Hi,
We're currently looking into solutions for accommodating multiple wikis. We have cross-login figured out with wgSharedDB, but has there been any work done to share blocked IP lists and spam blacklists across wikis? We were hoping to find a solution that would a) allow admins to maintain these lists without leaving their familiar wiki, while b) having 1 central version that was free from cross-wiki admin privileges and synchronization problems (i.e. a Spanish user should be able to add or remove a blacklist site without leaving the Spanish wiki, but this change would be immediately available to the English wiki).
Has there been any thought been put into this? Are there any wikis doing this right now? I have a few basic ideas about possible solutions, but would like to find out if anyone has spent any time on this first.
Thanks, Travis
If you're using MySQL 5+, and if all the databases are running on the same MySQL instance, you could have one blocklist table in one database, then use Views to replicate that table across.
I haven't tried this - just a thought :)
-- Jim R. Wilson (jimbojw)
On 4/20/07, Travis Derouin travis@wikihow.com wrote:
Hi,
We're currently looking into solutions for accommodating multiple wikis. We have cross-login figured out with wgSharedDB, but has there been any work done to share blocked IP lists and spam blacklists across wikis? We were hoping to find a solution that would a) allow admins to maintain these lists without leaving their familiar wiki, while b) having 1 central version that was free from cross-wiki admin privileges and synchronization problems (i.e. a Spanish user should be able to add or remove a blacklist site without leaving the Spanish wiki, but this change would be immediately available to the English wiki).
Has there been any thought been put into this? Are there any wikis doing this right now? I have a few basic ideas about possible solutions, but would like to find out if anyone has spent any time on this first.
Thanks, Travis
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 4/20/07, Travis Derouin travis@wikihow.com wrote:
Has there been any thought been put into this? Are there any wikis doing this right now? I have a few basic ideas about possible solutions, but would like to find out if anyone has spent any time on this first.
MW has DNSBL support, I believe, so if you create a front-end for sysops to maintain one of those, you could use that for wiki-wide IP bans without modifying the software. It was suggested that perhaps Wikimedia could set up a server to portscan people trying to edit to ensure that they aren't open relays or whatnot. I don't think any of this infrastructure is in place for crosswiki username blocks, although I could be wrong.
See also: http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8707
On Fri, Apr 20, 2007 at 05:20:25PM -0400, Simetrical wrote:
bans without modifying the software. It was suggested that perhaps Wikimedia could set up a server to portscan people trying to edit to ensure that they aren't open relays or whatnot.
[[Jargon:Sorcerer's Apprentice Mode]]
Cheers, -- jra
Travis Derouin wrote:
Hi,
We're currently looking into solutions for accommodating multiple wikis. We have cross-login figured out with wgSharedDB, but has there been any work done to share blocked IP lists and spam blacklists across wikis? We were hoping to find a solution that would a) allow admins to maintain these lists without leaving their familiar wiki, while b) having 1 central version that was free from cross-wiki admin privileges and synchronization problems (i.e. a Spanish user should be able to add or remove a blacklist site without leaving the Spanish wiki, but this change would be immediately available to the English wiki).
Has there been any thought been put into this? Are there any wikis doing this right now? I have a few basic ideas about possible solutions, but would like to find out if anyone has spent any time on this first.
Spam blacklist is being shared between Wikimedia projects http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Spam_blacklist
On 4/20/07, Travis Derouin travis@wikihow.com wrote:
...has there been any work done to share blocked IP lists and spam blacklists across wikis
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SpamBlacklist_extension can be made to use Wikimedia's spam blacklist or one from any other MediaWiki site. It's best to use it in conjunction with the spam whitelist in case Wikimedia are blocking sites you don't think need to be blocked.
For blocking IPs and usernames across wikis, Wikia have developed RegexBlock. See http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:RegexBlock
There is also Wikia's SpamRegex which is useful for blocking non-URL spam. See http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/SpamRegex/
Angela
Hi,
Thanks everyone for the responses.
I'm familiar with the Spam blacklist extension and how Wikipedia is sharing it by hosting it on meta. We also downloading and making use of this blacklist daily. While the meta setup is a good solution, I'm not sure it's the right one for our set of wikis. I would ideally like to see a solution where:
1. There is only one copy of our blacklist and changes to the blacklist are immediately available to all wikiHow sites. If we can't share a IP block list, having additions to the blacklist be immediately available to the other languages could be really beneficial in a case of a cross language spambot attack, etc. It's my understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) that the meta blacklist is only periodically updated to all of the different Wikipedia sites. Having only one copy also eliminates any synchronization problems.
2. I would ideally like to see a solution where admins don't have to leave their familiar wiki (i.e. Spanish wikiHow) to update the blacklist. We strive to make our wiki as user friendly as possible and as easy to maintain as possible. I think the workflow of expecting an admin to navigate to a different wiki and login to submit an edit to update a blacklist would be an unrealistic expectation for our admins and could be improved. Plus, I wouldn't look forward to maintaining a separate wiki just for the blacklist!
I've written an extension (SpamDiffTool) that streamlines the addition of domains an URLs to our blacklist, most of the edits to our blacklist come from this tool:
http://www.wikihow.com/Spam-Blacklist?action=history
(the edits with the comment Adding to Spam Blacklist come from the extension)
I was thinking it might be possible to extend this tool to point to one target blacklist on, perhaps on the English wikiHow, so that all other edits from other languages would end up in this version. There would be potential protection issues, since ES admins wouldn't have privileges to edit the protected EN page, but I think a workaround for this is doable. Other features for listing and removing entries from the blacklist would also have to be added.
If anyone has any other suggestions or comments, I'd appreciate hearing them.
Thanks, Travis
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org