[Mediawiki-l] Deleting a user account

[Netocrat]

On Wed, 31 May 2006 17:02:38 -0700, Jeff Lane wrote:

> We do this, but I've still found that I'm wanting to delete spammer
> accounts for the following reasons:
> 
> 1. The spammer accounts are very old and dormant.
> 2. The spammers continue to make new accounts.
> 3. The user list needlessly grows with many banned accounts.
> 4. The accounts often have usernames that are desired by real users.

This approach might be useful for you:
a) add a 'spambot' group with restricted rights to LocalSettings.php:
$wgGroupPermissions['spambot']['read']          = false;
$wgGroupPermissions['spambot']['edit']          = false;
$wgGroupPermissions['spambot']['move']          = false;
$wgGroupPermissions['spambot']['upload']        = false;
... any other rights that you need to block ...
b) add the spam accounts to that group - manually or by sql
c) apply a patch [*] to hide spam accounts from a default user listing,
and enable it by adding to LocalSettings.php:
$wgHiddenGroups = array('spambot');

This deals with 3 and slightly with 1; it assumes that mostly 1 can be
ignored, and that 2 needs to be handled by other protective means - e.g.
Rob Church's UsernameBlacklist.php extension.  To handle 4 you'd need to
rename the account e.g. using Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason's Renameuser.php
extension, but you seem to have a handle on that part already.

If you capture a full enough set of restricted rights, there is also no
longer a need to block the accounts (although you might consider it wise
or appropriate to block them anyway).

[*]
<http://clc-test.flash-gordon.me.uk/wiki/clc-wiki:Config:Wiki#Spam_account_filtering_patch>
(draft article on the test site; might not end up as a permanent link)

[...]
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