Difference between revisions of "Talk:Main Page/Discussion"

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(guess it hasnt worked.)
m (Reverted edits by AcbozElbob (Talk); changed back to last version by John Rumm)
 
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It also seems to be a favoured place for spammers advertising dodgy pharmaceuticals, <strike>fake</strike>replica Rolexes and so on <sigh>
 
It also seems to be a favoured place for spammers advertising dodgy pharmaceuticals, <strike>fake</strike>replica Rolexes and so on <sigh>
  
''Previous discussions on this page have been [[/Archive 20070630|Archived]]''
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''Previous discussions on this page have been [[DIYWiki:Archiving pages|Archived]]''
 
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* [[Talk:Main Page/Archive 20070630|30th June 2007]]
== spam ==
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* [[Talk:Main Page/Archive 20070815|15th August 2007]]
 
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* [[Talk:Main Page/Archive 20080229|29th February 2008]]
Since the 203.162.0.0 netblock seems to have been a frequent source of spam, and we probably don't care too much if vietnam has access to this UK resource, anyone up for blocking a range of IP addresses?
 
 
 
203.162.16.0 - 203.162.31.255
 
netname:      VDC-NET
 
country:      vn
 
descr:        VietNam Data Communication Company
 
admin-c:      KNH1-AP
 
tech-c:        DAD1-AP
 
status:      ALLOCATED NON-PORTABLE
 
changed:      hm-changed@vnnic.net.vn
 
20061102
 
mnt-by:        MAINT-VN-VNPT
 
source:      APNIC
 
person:      Khanh Nguyen Hien
 
nic-hdl:      KNH1-AP
 
e-mail:      anhdzung@vdc.com.vn
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
--[[User:John Rumm|John Rumm]] 02:53, 16 July 2007 (BST)
 
 
 
 
 
good idea
 
[[User:NT|NT]] 18:09, 16 July 2007 (BST)
 
 
 
== I would suggest ==
 
 
 
A block on 203.162.27.0/255.255.255.0 since that class C has been the source of at least 5 attacks in the last month.
 
 
 
--[[User:John Rumm|John Rumm]] 21:17, 16 July 2007 (BST)
 
 
 
Sounds good to me John
 
[[User:NT|NT]]
 
 
 
== blocking netblocks ==
 
 
 
I don't think we can block netblocks via the wiki software (though it could obviously be done at the server level.)
 
 
 
--[[User:John Stumbles|John Stumbles]] 19:31, 17 July 2007 (BST)
 
 
 
How do the wiki blocking controls work, by blocking all access, or by just blocking write access?
 
 
 
: We can only (AFAICT) block individual users/IP addresses. Obviously all the spammers have been just IPs. --[[User:John Stumbles|John Stumbles]] 01:06, 18 July 2007 (BST)
 
 
 
:: I meant more in terms of what does a blocked user see - does blocking them chop off all access to the site, or just prevent them making edits? The other solution should spam become a particular problem would be to change policy such that a user account is required (possibly with pre approval on account creation). --[[User:John Rumm|John Rumm]] 13:27, 18 July 2007 (BST)
 
 
 
::: Er, dunno. I ''guess'' it just makes the 'edit' functions unavailable to that user, or probably redirects edit attempts to a why-you-are-blocked page.
 
::: I could block you and you could tell us :-)
 
::: --[[User:John Stumbles|John Stumbles]] 23:54, 18 July 2007 (BST)
 
 
 
:::: Go on then, I will report back... (assuming you can unblock a blocked user!!) --[[User:John Rumm|John Rumm]] 01:20, 22 July 2007 (BST)
 
 
 
If it was done at the server level (say using ipchains) then that would block all access - the server would simply cease to exist to any user on the blocked address range. That may be a little more severe than is really required (then again probably not an issue).
 
 
 
--[[User:John Rumm|John Rumm]] 20:24, 17 July 2007 (BST)
 
 
 
== Propose add John Rumm as moderator ==
 
 
 
[[User:John Rumm|John's]] been patrolling this wiki and reverting spam. It would be useful if he were able to block spammers too.
 
He has also contributed to articles in the wiki. I'd like to see him be a moderator alongside [[User:John Stumbles|myself]] and [[User:NT|NT]].
 
I've asked him and he says he'd be happy to do this.
 
 
 
Do you agree NT?
 
 
 
Any other views?
 
 
 
''(Grunff, if you're reading this, if all say aye can you just do it?)''
 
