Spam on the Haskell wiki

[Gwern Branwen]

I recently moved, and when I returned to the Internet a few days
later, I was greeted with several hundred spam pages in Recent
Changes. The torrent of spam has not let up, and I estimate that I
have blocked 3-500 accounts and deleted as many pages. (I blocked
another 5 or so while composing this email.) Certainly the deletion
and block logs are long enough:

- http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=
- http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/index.php?title=Special:Ipblocklist&limit=500

I have asked Ashley Yakeley to turn on additional anti-spam measures,
but he has not been active on the wiki since January
(http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Special:Contributions/Ashley_Y
http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/index.php?title=Special:Log&user=Ashley_Y),
and has not replied to my talk messages or accompanying emails.

I had to do this single-handedly as there are no other administrators.
This took up a good chunk of today and yesterday, and the spam is
continuing. I cannot handle it much longer: it's incredibly tedious
and using up far more time than I have to give it. Measures need to be
taken:

1. Email confirmation needs to be checked that Ashley did in fact
enable it. I suspect he did not, since I also administrate the
LessWrong wiki - which I know for certain has email confirmation is
enabled - is being attacked by the same spammers (similar or identical
templates & spam) but at a much reduced scale.
2. Additional administrators must be created. I suggest:

- dons
- Magnus Therning
- Neil Mitchell
- byorgey
- Henk-Jan van Tuyl

I am sure there are others who can be trusted.
3. Additional bureaucrats should be created. I suggest myself.
4. ReCAPTCHA enabled for 'edits adding new, unrecognized external
links' - which is all of the spam. Further reading:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Combating_spam &
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Anti-spam_features
5. if Ashley is inactive, his account may be a security risk. The
English Wikipedia now removes administrator bits after a year of
inactivity; we should consider a similar policy.

None of these can be taken by myself, as I am neither a sysadmin on
Haskell.org nor a bureaucrat on the wiki.

If none of these steps are taken and spam continues to remain a
problem in 2 months (15 September 2012), I will cease patrolling
Recent Changes. I no longer have the time or patience.

--
gwern
http://www.gwern.net

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[Don Stewart]

More admins on the wiki is good, esp. those with experience to implement anti-spam measures.

Ashley is around , but as usual, we need more help.

On Saturday, July 14, 2012, Gwern Branwen wrote:

I recently moved, and when I returned to the Internet a few days
later, I was greeted with several hundred spam pages in Recent
Changes. The torrent of spam has not let up, and I estimate that I
have blocked 3-500 accounts and deleted as many pages. (I blocked
another 5 or so while composing this email.) Certainly the deletion
and block logs are long enough:

- http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=
- http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/index.php?title=Special:Ipblocklist&limit=500

I have asked Ashley Yakeley to turn on additional anti-spam measures,
but he has not been active on the wiki since January
(http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Special:Contributions/Ashley_Y
http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/index.php?title=Special:Log&user=Ashley_Y),
and has not replied to my talk messages or accompanying emails.

I had to do this single-handedly as there are no other administrators.
This took up a good chunk of today and yesterday, and the spam is
continuing. I cannot handle it much longer: it's incredibly tedious
and using up far more time than I have to give it. Measures need to be
taken:

1. Email confirmation needs to be checked that Ashley did in fact
enable it. I suspect he did not, since I also administrate the
LessWrong wiki - which I know for certain has email confirmation is
enabled - is being attacked by the same spammers (similar or identical
templates & spam) but at a much reduced scale.
2. Additional administrators must be created. I suggest:

- dons
- Magnus Therning
- Neil Mitchell
- byorgey
- Henk-Jan van Tuyl

I am sure there are others who can be trusted.
3. Additional bureaucrats should be created. I suggest myself.
4. ReCAPTCHA enabled for 'edits adding new, unrecognized external
links' - which is all of the spam. Further reading:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Combating_spam &
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Anti-spam_features
5. if Ashley is inactive, his account may be a security risk. The
English Wikipedia now removes administrator bits after a year of
inactivity; we should consider a similar policy.

None of these can be taken by myself, as I am neither a sysadmin on
Haskell.org nor a bureaucrat on the wiki.

If none of these steps are taken and spam continues to remain a
problem in 2 months (15 September 2012), I will cease patrolling
Recent Changes. I no longer have the time or patience.

--
gwern
http://www.gwern.net

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[Ashley Yakeley]

I have verified that a verified email address is required to edit (by creating an account).

-- Ashley

On Sat, 2012-07-14 at 20:52 -0700, Mark Lentczner wrote:

We probably need more than just recaptcha (don't use anything else - they are breakable) - there are real-time forum spammer lists one needs to consult, and other measures. It may seem draconian, but for other communities I run on the web, we've given up and have to resort to manual review of every account request.

- Mark

On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 6:05 PM, Don Stewart <[hidden email]> wrote:

More admins on the wiki is good, esp. those with experience to implement anti-spam measures.

Ashley is around , but as usual, we need more help.

On Saturday, July 14, 2012, Gwern Branwen wrote:

I recently moved, and when I returned to the Internet a few days
later, I was greeted with several hundred spam pages in Recent
Changes. The torrent of spam has not let up, and I estimate that I
have blocked 3-500 accounts and deleted as many pages. (I blocked
another 5 or so while composing this email.) Certainly the deletion
and block logs are long enough:

- http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=
- http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/index.php?title=Special:Ipblocklist&limit=500

I have asked Ashley Yakeley to turn on additional anti-spam measures,
but he has not been active on the wiki since January
(http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Special:Contributions/Ashley_Y
http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/index.php?title=Special:Log&user=Ashley_Y),
and has not replied to my talk messages or accompanying emails.

