Just thought I'd announce this here, in case it's of use:
About an hour ago, I checked in a PHP script which checks the database for users who haven't made edits, and deletes them. It runs from the command line (phpShell seems fine with it, too) and works relatively quickly.
You'll be able to find it in both HEAD and in REL_1_5; look in the maintenance directories. This will work with 1.5.x and 1.6, and is impossible to misuse. The first user in the table won't be touched, ever, as that's usually the site owner and default bureaucrat on most wikis. I'm considering adding functionality to remove users who haven't made an edit in X amount of time, too, which won't be too much trouble to add, I shouldn't think.
Enjoy,
Rob Church
On Wed, 04 Jan 2006, Rob Church wrote:
Just thought I'd announce this here, in case it's of use:
About an hour ago, I checked in a PHP script which checks the database for users who haven't made edits, and deletes them. It runs from the command line (phpShell seems fine with it, too) and works relatively quickly.
Thats cool. I have lots of unused acounts registered on my mediawiki installations. I think most of them are from spambots which never posted or got blocked by SpamBlacklist.
This probably makes sense on wikipedia too, as I guess there are a lot of spambot sleepers, which are now useful with the x%/can't edit blocks.
christof
that will be very useful....
thanks Rob...
-Isaac ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rob Church" robchur@gmail.com To: "MediaWiki announcements and site admin list" mediawiki-l@wikimedia.org Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 6:53 AM Subject: [Mediawiki-l] Deleting unused accounts
Just thought I'd announce this here, in case it's of use:
About an hour ago, I checked in a PHP script which checks the database for users who haven't made edits, and deletes them. It runs from the command line (phpShell seems fine with it, too) and works relatively quickly.
You'll be able to find it in both HEAD and in REL_1_5; look in the maintenance directories. This will work with 1.5.x and 1.6, and is impossible to misuse. The first user in the table won't be touched, ever, as that's usually the site owner and default bureaucrat on most wikis. I'm considering adding functionality to remove users who haven't made an edit in X amount of time, too, which won't be too much trouble to add, I shouldn't think.
Enjoy,
Rob Church _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
On 1/4/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
About an hour ago, I checked in a PHP script which checks the database for users who haven't made edits, and deletes them. It runs from the command line (phpShell seems fine with it, too) and works relatively quickly.
Other feature ideas:
* Delete a specific user * Delete a regex of users -- build the list and display it, and then ask for confirmation on that list (probably an overkill feature) * Perform deletions based on their last visit -- i.e. delete a user which hasn't visited in x amount of time. * Email a user that is to be deleted. "Hi there, you haven't visited example.com so your account has been automatically deleted."
There is no real inline functionality to pull up an overview list of users and display information about their last login, last edit or the like.. a separate script to do that would be cool. Then the deletion script could use the user display script to get its information, and act accordingly.
All of that available through mediawiki itself would be cool. Is it possible to have a special page which acts as a simple gateway to any script in the maintenance directory?
Oooh, feedback...
* I'm working on a simple DeleteUser special page. It's got pushed to the back burner due to other concerns right now, but I'll check it in at some point.
* I was toying with the idea of deleting users who hadn't edited within a certain time period as it is...
Thanks for the feedback. I'll keep it all in mind for the next incarnation. ;-)
Rob Church
On 07/01/06, Sy Ali sy1234@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/4/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
About an hour ago, I checked in a PHP script which checks the database for users who haven't made edits, and deletes them. It runs from the command line (phpShell seems fine with it, too) and works relatively quickly.
Other feature ideas:
- Delete a specific user
- Delete a regex of users -- build the list and display it, and then
ask for confirmation on that list (probably an overkill feature)
- Perform deletions based on their last visit -- i.e. delete a user
which hasn't visited in x amount of time.
- Email a user that is to be deleted. "Hi there, you haven't visited
example.com so your account has been automatically deleted."
There is no real inline functionality to pull up an overview list of users and display information about their last login, last edit or the like.. a separate script to do that would be cool. Then the deletion script could use the user display script to get its information, and act accordingly.
