[Noisebridge-discuss] how to protect media wikies against spammers - in general

Thu Nov 28 09:02:26 UTC 2013

US hosts are usually the 'best' and most advanced in automation technology,
cost, and ease-of-use.
However, (and no, I don't want to make this a political discussion), I
definitely think based on those concerns it would be best to stick with a
non-US provider. Including your registrar as well as your web host.

Cheers,
Zach

On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 4:36 PM, Frantisek Apfelbeck <algoldor at yahoo.com>wrote:

> Hi Zach,
> Thanks a lot for the post, I think that is the next step. My friend
> Christian had set up the media wiki for Food Hacking Base group when it was
> needed for free on his server, however now he is really busy with his
> project so alas we have to do by ourselves for now. I think that after the
> 30c3 when we come together and chat about that as a group we will see but I
> think that getting a VPS account of our own (Food Hacking Base) would be
> good idea. We have now more resources and more people on the deck so it
> should be quite easy. What is really important I think is to decide if just
> person has an access of multiple. By the principle, I'm for shared access
> even if it causes problems. My practical reason is that as less experienced
> person I can do things wrongly and it comes handy if someone can directly
> help. Also when I'm on the road or at events I just can not take care about
> it others who are not so busy may chip in than. So personally I would be
> for multiple people having access with full privileges.
>
> What I'm bit worried about is the legality or the probability of switching
> us off ... It is not that we do illegal stuff by default but in these days
> you never know and I honestly do not have a clew what are other members of
> the group up to in their spare time and based on the fact that some of them
> are quite heavily involved in the Tor projects I rather do not ask). I've a
> domain registrar for my personal domain frantisekapfelbeck.org with
> French company gandi.net and up to now no problems so I wonder if
> choosing some "non American based" service would give us a better chances
> of not getting turned off  so easily, that was at least a hint which I got
> some time ago.
>
> Many thanks for the info, it will come handy soon :-)
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Frantisek Algoldor Apfelbeck
>
>
> biotechnologist&kvasir and hacker
>
>
> http://www.frantisekapfelbeck.org
>
>
> "There is no way to peace, peace is the way." Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
>
>
>   On Tuesday, November 26, 2013 5:03 PM, Zach Hanna <chezbut at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>  Frantisek,
> I would suggest getting a VPS on DigitalOcean or Dreamhost.
> Then you can have full access.
> If you need help let me know and maybe we can have a Google Hangout and
> talk about it.
> -Z
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 1:20 PM, Chris Egeland <chris at chrisegeland.com>wrote:
>
> Frantisek,
>
> Unfortunately most of the proactive (before it happens) antispam measure
> require somehow modifying how MediaWiki presents it's registration or
> editing process so as to fool the spambots. Unfortunately, the only thing I
> can offer to someone without sysadmin level access to the server hosting
> the wiki (so one could edit the code and run SQL queries as needed) are
> reactive (after the fact) antispam tools. AutoWikiBrowser or Huggle could
> be of use, but the best way to handle wikispam is definitely to get the
> sysadmins on board and have them install the proper plugins to prevent it
> in the first place.
>
> For reference, I used to manually delete about 25-50 wiki user pages per
> day and ban the associated accounts before properly setting up our wiki
> antispam measures. Now, I get maybe 3-5 that slip through per month. So,
> something that used to take me over an hour of my time per month now takes
> under 2 minutes. For reference, I submit this graph:
> http://m.imgur.com/Q8kV8
>
> Regards,
> Chris Egeland
> SYN/HAK
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Nov 24, 2013, at 7:06, Frantisek Apfelbeck <algoldor at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>  Hi Chris,
> I will have questions, quite for sure :-) Many thanks for the help.
>
> I've been using wiki's for few years now but just as a user and not very
> educated one I would say. Now I'm at the point when I want to start my own
> server and I want to install and run media wiki there, plus email client so
> I can run my own account.
>
>  That "Special: Nuke extension" looks sweet, alas I do not have the rights
> to install it I think :-(( From the things which you mentioned to decrease
> the number of spammers (like questions and answers etc.), can I do them
> without having access to the server by itself? I've lets say "all the
> rights" on the media wiki graphical interface. I'm educating myself slowly
> but there are many other projects which I've to now keep running.
>
> Once more many thanks,
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Frantisek Algoldor Apfelbeck
>
>
