On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 7:22 AM, juan santos juansre@gmail.com wrote:

Hi!! I'm having a HUGE problem with the spamming in my wiki ( http://www.realzaragozapedia.es). I've installed the Confirm Edit and set up the User Registration to "false"...but the wiki don't have much sense with these parameters. Also I'm using the "Merge and Delete" extension, wich is a tedious an very slow way to delete all of the 7000 spam accounts registered in my wiki. Is there any faster way to do that? (I mean, preserving the database integrity ).

I'd suggest installing and using the ConfirmAccount extension until you have the problem worked out.

Thanks for your help and sorry for my english. Juan _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

I run a Wiki for students of Japanese Religion and had spam problems too, for some time. In the moment, I am doing quite well with Confirm Edit + CaptchaQuestions. When people want to register they have to do a simple Japanese test. Thus I can be fairly sure that only human users who know some basic Japanese become registered users. Only registered users have edit rights.

Perhaps it is a good idea to control user registration by easy topic related test questions.

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: mediawiki-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] Im Auftrag von juan santos Gesendet: Freitag, 8. November 2013 13:22 An: mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org Betreff: [MediaWiki-l] Serious Spam Problem

Hi!! I'm having a HUGE problem with the spamming in my wiki ( http://www.realzaragozapedia.es). I've installed the Confirm Edit and set up the User Registration to "false"...but the wiki don't have much sense with these parameters. Also I'm using the "Merge and Delete" extension, wich is a tedious an very slow way to delete all of the 7000 spam accounts registered in my wiki. Is there any faster way to do that? (I mean, preserving the database integrity ). Thanks for your help and sorry for my english. Juan _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

Hi!! I'm having a HUGE problem with the spamming in my wiki ( http://www.realzaragozapedia.es). I've installed the Confirm Edit and set up the User Registration to "false"...but the wiki don't have much sense with these parameters. Also I'm using the "Merge and Delete" extension, wich is a tedious an very slow way to delete all of the 7000 spam accounts registered in my wiki. Is there any faster way to do that? (I mean, preserving the database integrity ). Thanks for your help and sorry for my english. Juan

I've had good luck with this sort of addition to LocalSettings.php

require_once "$IP/extensions/ConfirmEdit/QuestyCaptcha.php"; $wgCaptchaClass = 'QuestyCaptcha'; $wgCaptchaQuestions[] = array( 'question' => "Four score and seven is?", 'answer' => "87" ); $wgCaptchaQuestions[] = array( 'question' => '3 lustrum are?', 'answer' => '15 years' ); $wgCaptchaQuestions[] = array( 'question' => "There are 24 hours in a?", 'answer' => "day" ); $wgCaptchaQuestions[] = array( 'question' => "Deutsch means what in English?", 'answer' => "German" ); $wgCaptchaQuestions[] = array( 'question' => "If TX is Texas CO is ", 'answer' => "Colorado" ); $wgCaptchaQuestions[] = array( 'question' => "If United States is US United Kingdom is", 'answer' => "UK" ); $wgCaptchaQuestions[] = array( 'question' => "Symbol for US dollar", 'answer' => "$" ); $wgCaptchaQuestions[] = array( 'question' => "If minus is - plus is", 'answer' => "+" );

$wgGroupPermissions['*' ]['skipcaptcha'] = false; $wgGroupPermissions['user' ]['skipcaptcha'] = false; $wgGroupPermissions['autoconfirmed']['skipcaptcha'] = true; $wgGroupPermissions['bot' ]['skipcaptcha'] = true; // registered bots $wgGroupPermissions['sysop' ]['skipcaptcha'] = true;

$wgGroupPermissions['emailconfirmed']['skipcaptcha'] = true; $ceAllowConfirmedEmail = true;

$wgCaptchaTriggers['edit'] = true; $wgCaptchaTriggers['create'] = true; $wgCaptchaTriggers['addurl'] = true; $wgCaptchaTriggers['createaccount'] = true; $wgCaptchaTriggers['badlogin'] = true;

Use questions which which have simple unambiguous answers for your audience and change them when the spammers begin programing their bots to answer them.

If you can access your database with phpMyAdmin you can manually delete spam users from table user. This sounds easy, but can be quite confusing as it is hard to remember or determine which of the 7,000 users are actual users who made an account in good faith, although the strange sy87XVisabelgodfrey type names offer a clue. This can also be done with mysql itself, but there is no GUI and you have to know to use mysql commands to manually delete the rows in the table; trying to figure this out can break your brain, or at least produce a mild headache...

If you can't do that at your present host, assuming you have money and time to do so, back up your wiki, lease a host for a month that has the Parallels Plesk Panel with support for phpMyAdmin (some have it disabled) import your database and work on it then reimport it into your present host. Email me privately for one host and configuration which I know has this.

Fred

Create a list of all the spam pages from Special:AllPages then load that into extension delete batch. Set the wiki so that only registered users can edit. Extension Confirm Edit won't stop spammers adding accounts and they can get around some Captchas. Instead use extension Confirm Account to keep spammers from registering accounts - then you won't need Confirm Edit nor possibly Abuse Filter. However Confirm Account asks too for much at registering. Try to set it so that it only has one box asking for some info that will help identify the request as legitimate.

Rob

________________________________ From: juan santos juansre@gmail.com To: mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, 8 November 2013, 12:22 Subject: [MediaWiki-l] Serious Spam Problem

Hi!! I'm having a HUGE problem with the spamming in my wiki ( http://www.realzaragozapedia.es). I've installed the Confirm Edit and set up the User Registration to "false"...but the wiki don't have much sense with these parameters. Also I'm using the "Merge and Delete" extension, wich is a tedious an very slow way to delete all of the 7000 spam accounts registered in my wiki. Is there any faster way to do that? (I mean, preserving the database integrity ). Thanks for your help and sorry for my english. Juan _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l