[ALUG] WiKi Status Enquiry

[Alan Pope]

On 05/10/05, Brett Parker <iDunno at sommitrealweird.co.uk> wrote:
> We know all about maintainence barriers... so, who other than MJ Ray has
> access to the website, and can upload changes to the static pages? It
> appears that we've ended up in the situation of having a defined method
> of updating the static content of the site, but the method involves
> knowing how to (at the very minimum) use make, and read the README in
> the tar ball of the site source, which is not in the most obvious of
> places.
>

Our entire site is a wiki. There is *no* static content. Well, there's
a couple of locked pages - the voting pages and the LUG finances -
which you can understand I'm sure. The front door and every page other
than the two I have mentioned are open for edits though. So there
really is no overall control from one person. I think at the last
count there were about 10 or so people with the "admin" password.

The admin password on our wiki allows you to quickly and easily
rollback changes with one click (any user of course can edit out
something they don't like - it's just easier for admins). Admins can
also maintain the list of banned words and banned hosts. Oh and they
can lock and unlock pages and the whole site if it's under sustained
attack.

As I mentioned quite a few of us have RSS readers open most of the day
and as such most spam doesn't go unnoticed by us for long. Either an
admin or a "normal" person (or an admin who has forgotten the admin
password and accesses the site like any other joe) can and does undo
the damage.

> Hmm, well, OK - so, here's a new, slightly sadistic idea... how about
> having 2 different stages for wiki edits, how about a maintainance
> section for logged in, trusted users (where the trust is assigned via
> discussion on the list, maybe), the changes these 'trusted' users make
> are immediately available in the wiki... changes done anonymously are
> accessable to all, but are not the default view of the wiki, they go
> through a 'staging' session...
>

This is actually not far off what we have in practice. Mr Scripting
Dude spams loads of pages with some duff content. A potential visitor
could drop by at this point and see the duff content. Within some
hours or often minutes (depending on time of day really) the content
is reversed. Job done. More visitors come to the site and are
oblivious as to what happened.

So in effect us admins watching the site are letting stuff stay ( good
content ) and removing tha bad stuff. Ok the odd bit gets through, but
it's not much and not often any more. We used to get attacked really
regularly, almost daily, and sometimes by different spammers all
making multiple changes to the same set of pages. That rarely happens
now - not because of the admins, but because of the extra patches -
detecting bad words and rejecting content that content..

We even have a patch (which has not been applied for performance
reasons) that runs all changes through spamassassin!

> (Yes, I know that I no longer live in East Anglia, before anyone
> helpfully points that out, but I don't believe that ALUGs goals state
> that you have to live in East Anglia to contribute, or to be a member...
> if anyone has got an objection with me contributing, though, feel free
> to bring it up).
>

I don't live in Anglia either, but my geographic location didn't stop
me helping Surrey LUG and Wolves. Once an acceptable solution is found
to a problem that affects quite a few LUGs, it makes sense to share
it.

Our solution works for us and some other LUGs. You don't have to use
it of course, and a LUG the size of Anglia clearly has some
considerable creative minds who can probably come up with a better
system than us, but until you do, ours is there for the taking.

Again, I'll gladly offer my assistance where it may be required.

Cheers,
Al.