Re: [wiki] fake account spam

[Mojca Miklavec <mojca.miklavec.lists@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 3:43 PM, Philipp Gesang  wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I’d like to draw your attention to the wiki. The spammers appear
> to know the solution to the current entry barrier “What is
> usually the last command in a ConTeXt source file (without the
> backslash)?”, and the number of fake accounts is growing fast:
>
>   http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Special:Log/newusers
>
> They don’t, however, seem to vandalize yet, so I guess the postal
> code of Hasselt is unbreakable with today’s technology ;-)
> Nevertheless the account spam is messing up the recent changes
> feed:
>
>   http://wiki.contextgarden.net/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&feed=rss
>
> Even if it’s not urgent, may I suggest we collect possible
> replacements for the current question? I can’t image the damage
> those accounts would do once they figure out how to post links.

It would probably be best to:

1.) Remove all those account (attention: some users are actually
legitimate and contributed valid content).

2.) Find out if there is any problematic IP and block those IPs.

3.) Install something like
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ConfirmAccount and/or maybe
use both captcha and some context-specific question (honestly: if
users don't know how to answer some slightly more tricky question,
they shouldn't be able to get the account). We could use questions
like "Last name of president of ConTeXt User Group."

I haven't been on wiki for a while and received a warning about the
issue yesterday.

Mojca
___________________________________________________________________________________
If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
webpage  : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net
archive  : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/
wiki     : http://contextgarden.net
___________________________________________________________________________________