The advice in the subject line is correct. Users should never be deleted from the table for another reason; you leave a lot of messy references to them lurking about which really does confuse the hell out of the software.
MediaWiki does not support the deletion of users, and likely never will.
Rob Church
The advice in the subject line is correct. Users should never be deleted from the table for another reason; you leave a lot of messy references to them lurking about which really does confuse the hell out of the software.
MediaWiki does not support the deletion of users, and likely never will.
But, how should we react, when there is a user, who _only_ uses his account to put Spam into the wiki? - Is it reasonable not to delete such a user?
Karl Kirst
Hi
On Tue 11-Oct-2005 at 05:37:19PM +0200, Karl-Otto Kirst wrote:
But, how should we react, when there is a user, who _only_ uses his account to put Spam into the wiki? - Is it reasonable not to delete such a user?
I'd like a 'nuke user' option for cases like this -- delete the user, ban the username, undo every edit they ever made and ban all the ip addresses they used, ideally with one click ;-)
...I have been battling with the spambot on several wiki's and wasting a *lot* of time restoring data etc... blah... :-(
Chris
Permanent blocking or scrambling of the password will cripple the account, won't it?
Rob Church
On 11/10/05, Chris Croome chris@webarchitects.co.uk wrote:
Hi
On Tue 11-Oct-2005 at 05:37:19PM +0200, Karl-Otto Kirst wrote:
But, how should we react, when there is a user, who _only_ uses his account to put Spam into the wiki? - Is it reasonable not to delete such a user?
I'd like a 'nuke user' option for cases like this -- delete the user, ban the username, undo every edit they ever made and ban all the ip addresses they used, ideally with one click ;-)
...I have been battling with the spambot on several wiki's and wasting a *lot* of time restoring data etc... blah... :-(
Chris
-- Chris Croome chris@webarchitects.co.uk web design http://www.webarchitects.co.uk/ web content management http://mkdoc.com/ _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
Hi
On Tue 11-Oct-2005 at 05:07:34PM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
Permanent blocking or scrambling of the password will cripple the account, won't it?
Sure, I have been blocking these users till sometime after 2030... but it's still irritating on a wiki with not many users to have dozens of spambot username on the userlist page (eg Cuca76, Buba15, Zuza81 etc etc....).
Perhaps if the users list page also listed the user status this would address this issue...
Chris
ext Rob Church wrote:
The advice in the subject line is correct. Users should never be deleted from the table for another reason; you leave a lot of messy references to them lurking about which really does confuse the hell out of the software.
MediaWiki does not support the deletion of users, and likely never will.
Rob Church _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
Does this not provide a fine attack against Mediawikis: make a bot that generates and register users. After some trillions of random users added the wiki is on its knees.
Why would that be the case? Users are merely a row in a table in a database, as far as the software is concerned, and databases are designed to handle data...
I'm not sure what you think could be exploited.
Rob Church
On 12/10/05, Jani H. Lahtinen jani.h.lahtinen@nokia.com wrote:
ext Rob Church wrote:
The advice in the subject line is correct. Users should never be deleted from the table for another reason; you leave a lot of messy references to them lurking about which really does confuse the hell out of the software.
MediaWiki does not support the deletion of users, and likely never will.
Rob Church _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
Does this not provide a fine attack against Mediawikis: make a bot that generates and register users. After some trillions of random users added the wiki is on its knees.
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
On 10/12/05, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
Why would that be the case? Users are merely a row in a table in a database, as far as the software is concerned, and databases are designed to handle data...
However, it's a relational database, and what's important is maintaining the relationships between the various tables. The user_id (which is the key to the user table is used extensively in other tables. Removing users will destroy the integrity of the database.
An analogy would be that ram chips just hold data, and computers are designed to handle data, so you should be able to rip out arbitrary ram chips...
-- Rick DeNatale
Visit the Project Mercury Wiki Site http://www.mercuryspacecraft.com/
I'm well aware of that. The "why would that be the case" bit is because just creating an account doesn't create anything else, and isn't, in itself, a problem.
Rob Church
On 12/10/05, Rick DeNatale rick.denatale@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/12/05, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
Why would that be the case? Users are merely a row in a table in a database, as far as the software is concerned, and databases are designed to handle data...
However, it's a relational database, and what's important is maintaining the relationships between the various tables. The user_id (which is the key to the user table is used extensively in other tables. Removing users will destroy the integrity of the database.
An analogy would be that ram chips just hold data, and computers are designed to handle data, so you should be able to rip out arbitrary ram chips...
-- Rick DeNatale
Visit the Project Mercury Wiki Site http://www.mercuryspacecraft.com/ _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
On 10/12/05, Rick DeNatale rick.denatale@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/12/05, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
Why would that be the case? Users are merely a row in a table in a database, as far as the software is concerned, and databases are designed to handle data...
However, it's a relational database, and what's important is maintaining the relationships between the various tables. The user_id (which is the key to the user table is used extensively in other tables. Removing users will destroy the integrity of the database.
