Response from usemodwiki developers...

Jon

-----Forwarded Message-----

From: Clifford Adams <caadams@...503...> To: Jon Phillips <jon@...235...> Subject: Re: spammer question Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2004 17:52:31 -0400

At 12:23 PM 8/6/2004, you wrote:

...

We have a serious problem with spammers/spambots on our usemodwiki system. Do you all have any recommendation or enhancements in developer versions. We try to run an open ship and do not want to require user/pass for editing the wiki.

I do have some recommendations that I recently sent to another wiki admin. I don't know if you'll want to try the first suggestion (involving editor passwords for some networks), but the second one has been very helpful in discouraging spam on the usemod.com sites. Let me know if you have any questions.

--Cliff

[excerpt from previous email:]

[...] I plan to have some anti-spam features in 1.1. (I don't know when that will be released, however.) In the meantime, here are a couple suggestions:

1. Use the ban list to block IPs or networks. One approach is to use

very wide blocks, and give out "editor" passwords for exceptions. (The editor password bypasses the bans.)

For example, the UseModWiki site blocks posting from the aol.com web-proxy sites. The Meatball wiki blocks a Chinese class A network (not my decision). If needed, you could even make the site read-only and email out editor passwords to contributors.

2. If you get persistent linkspam to particular sites, you might want to

add code like this to the DoPost subroutine (at around line 3890, just before the comment "Lock before getting..."):

# XXX CAA hack: block some spammers if (($string =~ m|http://.+webrank.cn|) || ($string =~ m|http://.+google123.net|) || ($string =~ m|http://.+ccnp130.com|) || ($string =~ m|http://.+.s5.com|) || ($string =~ m|http://.+.itgo.com|) || ($string =~ m|http://.+.tejia.com.cn|) || ($string =~ m|http://.+shemale|) || ($string =~ m|http://.+fueling-dispenser.com|)) { &ReportError("Internal Error."); return; }

# Lock before getting old page to prevent races

This code (from my live wiki) rejects any submitted text that contains these bad links. When spammers submit lots of links I don't bother entering all of them into the code--just a few chosen at random.

For 1.1 I plan to add a feature to read a "bantext" file, along with web editing like the current banned list.

Let me know if you need any help with implementing these suggestions.

...

I was surprised that a search for "spam" on the UseModWiki site revealed nothing interesting.

Most of the discussion I've seen is on the Meatball wiki site, specifically at:

http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiSpam

...which links to other discussions.

[end of excerpt]