Talk:Editors

Opening the wiki to the public is a double-edged sword--and both sides are extremely sharp.

On the plus side, we will potentialy more contributers. This is by no means assured, but if there are, then I think that the wiki will become more valuable by virtue of storing more information.

On the negative side, we will have spam. Period. This is assured. I'm also an editor on the (much less active) [GridEngine Wiki], and probably 80% (or more) of our time is spent reverting spam posts. Yes, you can block IPs, but that sucks, and the spammers will simply come from a different IP. It's the same problem as email-spam all over again, but without the nice crutches we have to manage it (RSBL, etc).

I wonder if it is possible to see how many "attempted posts" there are to the wiki. I don't know how the bots work, so this might not be effective. I will ask the site admin for the GE wiki if he can send me some log entries from spam-postings. Perhaps it is possible to automatically detect them somehow. If it is, then maybe we can look at the logs for this wiki, and try to guess how many spam posts we can expect to receive.

opening contributor access
I didn't realize there is no extension to combat spam yet. I'd prefer email address verification myself, and I see it's listed as an "[URGENT]" extension. I wonder what it would take to add the random characters in an image hack (on the Create Account page) that a lot of sites are using now to prevent bots? If you're a regular contributing editor, your privelges will be escalated shortly. As hackers, I think it's also our duty to maniulate the general look and feel more than I've done, feel free to propose any such changes. I've just modified the Navigation menu on the left including removal of the title.

The Spammers have found us...
>>...just like I was afraid they would.

>>Could we possibly limit posting to valid users only? I very much dislike rolling back stupid >>changes made by bots.

>done.

Is there an automated way to stop the bots that have recently been signing up? Or do we have to maintain manual intervention?