Spam Alert!

[Blodo]

Considering I now have root access to the wiki, the first thing I did was install a CAPTCHA extension which should begin filtering out the bots.

So now that we can fight back, we might as well go full out. If you catch any spam pages that have slipped through the cracks or a spam invasion despite the countermeasures that the wiki admins have not caught, please post about it in this thread.

Tagging it with the Spam category on the wiki (http://discoverygc.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Spam) or replacing the content of the page with the {{Spam}} template also helps.

Hopefully after today spam will no longer be a problem...

[Error]

Considering I now have root access to the wiki, the first thing I did was install a CAPTCHA extension which should begin filtering out the bots.

So now that we can fight back, we might as well go full out. If you catch any spam pages that have slipped through the cracks or a spam invasion despite the countermeasures that the wiki admins have not caught, please post about it in this thread.

Tagging it with the Spam category on the wiki (http://discoverygc.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Spam) or replacing the content of the page with the {{Spam}} template also helps.

Hopefully after today spam will no longer be a problem...

Ah, excellent, thanks. That should deal with the vast majority of the bots. Will do.

Just a quick question regarding captchas - and apologies for going slightly off-topic here - how have you set
them up? I didn't get a captcha when I first logged in and tried to edit my user page - does it only show up on the first few edits for a (new) user?

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[Blodo]

It is set up to only show up during registrations, as the bots can't edit pages if they don't make an account. It's not going to bother normal users, as there is no need for it to do that. Unless they attempt to add in an external url.

[Error]

A few of them appear to still be getting through, unfortunately.

Recent changes
Category:Spam

EDIT: Have you tried adding a IP blacklist yet? Couldn't see anything about that being mentioned anywhere. Might be worth a try.

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[Blodo]

Well, I'd like to avoid having to put in IP blacklists unless there is truly no more choice, stuff like this tends to have false positives in it.

I have set email verification to be required to be able to edit pages. We'll see how that goes.

I'll delete the new spam now.

[Alex.]

Suspected spambots:

David261Burton‎,
David537Wiley,
Brwin28Bentley‎,
Bernard69Lloyd‎,
Abraham924Kosinski‎,
George84Hornbuckle‎,
Samuel43Perez‎,
Tolby58Aguilar‎,
Richard92Ziegler‎,
Martin637Logan‎,
Guy217Brooks‎,
James837Higgins‎,
David86Headrick‎,
Floyed84Rodgers‎,
Hector82Perez‎,
Sonnie19Zavala‎,
Rhett12Bush‎

[Blodo]

Aye, those were the ones that managed to register before I switched the captcha again. Ever since I switched it, it seems to be working: no new bot registrations, no new spam pages, etc.

[Alex.]

Looks like we've had 5 more spammers posting in a similar format within the past few days. I've blocked them and deleted the pages, but they're managing to get past the captcha.

[Error]

Another one that registered today: http://discoverygc.com/wiki/Cdcopycenter2012

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[Blodo]

Ok, attempt number 2 to get rid of the spam plaguing us.

- KittenCaptcha disabled, switched back to ReCaptcha,
- 3 new extensions installed and enabled: AntiSpoof, SpamBlacklist, SimpleAntiSpam <- these will block the creation of spam pages
- TitleBlacklist installed as well so that we can start blocking usernames, however we will need to actually fill out the blacklist with something first. More info in the wiki editors chat.

Report any problems here if you can, please.