[[User:Instant Karma]] recently made a posting to [[User Talk:Jimbo Wales]] titled "The End Is Nigh", making a series of demands of Wikipedia (such as the removal of most sex-related material, the addition of an attempt to keep minors out of whatever remains in that area, and the removal of most pop-cultural stuff including reducing mention of Star Trek to a single article). It concluded with a threat of unspecified retribution of a "Doomsday Machine" nature which would allegedly result in the destruction of Wikipedia. Just thought you ought to know that we're allegedly all doomed now... :-)
Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines.
Well, we do have an article on [[doomsday machine]]s... not quite the same... but it's something...
FF
On 10/11/06, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines.
-- Oldak Quill (oldakquill@gmail.com) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
You could check out [[m:Worst cases]], which is just a big casserole of [[WP:BEANS]].
---Iki
This user is obviously a nut-job, but this is something we should atleast consider. I remember a while back when a vandalbot started attacking ANI, which effectively shut it down for a long period of time. This was before semi-protection, so today that specific threat could be easily dealt with, but what if he had attacked random articles instead?
It's a fact that there are botnet-operators out there with tens of thousands of computers, and they demand money from websites in exchange for them not being DDoSed. This is not even rare, it's fairly common in this brand new world.
What if one of these people wrote a script and installed it on all of their bots so that they register an account and then randomly attack and vandalise articles? I mean, there could be literally thousands of edits flowing in every minute. Not only would this probably make the servers screech to a grinding halt, it would cause huge damage to the content of the site.
In such an event, what would we do? Semi-protect the entire encyclopedia? Lock the database and quickly install a version control thing, like the germans? Is there anything else? Let's face it, wikipedia is a high-profile target, we need to consider such things.
--Oskar
On 10/11/06, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
[[User:Instant Karma]] recently made a posting to [[User Talk:Jimbo Wales]] titled "The End Is Nigh", making a series of demands of Wikipedia (such as the removal of most sex-related material, the addition of an attempt to keep minors out of whatever remains in that area, and the removal of most pop-cultural stuff including reducing mention of Star Trek to a single article). It concluded with a threat of unspecified retribution of a "Doomsday Machine" nature which would allegedly result in the destruction of Wikipedia. Just thought you ought to know that we're allegedly all doomed now... :-)
-- == Dan == Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/ Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/ Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 11/10/06, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
It's a fact that there are botnet-operators out there with tens of thousands of computers, and they demand money from websites in exchange for them not being DDoSed. This is not even rare, it's fairly common in this brand new world. What if one of these people wrote a script and installed it on all of their bots so that they register an account and then randomly attack and vandalise articles? I mean, there could be literally thousands of edits flowing in every minute. Not only would this probably make the servers screech to a grinding halt, it would cause huge damage to the content of the site.
Some say this has already occurred and the arms race between the bad idiots and the good idiots is really quite advanced now.
- d.
On 10/11/06, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
In such an event, what would we do? Semi-protect the entire encyclopedia? Lock the database and quickly install a version control thing, like the germans? Is there anything else? Let's face it, wikipedia is a high-profile target, we need to consider such things.
--Oskar
[[WP:BEANS]]
But we don have quite a number of different defence options that would handle the senario you talk about.
On 10/11/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/11/06, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
In such an event, what would we do? Semi-protect the entire encyclopedia? Lock the database and quickly install a version control thing, like the germans? Is there anything else? Let's face it, wikipedia is a high-profile target, we need to consider such things.
--Oskar
[[WP:BEANS]]
Ohh, no, there can't possibly be any bad person in the world who has ever heard of a DDoS attack! They don't exist! Infact, I just invented the term!
But we don have quite a number of different defence options that would handle the senario you talk about.
Like what? This is what I was wondering about. In such an event, is there any way to defend ourselves and still be the same encyclopedia.
On 10/11/06, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
But we don have quite a number of different defence options that would handle the senario you talk about.
Like what?
Well, we'd certainly turn on the registration captcha, for one thing.
