Maybe we could use rate control to reduce spam. phpBB has a similar control I believe. I don't know how effective these schemes are but it might help ease the pain of reverting everything back. This probably requires a new table with ip addresses/user-ids and the time of last update. Whenever a new update is submitted: . check the time of previous update attempt if exists in the table from this user or ip . if the time between these two requests is too short, show a warning that the user has to wait a minute or whatever to send a new update
How long the program should wait can be determined empirically. It should be made sure that whenever a warning is shown, user's contributions are not lost. it would be really frustrating to lose it because of a stupid software thinking you're a bot. And this table can be cleared periodically, say every hour, to remove old records.
Mike Valstar wrote:
you could:
- enable blocking of ip blocks (see defaultsettings.php) then block
69.50.0.0/16
change your settings to only allow people who are logged in to edit
run a wiki bot, give that bot the ability to block suspected spammers
(this is what i do)
The first will only help for a short while, there are many spammers, with all the wiki-mania going on on the web spammers see a great opertunity to increase their google rank
the second works pretty well (there are a few bots that get through, but no plan is perfect), but for a wiki that is starting out i concider this an early death to the wiki unless you already have a good readership and editorship
the 3rd works, but there are no public bots specifically made for this that i know of off hand, I am currently building mine by hand and will be releaseing it to the public when i feel its ready, if you want a preview copy .. mail me and i'll see what i can do (my current version is very rudimentary but blocks 95% of spammers, it still dosent auto revert)
Mike Valstar http://gentoo-wiki.com
Andy Roberts wrote:
Hi all, This is my first contribution, I have a few queries and I hope somebody can help me find the solutions or information I need.
Problem: I have a mediawiki running on a hosted web server ( ie not on my own computer ) which is being repeatedly spammed by a bot or bots which not only edits multiple pages inserting hundreds of porn links and so on, but also creates lots of new pages and talk pages.
according to the version page, the wiki is running on MediaWiki (http://wikipedia.sf.net/): 1.3.5 PHP (http://www.php.net/): 4.3.10 (apache) MySQL (http://www.mysql.com/): 4.0.24-standard-log
I can access the database using phpMyAdmin 2.6.3
The spammer(s) use IP addresses which vary, but always begin with 69.50. So what I can do for now, after a spam attack, is to log in as WikiSysop, block the individual IP number, go through reverting all the pages and deleting the newly created ones. Then I go to the phpMyAdmin page and run a few stored scripts which delete all the unwanted edits from both 'old' and 'recentchanges' , empty archive , and then the database is back to normal without expanding unmanageably.
My main question is :
How can I block the entire range of IP addresses like 69.50.* ??
Any help much appreciated, as I am determined to try and keep this wiki open to all and not concede to the spambots.
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