[pydotorg-www] Python Wiki Spam

[Paul Boddie]

On Friday 22 March 2013 12:19:05 M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> On 20.03.2013 15:30, Barry Warsaw wrote:
> > On Mar 20, 2013, at 10:08 AM, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> >> If we can't get things under control, we will have to start
> >> using such a group and disable public editing of pages :-(
> >
> > FWIW, we've long had this policy on the Mailman wiki.  It was the only
> > successful way to control spam.  Sign up is open (and yes, we
> > occasionally have to delete profile spam), but folks have to email the
> > mailman-cabal to request write/edit access.  We don't get a lot of such
> > requests, so the process is quite manageable, and we get almost zero spam
> > now.
>
> Did this have an effect on the number of editors of the wiki ?
>
> The usual complaint when doing this is that you prevent quick
> edits (e.g. typo corrections) by raising the bar in this way.
>
> After the recent updates to the textchas, the profile spam
> has apparently stopped:
>
>     http://wiki.python.org/jython/RecentChanges

That no longer seems to be the case. I am also having to remove these stupid 
profile spams from the Python Wiki two or more times per day.

> So perhaps making the textchas a little more complicated and also
> starting a process to accept people to the trusted editor group
> would solve the problem.

It would be nice to know which textchas the spammers managed to solve, but 
again I recommend non-trivial challenge questions. The MoinMoin Wiki doesn't 
suffer from this.

Paul

P.S. I'm willing to work on more advanced anti-spam measures, but only if they 
get used.