Wiki spame [ was: Building Haddock on Windows ]

[Shae Matijs Erisson]

Graham Klyne <gk at ninebynine.org> writes:

> Oh b.....
>
> How easy is it to password protect the Wiki?  I'm thinking that a password known to the Haskell community would act as a
> sufficient bar to random spamming.
>
> (I guess someone has fixed the wiki for now, because those links look OK to me.)

I could set the wiki to only allow editing by 'logged in' users.
But that's also easy to fake.
Right now, 'page revert' is allowed to any logged in users.

I've been using IP address banning, but that's becoming less successful.
I've been planning to switch to the AntiSpamGlobalSolution[1] when that solution
is significantly better, it seems now is the time.

By the way, many thanks to the Haskell Wiki users who revert spam on a regular
basis!

There will always be a tradeoff between security and ease of use, and the wiki
approach is towards ease of use and little security.  The advantage of a wiki
is that anyone can edit it, so anyone can update the pages. That's good for
taking work away from website administrators and giving it to the community at
large, but it means that spammers can change stuff too.

As Udo Stenzel said, spam scripts are only available for a few wiki engines. We
could switch to using Flippi, but that still wouldn't keep out the manual wiki
spammers. I would still like to use a Wiki written in Haskell on haskell.org

[1] http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/AntiSpamGlobalSolution
-- 
Shae Matijs Erisson - Programmer - http://www.ScannedInAvian.org/
"I will, as we say in rock 'n' roll, run until the wheels come off, 
because I love what I do." -- David Crosby