I had to do this single-handedly as there are no other administrators.
This took up a good chunk of today and yesterday, and the spam is
continuing. I cannot handle it much longer: it's incredibly tedious
and using up far more time than I have to give it. Measures need to be
taken:

1. Email confirmation needs to be checked that Ashley did in fact
enable it. I suspect he did not, since I also administrate the
LessWrong wiki - which I know for certain has email confirmation is
enabled - is being attacked by the same spammers (similar or identical
templates & spam) but at a much reduced scale.
2. Additional administrators must be created. I suggest:

- dons
- Magnus Therning
- Neil Mitchell
- byorgey
- Henk-Jan van Tuyl

I am sure there are others who can be trusted.
3. Additional bureaucrats should be created. I suggest myself.
4. ReCAPTCHA enabled for 'edits adding new, unrecognized external
links' - which is all of the spam. Further reading:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Combating_spam &
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Anti-spam_features
5. if Ashley is inactive, his account may be a security risk. The
English Wikipedia now removes administrator bits after a year of
inactivity; we should consider a similar policy.

None of these can be taken by myself, as I am neither a sysadmin on
Haskell.org nor a bureaucrat on the wiki.

If none of these steps are taken and spam continues to remain a
problem in 2 months (15 September 2012), I will cease patrolling
Recent Changes. I no longer have the time or patience.

--
gwern
http://www.gwern.net

_______________________________________________
Haskell mailing list
[hidden email]
http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell

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[Henk-Jan van Tuyl]

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 02:39:30 +0200, Gwern Branwen <[hidden email]> wrote:

> 2. Additional administrators must be created. I suggest:
>
> - dons
> - Magnus Therning
> - Neil Mitchell
> - byorgey
> - Henk-Jan van Tuyl

I am willing to do administrator tasks.


> 4. ReCAPTCHA enabled for 'edits adding new, unrecognized external
> links' - which is all of the spam.

This is already enabled.

Regards,
Henk-Jan van Tuyl


--
http://Van.Tuyl.eu/
http://members.chello.nl/hjgtuyl/tourdemonad.html
Haskell programming
--

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[Brent Yorgey-2]

On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 12:03:49AM +0200, Henk-Jan van Tuyl wrote:

> On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 02:39:30 +0200, Gwern Branwen <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> >2. Additional administrators must be created. I suggest:
> >
> >- dons
> >- Magnus Therning
> >- Neil Mitchell
> >- byorgey
> >- Henk-Jan van Tuyl
>
> I am willing to do administrator tasks.
>
>
> >4. ReCAPTCHA enabled for 'edits adding new, unrecognized external
> >links' - which is all of the spam.
>
> This is already enabled.

I am also willing to do administrator tasks, and can confirm that the
ReCAPTCHA for edits adding external links is indeed enabled, since in
the course of editing the Typeclassopedia and Diagrams wiki (both
hosted on the Haskell wiki) I often add external links.

-Brent

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[Brent Yorgey-2]

So it looks like email confirmation for new accounts and ReCAPTCHA for
new links are both enabled, but clearly spam is still a problem.  Are
there any additional measures we can take to cut down on spam?

For the record, if we need to move to a manual approval process for
new accounts, I would be willing to help.

-Brent

On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 08:39:30PM -0400, Gwern Branwen wrote:

> I recently moved, and when I returned to the Internet a few days
> later, I was greeted with several hundred spam pages in Recent
> Changes. The torrent of spam has not let up, and I estimate that I
> have blocked 3-500 accounts and deleted as many pages. (I blocked
> another 5 or so while composing this email.) Certainly the deletion
> and block logs are long enough:
>
> - http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=
> - http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/index.php?title=Special:Ipblocklist&limit=500
>
> I have asked Ashley Yakeley to turn on additional anti-spam measures,
> but he has not been active on the wiki since January
> (http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Special:Contributions/Ashley_Y
> http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/index.php?title=Special:Log&user=Ashley_Y),
> and has not replied to my talk messages or accompanying emails.
>
> I had to do this single-handedly as there are no other administrators.
> This took up a good chunk of today and yesterday, and the spam is
> continuing. I cannot handle it much longer: it's incredibly tedious
> and using up far more time than I have to give it. Measures need to be
> taken:
>
> 1. Email confirmation needs to be checked that Ashley did in fact
> enable it. I suspect he did not, since I also administrate the
> LessWrong wiki - which I know for certain has email confirmation is
> enabled - is being attacked by the same spammers (similar or identical
> templates & spam) but at a much reduced scale.
> 2. Additional administrators must be created. I suggest:
>
> - dons
> - Magnus Therning
> - Neil Mitchell
> - byorgey
> - Henk-Jan van Tuyl
>
> I am sure there are others who can be trusted.
> 3. Additional bureaucrats should be created. I suggest myself.
> 4. ReCAPTCHA enabled for 'edits adding new, unrecognized external
> links' - which is all of the spam. Further reading:
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Combating_spam &
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Anti-spam_features
> 5. if Ashley is inactive, his account may be a security risk. The
> English Wikipedia now removes administrator bits after a year of
> inactivity; we should consider a similar policy.
>
> None of these can be taken by myself, as I am neither a sysadmin on
> Haskell.org nor a bureaucrat on the wiki.
>
> If none of these steps are taken and spam continues to remain a
> problem in 2 months (15 September 2012), I will cease patrolling
> Recent Changes. I no longer have the time or patience.
>
> --
> gwern
> http://www.gwern.net

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