Forum:What to do about the spam

Okay, there seems to be no end to the spam,. Is it just one IP or does the IP vary? It might increase even so. Would an upgrade be sufficient or do you think something more serious might be needed such as preventing non-user edits?

It's spammers like that which I hate the most, as they undermine the concept of everyone can contribute. It would be pretty severe to block ananymus edits, but maybe a login should be needed for creating completely new pages?--Tribun 00:16, 26 March 2012 (PDT)

What we need is some system that automatically updates the blocked IP address. Fenyx4 talked about this at some point, but he is a busy guy. Dungy 04:15, 26 March 2012 (PDT)

I can't believe the CAPTCHAs are failing. Why is that? Are spiders just that sophisticated? I've been on sites where I've failed the CAPTCHA about half a dozen times before getting it right. Or are there a bunch of Asian kids in sweatshops who work on these things for bots?

I have an idea that might be good against both: what if we replace CAPTCHAs with trivia? Ultima trivia, of course. Can we do that? I don't think anyone who doesn't know the name of the main island in U7P2 or what virtue begins with a 'J' has any business editing the Codex anyway. We could even have Mickey Mouse stuff like "what're Iolo Fitzowen's initials?" (Actually his name is FitzOwen, isn't it? That would be ambiguous) I can see that actually being fun. The Ultra-Mind 10:05, 15 May 2012 (PDT)

There is much that I need to do. *hangs head in shame*

It would be fairly simple to replace the captcha with a simple hard coded quiz. And one that is as simple as "What is 7+3=" would break many spam bots merely because it is non-standard. (It wouldn't hold up to direct scrutiny but because it is homespun the kind we've been seeing would be tripped up by it.) However by "fairly simple" I mean "fairly simple for someone who knows php" and I do not. Maybe I could ask someone on the mediawiki IRC channel... Or not that I think about it maybe I could just minorly tweak the Captcha code. Rename a textbox or something so it is no longer an off the shelf script to trip the bot coding up. -- Fenyx4 15:28, 15 May 2012 (PDT)

Well, aren't you in luck! For one reason or another, all these other environments they are making me work in make me look forward to developing in PHP. How sad is that? If a quiz is as easy as you say, I'm sure I could bear up.

But I'm still interested in how our CAPTCHAs are being defeated. Is it all about a source of cheap labour or is image recognition that advanced? The Ultra-Mind 20:44, 15 May 2012 (PDT)

Could be either of those. Could also be they found an exploit that just skips right past the need to do the CAPTCHA. -- Fenyx4 06:57, 16 May 2012 (PDT)

Ok, enough is enough. We need to do something fast, as we're suffocating in spam.--Tribun 20:31, 25 May 2012 (PDT)

Little experience in this realm, but perhaps anonymous edits should indeed be temporarily disabled until the proposed quiz system is up and running.RACapowski 17:01, 26 May 2012 (PDT)

I'd like to second that. --polygoncount (Polygon Dragon -==(UDIC)==-) 15:00, 27 May 2012 (PDT)

I just uploaded a new banned ip list. We'll see if that helps. -- Fenyx4 08:20, 28 May 2012 (PDT)

The silence is reassuring... *knocks on wood* -- Fenyx4 10:36, 29 May 2012 (PDT)

I'm doing a trial period of removing the banned ip list and replacing it with a dns blacklist. Hopefully spam won't reappear during this trial. (The bannedip list was causing server load and slow page load times). -- Fenyx4 01:47, 3 July 2013 (UTC)