Re: [Audacity-devel] Audacity Wiki Spam

[Matt B. <mbr...@cs...>]

Dominic Mazzoni wrote:

> Does anyone know of a Wiki with many more power-user features,
> including requiring registration?  Even better, with a CAPTCHA
> (http://www.captcha.net/)?

You might want to look at MediaWiki, which is developed and used for the
Wikipedia project; it has good registration and blocking features, other
anti-spam features like Edit Throttling, and is actively maintained:

  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki

Meanwhile, some things to do while we're still on UseModWiki:

1. Use a .htaccess file to ban IP ranges of known spammers (or redirect
   them to a read-only copy, to avoid locking out innocent users):

   http://wikiblacklist.blogspot.com/
   http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?ListOfSpammersIPs

2. Apply this patch, which prevents Google from indexing old page
   versions or following off-wiki links.  This doesn't prevent spam, but
   it eliminates the spammer's rewards.  (And if several wikis do it, we
   reduce the motivation to continue spamming.)

   http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiPatches/RobotsNoFollow

3. Set the AdminPass variable in the UseModWiki config file, and use it
   to lock central pages (homepage, recentchanges) and block spammer IPs.

4. Implement CAPTCHA.  I don't know any Wiki software that has CAPTCHA
   out of the box, but there are various patches around.  With the
   CAPTCHA module from CPAN, it should be easy to write one for UseMod.

I suggest we take as many of these steps as practical.  Dominic, my
Dreamhost username is mbrubeck.  E-mail me off-list if you'd like me
to help make any server-side changes.