> biotechnologist&kvasir and hacker
>
>
> http://www.frantisekapfelbeck.org
>
>
> "There is no way to peace, peace is the way." Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
>
>
>   On Sunday, November 24, 2013 4:15 PM, Chris Egeland <
> chris at chrisegeland.com> wrote:
>  Frantisek,
>
> Check out the Special:Nuke extension and also consider implementing
> recaptcha and site-specific registration questions. For example, the wiki
> that runs our website for SYN/HAK asks what city we are in (which is
> plastered all over our home page, so it's not a secret or anything).
>
> Also, if you have thousands of edits to deal with, check out
> AutoWikiBrowser which can be useful if you know what you're doing.
>
> If you have any questions about running a wiki, let me know. I manage most
> of the frontend stuff on our wiki and have been doing so for over a year
>
> Chris Egeland
> SYN/HAK
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Nov 23, 2013, at 22:04, Frantisek Apfelbeck <algoldor at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Lee and others,
> I've an another question on you. I've just cleaned most of our food
> hacking base wiki at least the pages which were not suppose to be there -
> finally learn how to delete them ending up with just active pages which we
> want to have on
>
> https://foodhackingbase.org/wiki/Special:AllPages
>
> blocking up all recent users - spammers (up to 30 days) leaving just the
> "proper users"
>
> https://foodhackingbase.org/wiki/Special:ActiveUsers
>
> I've found that based on statistics we have 324 users
>
> https://foodhackingbase.org/wiki/Special:Statistics
>
> from which just five are suppose to be there, rest are spammers, all users
> can be found here
>
>
> https://foodhackingbase.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListUsers&offset=&limit=500
>
> Is there some simple way how to block all these spammers/users and also
> delete they account pages - I'm not sure how you call it, it doesn't show
> as a page by itself in the list of pages but it is "part of their account"
> and they have spamm links there too.
>
> I just do not want to click over all 319 users and block and delete the
> contributions one by one, having also click again on the already blocked
> ones. I'm wondering if there is some way like giving the five users special
> privileges and after that erasing whole "group of users" who do not have
> these privileges?
>
> Many thanks for any help and info on the subject,
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Frantisek Algoldor Apfelbeck
>
>
> biotechnologist&kvasir and hacker
>
>
> http://www.frantisekapfelbeck.org
>
>
> "There is no way to peace, peace is the way." Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
>
>
>   On Monday, November 18, 2013 12:42 PM, Lee Sonko <lee at lee.org> wrote:
>  Good luck. There are a couple ways you might get access to the file. As
> your friend.
>
> Have fun with your own server. I was pleasantly surprised at how quick my
> "old slow" linux server ran. I just got tired of fighting off people
> breaking into it. I now have a $7/month virtual private server with
> Dreamhost. It could be faster, better, stronger etc... but it works pretty
> well.
>
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 5:52 PM, Frantisek Apfelbeck <algoldor at yahoo.com>wrote:
>
> Thanks Lee!
> Alas I've I think lots of privileges on the wiki itself (like admin etc.)
> but I'm quite sure that I do not have SSH access because it is running on
> one of the members servers. However I will ask and find out. Many thanks
> for the info now I know what I'm after :-)
>
> By the way in references to variety of previous conversations about these
> topics which raised I've decided to set up my first server, the machine is
> sitting on my table for last few weeks, now it is time maybe to check if it
> is functional to play with - nothing big just starting to experiment with
> something useful like email server etc. Machine is old, with 512 Mb of
> memory (Pentium 4) but with some basic version of Ubuntu for servers it may
> do slowly what I'm after.
>
> Many thanks for help,
> \
> Sincerely,
>
> Frantisek Algoldor Apfelbeck
>
>
> biotechnologist&kvasir and hacker
>
>
> http://www.frantisekapfelbeck.org
>
>
> "There is no way to peace, peace is the way." Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
>
>
>   On Monday, November 18, 2013 8:40 AM, Lee Sonko <lee at lee.org> wrote:
>  Seth, you are correct! I am so embarrassed! Thanks for the correction.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 3:38 PM, Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org>wrote:
>
> Lee Sonko writes:
>
> > As an example, on my server, I have a wiki in the "k" directory. So the
> > LocalSettings file it is located in  ~\lee.org\k\   .
>
> Forward slashes: ~/lee.org/k/
>
> --
> Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org>      |  No haiku patents
>      http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/        |  means I've no incentive to
>   FD9A6AA28193A9F03D4BF4ADC11B36DC9C7DD150  |        -- Don Marti
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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