 
 
--[[User:John Stumbles|John Stumbles]] 09:42, 23 July 2007 (BST)
 
 
 
 
 
Great
 
[[User:NT|NT]] 15:08, 23 July 2007 (BST)
 
 
 
== Good afternoon ==
 
 
 
hello administrators of site  wiki.diyfaq.org.uk I not so a long ago settled in Morganton 
 
and so, that I lost connection with magnificent  a man, Amanda- Brianporkon, and now try to find him, last that I know so it that he lives in citi, and often vi
 
sits the resources of type your wiki.diyfaq.org.uk, nik at negoDavid/Sarahporkon
 
, if suddenly will see this nik write that this man contacted with me  . I very much I am sad  without socializing with this man.To reason wanted to say thank you  to the command  your resource. So to hold boys. Only little request of,sdelayte  that your resource was accessible more pochasche
 
 
----
 
----
: I was about to revert the above (from [[User:201.243.59.225]]) but I think it's so good we should keep it :-)
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== Time to protect pages from spam? ==
Reverse DNS for 201.243.59.225
 
Generated by www.DNSstuff.com
 
 
Location: Venezuela [City: Caracas, Distrito Federal]
 
 
Preparation:
 
The  reverse DNS entry for an IP is found by reversing the IP, adding it to "in-addr.arpa", and looking up the PTR record.
 
So, the reverse DNS entry for 201.243.59.225 is found by looking up the PTR record for
 
  225.59.243.201.in-addr.arpa.
 
All DNS requests start by asking the root servers, and they let us know what to do next.
 
See How Reverse DNS Lookups Work for more information.
 
 
How I am searching:
 
Asking a.root-servers.net for 225.59.243.201.in-addr.arpa PTR record: 
 
        a.root-servers.net says to go to ns-sec.ripe.net. (zone: 201.in-addr.arpa.)
 
Asking ns-sec.ripe.net. for 225.59.243.201.in-addr.arpa PTR record: 
 
        ns-sec.ripe.net [193.0.0.196] says to go to DNS1.CANTV.NET. (zone: 243.201.in-addr.arpa.)
 
Asking DNS1.CANTV.NET. for 225.59.243.201.in-addr.arpa PTR record:  Reports 201-243-59-225.dyn.dsl.cantv.net. [from 200.44.32.10]
 
 
Answer:
 
201.243.59.225 PTR record: 201-243-59-225.dyn.dsl.cantv.net. [TTL 86400s] [BAD: No A record]
 
 
 
--[[User:John Stumbles|John Stumbles]] 00:27, 4 August 2007 (BST)
 
 
 
 
 
==More Spam==
 
Is there something we can do to stop most of it?  Does wikimedia have any clever tools for mass spam?
 
 
 
I can think of a neat idea or 2, but I assume what wikimedia has is what we will need to work with.
 
[[User:NT|NT]] 14:17, 4 August 2007 (BST)
 
 
 
 
 
will there be utterances on this topic
 
User 76.28.136.181
 
 
 
 
 
No.
 
[[User:NT|NT]] 11:56, 5 August 2007 (BST)
 
 
 
==Spam Overflow==
 
I suggest we could use this page as a deliberate spam trap, move the useful content to another location and let this be a spam dump. It will be quicker to simply wipe the page regularly than trawl through an ever growing list of previous versions.
 
 
 
I dont know if there is a way to script/automate wiping the page contents, if so it would save us wasting time.
 
[[User:NT|NT]] 14:59, 6 August 2007 (BST)
 
 
 
If we in effect block this page then they will just spam more important pages. If you want to have fun with them it would be more entertaining to edit their links so that they visually appear the same, but actually harm their site rankings. ;-)
 
--[[User:John Rumm|John Rumm]] 04:34, 7 August 2007 (BST)
 
  
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Following up from discussion of spam in [[Talk:Main_Page/Archive_20080229]] and looking at the current level of spamming I think it's time we protected all the wiki so that only registered users can edit pages.
  
I'm suggesting using it as a spam dump, not blocking it. All we would need to do is move the genuine discussions on here to another page.
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Earlier I had hoped/suggested that keeping the wiki open would encourage casual visitors to start contributing with little edits such as typos, clarifications etc, and maybe move on to becoming more heavyweight contributors. However this doesn't seem to be happening anyway, and the quantity of spam is getting unmanageable.
[[User:NT|NT]] 09:58, 7 August 2007 (BST)
 
  
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The quality of the wiki would probably be improved more by having less spam and less work for regulars to do patrolling it, than any notional contribution from unregistered users. Also when/if unregistered users do contribute there's a danger their input may be mistaken for spam and their IP get blocked.
  
