-----Original Message----- From: main-admin@lists.alug.org.uk [mailto:main-admin@lists.alug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Richard Kettlewell Sent: 28 July 2005 14:25 To: main@lists.alug.org.uk Subject: Re: [ALUG] ALUG Wiki
"John Woodard" mail@johnwoodard.co.uk writes:
Thanks to Darren at php4hosting.com who kindly hosts the web site for us a recent backup has cured the mess that the spammers left the wiki in. All should be well for now at least until one of the spamming scum does it again. Oh the joys of having an open access wiki!
A wiki I help operate was having a lot of trouble with spam - basically you need someone to check it daily and revert any spam found. Having more than one despammer helps.
We tried blocking IP addresses that had posted spam initially, but this didn't remain effective for very long.
Since then I've done the following things:
Changed the name of one of the form parameters. This is plain obfuscation; anyone using an interactive browser to spam will be unaffected, but a spamming script explicitly designed for UseModWiki will find a speedbump.
Created a list of unsayable strings, and populated it with the names of the websites used by the wiki spammers (or in some cases substrings of those names, though obviously this needs a little care).
Changed the hostname (for unrelated reasons). This has probably helped in the short term but obviously isn't a viable general solution.
Added a 'revert' link to undo a change. This doesn't reduce spamming directly but makes itf easier to cleanup.
The rate of spamming is now below 1 per day, which is much easier to cope with.
All sound ideas. Over to whoever is looking after the web/wiki at the moment.
Cheers, BJ