On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 6:09 PM, Daniel Friesen <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, 24 May 2013 13:41:04 -0700, Al Johnson <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> Maybe mediawiki sites can unite to keep a global list of these IP's and >> block them as soon as they are submitted. Each mediawiki site can >> auto-submit a spammer IP as soon as it's discovered to the global list. >> What are the problems with this idea? >> >> Al > > > IP blocking simply doesn't work. It's like playing whack-a-mole against a > billion moles (or trillions on trillions once IPv6 really takes off). > There are too many open proxies, botnet machines, etc... and many of them > are either also addresses used by real editors, NAT addresses with editors > on them, or dynamic IPs that will soon be forced on a non-spammer while the > spammer gets an unblocked IP.
From what I've seen, it's probably the least time-effective technique for preventing spam, but it is effective against naive vandals like we see on en.wikipedia.org. It may be enough to get a spammer to move on to easier targets. I'd be interested in hearing if any smaller wikis have tried this and found it to work or not work. > The proper way to deal with this spam is not by IP but by content. We need > some people who are knowledgeable about matching spam by training programs > with spam and non-spam. That's the kind of central database that would be > useful. An extension that sends spam (and after awhile things marked > non-spam) to a central database. A community on that database that vets > valid and invalid submissions. And eventually a mode for that extension that > will start using information generated from that data to start filtering out > spam edits. > > I've actually already thought about this and thought about how to make it > friendly to users when their edits accidentally end up considered spam: > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Dantman/Anti-spam_system We have a gsoc proposal from Anubhav, who wants to create a bayesan filter: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Anubhav_iitr/Bayesan_spam_filter The primary target for that project is smaller wikis, so I'm sure he would appreciate input and feedback on that project if it gets accepted. > > -- > ~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://danielfriesen.name/] > > > _______________________________________________ > MediaWiki-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