We would need to make sure that the page is not spiderable then, otherwise we are just helping the spammers cause by allowing the crap to get any "airtime" (not to mention that some rather odd google searches would start to land here!
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A wiki-wide change is probably a Grunff-config thing. If others (NT, JR) agree I'll ask him to do it.
--[[User:John Rumm|John Rumm]] 12:55, 7 August 2007 (BST)
 
  
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--[[User:John Stumbles|John Stumbles]] 20:37, 29 February 2008 (GMT)
  
I dont know enough about it to know what method spammers use to find these pages. Either way we could still wipe the page clean as and when, which might be daily, it would just be less work and hopefully avoid encouraging them to go anywhere else.
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OK by me --[[User:John Rumm|John Rumm]] 23:01, 29 February 2008 (GMT)
  
Do you know how to set Robots.txt to exclude this page? Should we?
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==Mass block==
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Is there any way to block IPs en masse? Any way at all would be a big help here.
 +
[[User:NT|NT]] 10:36, 9 April 2008 (BST)
  
Any ideas for another page or page title for this discussion?
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Alas not that I am aware of.
[[User:NT|NT]] 23:42, 7 August 2007 (BST)
 
  
Thought I would try a little experiment on this page seeing as it is only ever the three of us who use it. --[[User:John Rumm|John Rumm]] 01:57, 11 August 2007 (BST)
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We could also do with a global config file change to disable anonymous edits altogether. The policy of setting protection on individual articles to limit edits to registered users only, seems to have worked reasonably well[1] - but it is a bit slow to work through them all. Also it does not stop them creating new articles.  
  
Lets hope this doesnt cause the spam to spill onto other pages. If it does I'll move the content here to another page so this can become a spam trap.
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I am tempted to protect the talk main page and see what happens. It will probably cause them to look for new articles to spam - but we can revert and protect any they find as it happens, so the workload may not be too much. It would certainly cut down the noise and leave them an ever decreasing pool of articles to fiddle with.  
[[User:NT|NT]] 10:31, 11 August 2007 (BST)
 
  
One way to find out ;-) --[[User:John Rumm|John Rumm]] 21:51, 11 August 2007 (BST)
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[1] I have only seen one edit to a protected file - and that was from a user that we had pre-emptively banned anyway. I am not sure how that happened - but it may have been because the user had tried it once before and got a limited duration ban which expired after my permanent ban was set. Perhaps the expiration of the temporary one overrode the permanent one?
  
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--[[User:John Rumm|John Rumm]] 13:24, 9 April 2008 (BST)
  
Well, now we know unfortunately... the spam is going elsewhere. I suggest unblocking this page and moving the content. In fact if we dont do it promptly the spam will all go elsewhere and make our job 3x worse.
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<!-- ATTENTION! real contributors - add your contribution before this anti-spam device ...
[[User:NT|NT]] 16:00, 14 August 2007 (BST)
 

Latest revision as of 03:14, 3 January 2009

This page is for discussion of the DIY Wiki main page, and the Wiki as a whole.

It also seems to be a favoured place for spammers advertising dodgy pharmaceuticals, fakereplica Rolexes and so on <sigh>

Previous discussions on this page have been Archived


Time to protect pages from spam?

Following up from discussion of spam in Talk:Main_Page/Archive_20080229 and looking at the current level of spamming I think it's time we protected all the wiki so that only registered users can edit pages.

Earlier I had hoped/suggested that keeping the wiki open would encourage casual visitors to start contributing with little edits such as typos, clarifications etc, and maybe move on to becoming more heavyweight contributors. However this doesn't seem to be happening anyway, and the quantity of spam is getting unmanageable.

The quality of the wiki would probably be improved more by having less spam and less work for regulars to do patrolling it, than any notional contribution from unregistered users. Also when/if unregistered users do contribute there's a danger their input may be mistaken for spam and their IP get blocked.

A wiki-wide change is probably a Grunff-config thing. If others (NT, JR) agree I'll ask him to do it.

--John Stumbles 20:37, 29 February 2008 (GMT)

OK by me --John Rumm 23:01, 29 February 2008 (GMT)

Mass block

Is there any way to block IPs en masse? Any way at all would be a big help here. NT 10:36, 9 April 2008 (BST)

Alas not that I am aware of.

We could also do with a global config file change to disable anonymous edits altogether. The policy of setting protection on individual articles to limit edits to registered users only, seems to have worked reasonably well[1] - but it is a bit slow to work through them all. Also it does not stop them creating new articles.

I am tempted to protect the talk main page and see what happens. It will probably cause them to look for new articles to spam - but we can revert and protect any they find as it happens, so the workload may not be too much. It would certainly cut down the noise and leave them an ever decreasing pool of articles to fiddle with.

[1] I have only seen one edit to a protected file - and that was from a user that we had pre-emptively banned anyway. I am not sure how that happened - but it may have been because the user had tried it once before and got a limited duration ban which expired after my permanent ban was set. Perhaps the expiration of the temporary one overrode the permanent one?

--John Rumm 13:24, 9 April 2008 (BST)