Ehmm, yeah, ehmm, that was pretty obvious
(/me hides in a corner from embarresment)
--Oskar
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
On 10/11/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/11/06, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
In such an event, what would we do? Semi-protect the entire encyclopedia? Lock the database and quickly install a version control thing, like the germans? Is there anything else? Let's face it, wikipedia is a high-profile target, we need to consider such things.
--Oskar
[[WP:BEANS]]
Ohh, no, there can't possibly be any bad person in the world who has ever heard of a DDoS attack! They don't exist! Infact, I just invented the term!
But we don have quite a number of different defence options that would handle the senario you talk about.
Like what? This is what I was wondering about. In such an event, is there any way to defend ourselves and still be the same encyclopedia.
Given that these mailing lists are available to be read by potential adversaries, it's probably not a good idea to speculate here about what those countermeasures might be...
-- Neil
On 11/10/06, Neil Harris usenet@tonal.clara.co.uk wrote:
Given that these mailing lists are available to be read by potential adversaries, it's probably not a good idea to speculate here about what those countermeasures might be...
One important point that escapes many is that when you try to explain "it's a website the readers can edit", some people immediately go OH NOEZ and list every obvious reason it can't possibly work and the enterprise is provably doomed. Wikipedia cannot possibly work in theory.
Yet somehow it keeps working, pretty much. This is because every single one of the doomsday scenarios has happened and keeps happening and we've learnt to deal with them as part of the normal course of events.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
...when you try to explain "it's a website the readers can edit", some people immediately go OH NOEZ and list every obvious reason it can't possibly work and the enterprise is provably doomed.
"People who believe a thing to be impossible should not stand in the way of those who are doing it."
On 10/11/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/10/06, Neil Harris usenet@tonal.clara.co.uk wrote:
Given that these mailing lists are available to be read by potential adversaries, it's probably not a good idea to speculate here about what those countermeasures might be...
One important point that escapes many is that when you try to explain "it's a website the readers can edit", some people immediately go OH NOEZ and list every obvious reason it can't possibly work and the enterprise is provably doomed. Wikipedia cannot possibly work in theory.
Yet somehow it keeps working, pretty much. This is because every single one of the doomsday scenarios has happened and keeps happening and we've learnt to deal with them as part of the normal course of events.
We thought that about Usenet spam too, once.
We lost that one.
On 10/11/06, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/11/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/10/06, Neil Harris usenet@tonal.clara.co.uk wrote:
Given that these mailing lists are available to be read by potential adversaries, it's probably not a good idea to speculate here about what those countermeasures might be...
One important point that escapes many is that when you try to explain "it's a website the readers can edit", some people immediately go OH NOEZ and list every obvious reason it can't possibly work and the enterprise is provably doomed. Wikipedia cannot possibly work in theory.
Yet somehow it keeps working, pretty much. This is because every single one of the doomsday scenarios has happened and keeps happening and we've learnt to deal with them as part of the normal course of events.
We thought that about Usenet spam too, once.
We lost that one.
That's because Usenet didn't have any good way of reacting quickly to changing threats, or of undoing actions taken by users. Wikipedia has the advantages that any action can be undone faster than it can be done, and that the whole system is centrally managed. If all else fails, the system can be put in read-only mode to give people time to come up with a fix.
On 11/10/06, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/11/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Yet somehow it keeps working, pretty much. This is because every single one of the doomsday scenarios has happened and keeps happening and we've learnt to deal with them as part of the normal course of events.
We thought that about Usenet spam too, once. We lost that one.
Usenet is presently much smaller but still going. The current Cabal ("OK YOU WANTED A CABAL NOW YOU'VE GOT ONE!") are working on how to get people back from web boards. I volunteered to work on an AJAX version of slrn, God help me ...
(And the spam is a lot less. Particularly if you apply vicious filtering to Google Groups, who are now the biggest spam problem site on Usenet and really couldn't give a shit. "Do no evil" apparently doesn't include uncaring negligence.)
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 11/10/06, Neil Harris usenet@tonal.clara.co.uk wrote:
Given that these mailing lists are available to be read by potential adversaries, it's probably not a good idea to speculate here about what those countermeasures might be...
