Wiki Busters

Share the love (well, ok, not literally, that might get messy) for Poe's first big outing into the webcomic world.
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Imp-Chan
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Re: Wiki Busters

Post by Imp-Chan »

We may or may not have muddled through and found a way for me to make the necessary changes to protect the wiki. I have no idea if they worked or not, but here's hoping.

^-^'
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Tiamat
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Re: Wiki Busters

Post by Tiamat »

Imp-Chan wrote:We may or may not have muddled through and found a way for me to make the necessary changes to protect the wiki. I have no idea if they worked or not, but here's hoping.

^-^'
Well, that's possibly good to hear. Schroedinger's compliment?

Anyway, went through and cut out the very last of the spam created pages. The wiki is Officially Free of Spam for at least the next thirty seconds >_>;

Also blocked a registered spambot. That felt good. Thank you much for the good faith and trust, Viking - I'll try to make sure it's well repaid.

Edit: Question for you greybeard, because I've noticed a lovely (read: bad) trend in our username collection: would these ten-character spambots happen to have names like LaerbOccna, RelroDomal, CoalcAdara, Rrokuryook. or TadroNbaso? because we've got something on the order of 30 of those, and i don't like the looks of them.
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Viking-Sensei
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Re: Wiki Busters

Post by Viking-Sensei »

Well, we blocked:

Registration, Edit, CreatePage, and CreateTalk for all anon users. So any non-registered user can Read, but that's about it. That should, if I told Impy the correct set of wahoosits, essentially shut off the entire flow of spam to the board and leave us free to actually wiki-ify it for once.

As to the 10-digit-delinquents; I have absolutely no qualms with deleting any username that looks overly suspicious. I figure... if they haven't contributed yet, they're not going to... and we can always recreate the ones that we delete if needs be. Anybody you obviously recognize from the boards (I saw BloodHenge has a user account) should be left, but for the most part let's raze hell.
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Graybeard
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Re: Wiki Busters

Post by Graybeard »

Tiamat wrote:Edit: Question for you greybeard, because I've noticed a lovely (read: bad) trend in our username collection: would these ten-character spambots happen to have names like LaerbOccna, RelroDomal, CoalcAdara, Rrokuryook. or TadroNbaso? because we've got something on the order of 30 of those, and i don't like the looks of them.
Yup. Ten characters, first and sixth capitalized (usually), broadly resembling syllables but not making words. Those are the successors to the 6-character spambots. My recommendation is to block 'em now before they start posting spam -- and they will.

In the long run, the only choices here are:
1. Disable new account creation by users, which it sounds like Impy may have found a way to do -- if you have Bureaucrat privileges, you can still add names yourself.
2. Get the MediaWiki upgrade done. Newer versions have added security features so that a blacklist can be added (and often downloaded from some places that retain master lists of known spam sites), which although it doesn't keep these things from posting anything, at least prevents them from posting things known to be spam. This, in principle, is the "right" solution, and it works for many other wikis. Unfortunately, that requires actions at the system administrator level, and there has been a reluctance to do that until it's certain that it won't interfere with operations of the store.
3. Be prepared to spend more time dealing with the nonsense that they post than you really want to.
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Imp-Chan
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Re: Wiki Busters

Post by Imp-Chan »

We have to upgrade the server before we can upgrade the wiki.

I currently owe our techies somewhere around $1500, which I really should pay them before we upgrade the server. I do not have $1500 in the company bank account, since the store has not done anything in quite some time. Thus, no server upgrades yet.

Also, we just got a weird tax bill for property tax that was supposed to have been paid before we bought our place, but wasn't and so will mean a foreclosure if we don't pay it. Anyone got $3600 to spare?

-_-'
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BloodHenge
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Re: Wiki Busters

Post by BloodHenge »

Viking-Sensei wrote: Anybody you obviously recognize from the boards (I saw BloodHenge has a user account) should be left, but for the most part let's raze hell.
I do indeed. I haven't written anything yet because I have a lot of work for class and I've been doing other things to procrastinate for the most part.
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Tiamat
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Re: Wiki Busters

Post by Tiamat »

It is done. I believe I've taken all of the bots down, and although I have suspicions about one in particular that I left standing, it's only one and very easy to contain if I'm wrong. Anyone wanting to edit the wiki, now is the time! PM me (because Vikiing has a life >_>) and I'll make an account for you since registration is down for the count.

Oh, and does anyone know if it's possible to completely remove the bots from our userlist? I can block but I've not found an option for removal yet - it's not important, I'm just a perfectionist.
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Viking-Sensei
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Re: Wiki Busters

Post by Viking-Sensei »

Unfortunately, due to the nature of the Wiki itself, I don't think removal is all that doable. It's a database/table/reference thingy. Graybeard can probably aspound more eloquently than I, but the feeling I've gotten is that removing them 100% requires far more time and effort than it's really worth, since they're now cast into 'the abyss' and cannot return unless we say so.
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Graybeard
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Re: Wiki Busters

Post by Graybeard »

Viking-Sensei wrote:Unfortunately, due to the nature of the Wiki itself, I don't think removal is all that doable. It's a database/table/reference thingy. Graybeard can probably aspound more eloquently than I, but the feeling I've gotten is that removing them 100% requires far more time and effort than it's really worth, since they're now cast into 'the abyss' and cannot return unless we say so.
Right on all counts, although I'm eloquent only when silent. We didn't even try to remove the 6-character spambot usernames on the Heretic Knowledge Vault; in fact I suspect an unintended and undesirable consequence might have resulted if we had. One thing: make sure the blocks have an expiration time of "infinite." On looking at the block logs, it's clear that some of the spambots do go back and try to post spam after they're blocked. If the expiration time is finite, they may succeed.
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Tiamat
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Re: Wiki Busters

Post by Tiamat »

Graybeard wrote:
Viking-Sensei wrote:Unfortunately, due to the nature of the Wiki itself, I don't think removal is all that doable. It's a database/table/reference thingy. Graybeard can probably aspound more eloquently than I, but the feeling I've gotten is that removing them 100% requires far more time and effort than it's really worth, since they're now cast into 'the abyss' and cannot return unless we say so.
Right on all counts, although I'm eloquent only when silent. We didn't even try to remove the 6-character spambot usernames on the Heretic Knowledge Vault; in fact I suspect an unintended and undesirable consequence might have resulted if we had. One thing: make sure the blocks have an expiration time of "infinite." On looking at the block logs, it's clear that some of the spambots do go back and try to post spam after they're blocked. If the expiration time is finite, they may succeed.
Well, in the abyss they stay, since I did select infinite for all of them. Thanks for the clarification on removal.
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