spam links... never ending story?

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sol
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spam links... never ending story?

Post by sol »

Again spammers. Some examples with plenty links in case you're bored and need some change:

http://wiki.armagetronad.net/index.php?title=IFC
http://wiki.armagetronad.net/index.php? ... nistration
http://wiki.armagetronad.net/index.php? ... L_Calendar

...all happened in the last few days. Realized this while browsing http://wiki.armagetronad.net/index.php? ... entchanges

Lucifer, I guess you might need to upgrade to latest version 2008-03-20: 1.12.0
Last edited by sol on Mon Apr 14, 2008 11:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Jonathan
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Post by Jonathan »

I don't check the wiki a lot these days, let alone kill spam. It's just a chore to maintain it, and the spam keeps coming.
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sol
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Post by sol »

is there nothing we can do about it? updating? new captcha?

have a look here. Again new links - same user. how about deleting those accounts? Same accouns are used to insert spam links again and again...
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wrtlprnft
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Post by wrtlprnft »

Why don't we just require some special, armagetronad-specific CAPTCHA for user registration? Something like “Enter the server browser in armagetronad and navigate (don't enter) toTigers Network Speed Blast. Look at the details at the bottom of the screen and enter the URL associated with this server into the following field:” (and accept if the answer contains the string “tigersnetwork.sytes.net”).
It doesn't need to be dynamic, just some static question. If some spammer really goes through the trouble of installing arma or finding some online server browser we can still change the question (“The password is found in the MOTD of Fortress Café”).
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sol
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Post by sol »

I like this idea! Wouldn't be some standard captcha (that might be already broken too) but a specific one for Arma.
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Post by Z-Man »

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Post by Lucifer »

Before we get too crazy writing our own code (and soliciting a NotInventedHere comment from at least one of us), why don't we try the reCAPTCHA project?

http://recaptcha.net/

That's the one where everytime a person fills in the captcha, they're helping to digitize books.

Edit:

They have a mediawiki plugin now.

http://recaptcha.net/plugins/mediawiki/
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Post by wrtlprnft »

Don't you get the point? Any popular captcha system is likely to be cracked by some spammer, because it's worth it for them.

If we build our own system, however primitive it may be (just a matter of adding another static input field to the login form and a simple check in the code that handles the request), it won't be worth for a spammer to crack. We're small enough for that. Obvioisly Wikipedia couldn't get away with this kind of CAPTCHA.

This will also stop spammers who use a half-automated process involving cheap workers in some third-world country, because someone who doesn't play arma won't have any idea what to do. And in the time they downloaded arma and found out the password they could have spammed dozens of other wikis, so guess what they'll do.
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Post by Lucifer »

Yeah, I get the point. The point is to make it hard enough to crack that the remaining vandalism isn't bad enough to worry, without overloading the user with a series of steps that's going to reduce the amount of contributions to the wiki.
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Post by Tank Program »

We now have three captchas. I did wrtl's arma specific question, and I stuck on reCaptcha since Lucifer has been asking about this for quite some time. (And my original aparently-it-stops-nothing-but-is-a-tribute-to-mc-hammer-anyway thingy.)
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sol
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Post by sol »

Thanks Tank!

I think we won't loose contributions just because of this new method. Those who know the wiki know these forums too. Experienced users should know what to do. Anyway, I don't think that newbies are interested to contribute on the wiki but rather just read and browse through.

Now there are still those existing spam accounts which aren't only used once but several times (e.g. PasroLrolc - as you can see here). Who's able to delete them? At least those who show up in recent changes for the last 30 days. Conspicuously often those spam accounts have a name consisting of 10 characters.
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Post by Lucifer »

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