One important point that escapes many is that when you try to explain "it's a website the readers can edit", some people immediately go OH NOEZ and list every obvious reason it can't possibly work and the enterprise is provably doomed. Wikipedia cannot possibly work in theory.
Yet somehow it keeps working, pretty much. This is because every single one of the doomsday scenarios has happened and keeps happening and we've learnt to deal with them as part of the normal course of events.
We've even learned to cope with the chronically paranoid.
Ec
On 10/11/06, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
This user is obviously a nut-job, but this is something we should atleast consider. I remember a while back when a vandalbot started attacking ANI, which effectively shut it down for a long period of time. This was before semi-protection, so today that specific threat could be easily dealt with, but what if he had attacked random articles instead?
It's a fact that there are botnet-operators out there with tens of thousands of computers, and they demand money from websites in exchange for them not being DDoSed. This is not even rare, it's fairly common in this brand new world.
Top-ten websites tend not to be DDoSed with any level of success. As a general rule, if your website can survive a Slashdotting, it can survive anything a botnet operator can throw at it.
On 10/11/06, Mark Wagner carnildo@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/11/06, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
This user is obviously a nut-job, but this is something we should atleast consider. I remember a while back when a vandalbot started attacking ANI, which effectively shut it down for a long period of time. This was before semi-protection, so today that specific threat could be easily dealt with, but what if he had attacked random articles instead?
It's a fact that there are botnet-operators out there with tens of thousands of computers, and they demand money from websites in exchange for them not being DDoSed. This is not even rare, it's fairly common in this brand new world.
Top-ten websites tend not to be DDoSed with any level of success. As a general rule, if your website can survive a Slashdotting, it can survive anything a botnet operator can throw at it.
-- Mark [[User:Carnildo]] _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Please don't say that. Some of the botnets out there have enough firepower to nuke any website in existence, if you don't apply reactive measures upstream.
On 10/11/06, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
What if one of these people wrote a script and installed it on all of their bots so that they register an account and then randomly attack and vandalise articles? I mean, there could be literally thousands of edits flowing in every minute. Not only would this probably make the servers screech to a grinding halt, it would cause huge damage to the content of the site.
In such an event, what would we do? Semi-protect the entire encyclopedia? Lock the database and quickly install a version control thing, like the germans? Is there anything else? Let's face it, wikipedia is a high-profile target, we need to consider such things.
--Oskar
If such a thing became a problem, we could have a developer do an emergency shutdown of the database while the damage is assessed and a more permanent solution is sough to avoid further damage.
Mgm
Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
[[User:Instant Karma]] recently made a posting to [[User Talk:Jimbo Wales]] titled "The End Is Nigh", making a series of demands of Wikipedia (such as the removal of most sex-related material, the addition of an attempt to keep minors out of whatever remains in that area, and the removal of most pop-cultural stuff including reducing mention of Star Trek to a single article). It concluded with a threat of unspecified retribution of a "Doomsday Machine" nature which would allegedly result in the destruction of Wikipedia. Just thought you ought to know that we're allegedly all doomed now... :-)
Haven't I heard this one before?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:216.148.246.134
It caused quite a stir, but September 1, 2004 passed without incident. Hey, maybe it's the same guy! OMG, maybe he's actually *got* a network of proxies and compromised machines this time! The end is nigh!
-- Tim Starling
Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
[[User:Instant Karma]] recently made a posting to [[User Talk:Jimbo Wales]] titled "The End Is Nigh", making a series of demands of Wikipedia (such as the removal of most sex-related material, the addition of an attempt to keep minors out of whatever remains in that area, and the removal of most pop-cultural stuff including reducing mention of Star Trek to a single article). It concluded with a threat of unspecified retribution of a "Doomsday Machine" nature which would allegedly result in the destruction of Wikipedia. Just thought you ought to know that we're allegedly all doomed now... :-)
It would be consistent with the tone set by this user to inform him that Jimbo is in direct communication with God, and that he has been warned by The Man Himself that anyone who advocates quick karmic fixes is evidently a false prophet of Karma.
Ec