On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 6:09 PM, Daniel Friesen
<daniel(a)nadir-seen-fire.com> wrote:
On Fri, 24 May 2013 13:41:04 -0700, Al Johnson
<alj62888(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
Maybe mediawiki sites can unite to keep a global list of these IP's and
block them as soon as they are submitted. Each mediawiki site can
auto-submit a spammer IP as soon as it's discovered to the global list.
What are the problems with this idea?
Al
IP blocking simply doesn't work. It's like playing whack-a-mole against a
billion moles (or trillions on trillions once IPv6 really takes off).
There are too many open proxies, botnet machines, etc... and many of them
are either also addresses used by real editors, NAT addresses with editors
on them, or dynamic IPs that will soon be forced on a non-spammer while the
spammer gets an unblocked IP.
From what I've seen, it's probably the least
time-effective technique
for preventing spam, but it is effective against naive
vandals like we
see on
en.wikipedia.org. It may be enough to get a spammer to move on
to easier targets. I'd be interested in hearing if any smaller wikis
have tried this and found it to work or not work.
The proper way to deal with this spam is not by IP but
by content. We need
some people who are knowledgeable about matching spam by training programs
with spam and non-spam. That's the kind of central database that would be
useful. An extension that sends spam (and after awhile things marked
non-spam) to a central database. A community on that database that vets
valid and invalid submissions. And eventually a mode for that extension that
will start using information generated from that data to start filtering out
spam edits.
I've actually already thought about this and thought about how to make it
friendly to users when their edits accidentally end up considered spam:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Dantman/Anti-spam_system
We have a gsoc proposal from Anubhav, who wants to create a bayesan filter:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Anubhav_iitr/Bayesan_spam_filter
The primary target for that project is smaller wikis, so I'm sure he
would appreciate input and feedback on that project if it gets
accepted.
--
~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [
http://danielfriesen.name/]
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