All of that available through mediawiki itself would be cool. Is it possible to have a special page which acts as a simple gateway to any script in the maintenance directory? _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
is the plan to have this lock usernames too? I think it would be cool to make a page that says: user account unavailible due to such and such reason, like all of the accounts that try to impersonate jimbo that curps keeps blocking, etc. possibly blocking other names that have a 99% chance of being used as a sockpuppet account in the future too? such as by sollog.
Just a though. Kyle
Rob Church wrote:
Oooh, feedback...
- I'm working on a simple DeleteUser special page. It's got pushed to
the back burner due to other concerns right now, but I'll check it in at some point.
- I was toying with the idea of deleting users who hadn't edited
within a certain time period as it is...
Thanks for the feedback. I'll keep it all in mind for the next incarnation. ;-)
Rob Church
On 07/01/06, Sy Ali sy1234@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/4/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
About an hour ago, I checked in a PHP script which checks the database for users who haven't made edits, and deletes them. It runs from the command line (phpShell seems fine with it, too) and works relatively quickly.
Other feature ideas:
- Delete a specific user
- Delete a regex of users -- build the list and display it, and then
ask for confirmation on that list (probably an overkill feature)
- Perform deletions based on their last visit -- i.e. delete a user
which hasn't visited in x amount of time.
- Email a user that is to be deleted. "Hi there, you haven't visited
example.com so your account has been automatically deleted."
There is no real inline functionality to pull up an overview list of users and display information about their last login, last edit or the like.. a separate script to do that would be cool. Then the deletion script could use the user display script to get its information, and act accordingly.
All of that available through mediawiki itself would be cool. Is it possible to have a special page which acts as a simple gateway to any script in the maintenance directory? _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
Er, no...this is a maintenance script to delete unused accounts from the database. ;-)
Rob Church
On 07/01/06, Kyle Lutze kyle@randomvoids.com wrote:
is the plan to have this lock usernames too? I think it would be cool to make a page that says: user account unavailible due to such and such reason, like all of the accounts that try to impersonate jimbo that curps keeps blocking, etc. possibly blocking other names that have a 99% chance of being used as a sockpuppet account in the future too? such as by sollog.
Just a though. Kyle
Rob Church wrote:
Oooh, feedback...
- I'm working on a simple DeleteUser special page. It's got pushed to
the back burner due to other concerns right now, but I'll check it in at some point.
- I was toying with the idea of deleting users who hadn't edited
within a certain time period as it is...
Thanks for the feedback. I'll keep it all in mind for the next incarnation. ;-)
Rob Church
On 07/01/06, Sy Ali sy1234@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/4/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
About an hour ago, I checked in a PHP script which checks the database for users who haven't made edits, and deletes them. It runs from the command line (phpShell seems fine with it, too) and works relatively quickly.
Other feature ideas:
- Delete a specific user
- Delete a regex of users -- build the list and display it, and then
ask for confirmation on that list (probably an overkill feature)
- Perform deletions based on their last visit -- i.e. delete a user
which hasn't visited in x amount of time.
- Email a user that is to be deleted. "Hi there, you haven't visited
example.com so your account has been automatically deleted."
There is no real inline functionality to pull up an overview list of users and display information about their last login, last edit or the like.. a separate script to do that would be cool. Then the deletion script could use the user display script to get its information, and act accordingly.
All of that available through mediawiki itself would be cool. Is it possible to have a special page which acts as a simple gateway to any script in the maintenance directory? _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
On 1/7/06, Kyle Lutze kyle@randomvoids.com wrote:
is the plan to have this lock usernames too? I think it would be cool to make a page that says: user account unavailible due to such and such reason, like all of the accounts that try to impersonate jimbo that curps keeps blocking, etc. possibly blocking other names that have a 99% chance of being used as a sockpuppet account in the future too? such as by sollog.
That would be a good feature request for mediawiki itself.
Maybe a list of regexes of usernames. I could think of a number of cussword or political usernames which ought to be banned.
This would be important for particularly high-popularity wikis. I wouldn't need to use it, but it would be a sensible feature to see.
With a basic search, it looks like this feature has not been requested yet: http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=specific&order=re...
Request it.. report back, and I'll vote on it. =)
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