An analogy would be that ram chips just hold data, and computers are designed to handle data, so you should be able to rip out arbitrary ram chips...
Aah, now I understand.. so really one would have to remove all sorts of entries in the history as well we removing associated users.. or would have to take all references to various users to be deleted and re-reference them to a placeholder user so that the various pages in history (incorrectly) point to _somebody_.
That's correct, and on some projects, that would violate the terms of the licenses they used, e.g. Wikipedia's use of the GFDL means it needs to preserve full and accurate page histories in order to be able to list the contributors.
Rob Church
On 13/10/05, Sy Ali sy1234@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/12/05, Rick DeNatale rick.denatale@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/12/05, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
Why would that be the case? Users are merely a row in a table in a database, as far as the software is concerned, and databases are designed to handle data...
However, it's a relational database, and what's important is maintaining the relationships between the various tables. The user_id (which is the key to the user table is used extensively in other tables. Removing users will destroy the integrity of the database.
An analogy would be that ram chips just hold data, and computers are designed to handle data, so you should be able to rip out arbitrary ram chips...
Aah, now I understand.. so really one would have to remove all sorts of entries in the history as well we removing associated users.. or would have to take all references to various users to be deleted and re-reference them to a placeholder user so that the various pages in history (incorrectly) point to _somebody_. _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
On 12/10/05, Jani H. Lahtinen jani.h.lahtinen@nokia.com wrote:
ext Rob Church wrote:
The advice in the subject line is correct. Users should never be deleted from the table for another reason; you leave a lot of messy references to them lurking about which really does confuse the hell out of the software.
MediaWiki does not support the deletion of users, and likely never will.
Rob Church
Does this not provide a fine attack against Mediawikis: make a bot that generates and register users. After some trillions of random users added the wiki is on its knees.
On 10/12/05, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
Why would that be the case? Users are merely a row in a table in a database, as far as the software is concerned, and databases are designed to handle data...
I'm not sure what you think could be exploited.
Just like there's no way to officially delete old revisions and there's no way to delete users, this is the sort of bloat that unsettles a lot of people. I think I'd have a serious issue with a bot making various random names, filling up slots that are potentially usable by regular users, and which could bloat my database more than I'd like.
Yes, trillians of users would take up a bit of space.. these are the inconveniences which force me to download an ever increasingly-large dump to back up my database..
On 10/12/05, Jani H. Lahtinen jani.h.lahtinen@nokia.com wrote:
Does this not provide a fine attack against Mediawikis: make a bot that generates and register users. After some trillions of random users added the wiki is on its knees.
I supposed, but most of the "evil-doers" seem motivated by wanting to pollute wikispace with referenced to their urls as a means of raising their Google page-rank. Their hope is that they can introduce those urls "quietly" and that they will still be there when the search engine bots do their next scans.
Bringing the wiki to it's needs is counterproductive to their ends.
If this should become a problem though, a better solution would be to introduce measures which limit the ability of bots to register.
-- Rick DeNatale
Visit the Project Mercury Wiki Site http://www.mercuryspacecraft.com/
Hi!
Rob Church <robchur@...> writes:
The advice in the subject line is correct. Users should never be deleted from the table for another reason; you leave a lot of messy references to them lurking about which really does confuse the hell out of the software.
MediaWiki does not support the deletion of users, and likely never will.
Rob Church
I know, this thread is "somewhat" old (it's from October 2005), but still...
Does it still hold true what Rob wrote there? That MediaWiki does not support the deletion of users? Is that still the case in 1.11.0? Or does someone know of an extension which will allow to easily remove user accounts?
Thanks a lot, Michael
Does it still hold true what Rob wrote there? That MediaWiki does not support the deletion of users? Is that still the case in 1.11.0? Or does someone know of an extension which will allow to easily remove user accounts?
It still applies for the same reasons. What are you meant to do with article histories of articles the deleted user edited? A user with no (undeleted) edits can generally be deleted if you really have to (by altering the database manually), but there's rarely any need - you can always rename the user to "DeletedUser1".
Thomas, you probably want the UserMerge extension...
On Jan 18, 2008, at 9:06 AM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
Does it still hold true what Rob wrote there? That MediaWiki does not support the deletion of users? Is that still the case in 1.11.0? Or does someone know of an extension which will allow to easily remove user accounts?
It still applies for the same reasons. What are you meant to do with article histories of articles the deleted user edited? A user with no (undeleted) edits can generally be deleted if you really have to (by altering the database manually), but there's rarely any need - you can always rename the user to "DeletedUser1".
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
On 18/01/2008, dKosopedia admin admin@dkosopedia.com wrote:
Thomas, you probably want the UserMerge extension...
And merge the user to User:DeletedUsers or similar? That's also an option. I prefer DeletedUser1, DeletedUser2 etc. since it's reversible and easier to follow what's going on in an article history if multiple users that edited the article have been "deleted".
mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org