[Nix-dev] Wiki spam

[Philip Lykke Carlsen]

On Monday 30 September 2013 15:18:19 Domen Kožar wrote:
> You don't have spam because nixos.org has pagerank 5, which makes it
> attractive to spammers in a way that humans are paid to enter spam links.
> 
> Your site has pagerank of 0.
> 
> On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 3:12 PM, Marc Weber <marco-oweber at gmx.de> wrote:
> > Eelco: Have a look at vim-wiki.mawercer.de I have not yet had any spam.
> > and if it happens its as easy as git revert. There is *no* password
> > protection at all. You just have to use special ?get parameter.
> > I know the design is not that pretty, its just a hack so that I don't
> > have to type and talk about the same topics again. Maybe its also much
> > less popular than nixos.org/wiki ...
> > 
> > I seriously think that bots (or humans?) are specialized on media wiki.
> > I think the real fix is using non standard wikis or doing anything
> > non-standard, such as protecting login page by htaccess and dummy
> > password.
> > Something simple such as 'nixonixo' would probably be enough and more
> > effective than captchas. If irc knowns about it ..
> > 
> > Me too thinks that its bad to host spam. Additional alternatives such as
> > github wiki has been discussed. And they are options, too.
> > You can also access those git repositories easily.
> > 
> > The community is strong enough to handle this. We just have to make a
> > list of features we want and we must get started.
> > 
> > Some additional discussions took place on this mailinglist earlier.
> > How much spam does exist? Click the random page 10 times, then you'll
> > know.
> > 
> > click1: Multi-level Marketing Two Schools Of Believed Collide
> > click2: Women's Manner Trend Principles To Stay By
> > click3: Ageing Tips That Can Help You In The Process
> > click4: Meet The Equipment Shop Manager
> > click5: Picking out Straightforward Advice For beauty salon insurance
> > 
> > I'm stopping here, you get it, all 5 pages are spam.
> > 
> > I'm protecting against arbitrary spammers by adding a 1x1 px input spam
> > bots are likely to fill, but humans miss. Thus if such a field is non
> > empty I can disregard the request.
> > 
> > The wiki is one of the weakest parts of this project.
> > People spend their time on the libraries, packages and the core instead
> > mostly.
> > 
> > Marc Weber
> > _______________________________________________
> > nix-dev mailing list
> > nix-dev at lists.science.uu.nl
> > http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev

If it was common practise for wikis to require user registrations lay a money 
deposit as security for constructive behaviour the problem would go away 
overnight.
But it isn't, and implementing it would probably be a rather non-trivial task 
and also raise the bar to entry (due to inconvenience) for new good members 
too.

If there is an effective interface (available to users) I don't mind spending 
some time tonight deleting spam..

-plc