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.
Looks good ...
Followed the "Setup" instructions:
Downloaded, put into .../Wiki/extensions
How can I run "ConfirmAccount.sql"? The file exists.
(I'm no experienced MySQL user ...)
Added "require_once ..."
How can I run "maintenance/update.php"? The file exists. I cannot run
"php" on the Wiki server, and
http://arktur.de/Wiki/maintenance/update.php
leads to "403: forbidden".
Over on the
Openoffice.org Wiki, we have similar spam issues.... I've
pretty much completely stopped it (a few still leak through, but it's
around 1 or 2 every few months rather than hourly as it was before I
made the changes to stop it) with a combination of MedaiWiki options and
Extensions.
The MedaiWiki options you can play with to limit spammers are:
# Require users log in to edit
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;
This blocks anonymous edits.
# Editors must have a valid email address before
# being allowed to edit wiki pages
$wgEmailConfirmToEdit = true;
All users must have a valid email address and confirm by clicking a link
in an email they receive from the Wiki
# Look for specific common spam words on page save,
# and block if any found
$wgSpamRegex = "/word1|word2|word3|word4/";
In the $wgSpamRegex array, just add your common spam words between the
slashes with each word separated by a pipe. This is fairly effective
for common spam words, but it requires that you keep up with the
spammers and their word variations and misspellings. When a word in
your word list is used in the content of any page being saved, the save
is intercepted, blocked and a system message is shown saying that $word
was used and to contact an admin if it's incorrectly blocking a real
page save.
The extensions I installed there are:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ReCAPTCHA which adds a Captcha
on new user creation. It's a minor inconvenience to new users, but it
adds one more hurdle to spammers.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Bad_Behavior
This has probably been the number one most effective tool for blocking
spammers, and so far after being in place about a year on the OOoWiki
has not interfered once (that I am aware of) with regular users.
Each of these solutions by themselves are only partially effective, but
the combination seems to be doing it's job, and I rarely ever have to
block users or delete spam.
C.