. We are working on restoring a recent snapshot of the wiki and upgrading our mediawiki server. Thankfully its running on a separate server, which makes maintenance a lot easier!

    Posted 4 years ago #
14. 

    mbolivar
    LeafLabs

    becker,

    Thanks for all your help on the Wiki. We've noticed all the pages you've been fixing, and we really appreciate it.

    For now, I'm just watching the recent changes pages closely, and blocking any IPs that vandalize or spam for 3 months or so. Hopefully that will help stem the tide until we get something better. I don't want to restrict editing to members only on such a young wiki, as I worry that it will really discourage the sort of one-off edits that help to contribute towards critical mass. However, it may be reasonable to restrict the creation of new pages to registered members, and put a solid CAPTCHA on the registration page.

    Posted 4 years ago #
15. 

    rednaxela
    Member

    IIRC, CAPTCHA plugins for Mediawiki often support a mode where you allow anonymous edits, but it asks for a CAPTCHA to be solved if the edit is a change that involved a URL. That would stop the spam in it's tracks while being minimally intrusive.

    Posted 4 years ago #

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