[Mediawiki-l] blocking drug spam

[Jim Laurino]

On 12/04/2009 04:37:00 PM, Helmut Hullen - Hullen at t-online.de wrote:
> Hallo, mediawiki-l,
> 
> I have a lot of problems with drug spam on my wiki
> 
>         http://arktur.de/Wiki/Spezial:Logbuch/delete
>         http://arktur.de/Wiki/Spezial:Logbuch/block
> 
> The spammer (who uses a bundle of IP adresses) first creates a user with  
> a name including the drug, and then he creates a user page with a  
> contents like
> 
snip...
> -----------------------------------------------
> 
> I may not block signing up users (does mediawiki allow blocking new  
> users?), and therefore I have to look at least daily for new users. The  
> drug spammer changes round about every hour the user page, and because  
> the user has signed up the spammer can feed the user page from  
> everywhere.
> 
snip...
> -------------------------------------------------
> 
> Is there any chance
> a) to block such spam in a simplier way?
> b) to delete the user pages and the user entries in a simplier way?
> 
> Viele Gruesse!
> Helmut

It seems to me that it might be less work if you moderated the creation of new accounts. I recently saw an extension, though I have not used it, that requires approval by an authorized person before a new account is created.

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ConfirmAccount

If you reviewed requests at least once a day, the same frequency you are removing spam accounts now, I think the delay would not be a great inconvenience to new users. I think moderation would drive the spammers away; it would certainly stop them from creating user names with the drug name embedded.

Let us know how you resolve the problem.

Good Luck,

Jim