Talk:Standards and Policies

Spam

It looks like we've been having a bit of trouble with spammers lately. Unless there's a good reason to do so privately (do we have a mailing list or something?), I guess here should be a useful place to discuss it.

As far as I know, account creation currently requires both a CAPTCHA and email confirmation, and any edits by regular users require a further CAPTCHA completion. Nonetheless, we've been getting a fair amount of spam lately, most noticeably (at least to me) in the form of existing pages being replaced or new pages created with the content "OPPOSITE BLOCK. BLOCK. UNBLOCK IS OPPOSITE BLOCK." etc., lately also sometimes accompanied with image uploads.

For each of the users I've noticed that has vandalised the wiki in this way so far, there have been duplicate accounts using the same letters (e.g. "Hceef" and "[[Feech", "LAITH10" and "01HTIAL"). I've pre-emptively blocked accounts that appear to be duplicates, which all appear to be created at the same time, and the set of accounts that appear to be duplicates of [[1]], although they've made no such edits. I didn't feel entirely comfortable blocking an account before they made any edits, but considering that these accounts have so far vandalised the wiki significantly before they've been blocked, I thought it worth the small risk.

I don't want to suggest tightening the requirements for account creation or edits, which are usually the best ways to stop spam by bots, but considering the time it can take to undo this vandalism I do feel as though new "weaponry" might be required for us sheriffs. In particular, I was wondering if it would be possible to have the option to revert all edits by a particular user while blocking them. Generally, spam accounts like these provide no useful edits to the wiki, so being able to automate the process of reverting their edits (and destroying any new pages they've created, either by marking them for deletion or by removing content) could be very useful. I'm not sure how feasible this may be, though.

Another thing that I've wondered about is deleting pages created by vandals that should perhaps one day exist. For example, the spam user Fceeh created the "wanted page" Form. By not deleting this now empty page, it has been removed from the list of "wanted pages", but if it is deleted then when a user tries to create it legitimately, the "this page has previously been deleted" warning will be shown. Is it feasible to give us a way to mark pages for deletion in such a way that this warning will not be given when someone tries to recreate the page?

-- Cipscis (talk) 17:20, 17 August 2012 (EDT)

I've created a Vandals category like on the GECK wiki so regular users can more easily help with fighting spam and other vandalism.

-- Cipscis (talk) 17:32, 17 August 2012 (EDT)