Admin:Link Spam - Revision history

Admin: further steps added

2012-03-03T20:12:04Z

further steps added

Admin: Added CheckUser

2012-01-07T23:52:30Z

Added CheckUser

Admin: Protected "Admin:Link Spam" ([edit=sysop] (indefinite) [move=sysop] (indefinite))

2011-12-30T15:26:31Z

Protected "Admin:Link Spam" ([edit=sysop] (indefinite) [move=sysop] (indefinite))

Admin: decided not to go with Flagged Revisions for now, let's see how effective the blacklist is

2011-12-30T15:23:51Z

decided not to go with Flagged Revisions for now, let's see how effective the blacklist is

Admin at 15:08, 30 December 2011

2011-12-30T15:08:45Z

Admin at 14:43, 30 December 2011

2011-12-30T14:43:09Z

Admin: new page

2011-12-30T13:51:24Z

new page

New page

We have had a significant problem with [http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/LinkSpam Link Spam] on this wiki in recent months (late 2011). We do not wish to prevent public contributions altogether, as any corrections to the [[Symbian OS Platform Security]] book are still very welcome and some new material is about to be added to the site which we hope will promote some public participation.

A while back we disabled anonymous page creation and added a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA CAPTCHA] to user registration, but that hasn't reduced the quantity of spam; it has continued to increase until we're deleting spam articles on an almost daily basis. We are now taking the following steps:

;Disabling indexing of link spam
:On the basis that the motivation for link spam is to increase the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank PageRank™] of the spammers' sites, we aim to make that ineffective by ensuring that the edits are not indexed by Google. We have disabled indexing of all pages in the "Special:" name space, which includes the change history, using a [http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html site robots policy]. External links from this wiki are ignored for ranking due to the inclusion of the <code>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nofollow nofollow]</code> attribute. Indexing of deleted content from page histories is disabled using the [http://www.robotstxt.org/meta.html robots meta tag] with <code>noindex</code> and <code>nofollow</code>.

← Older revision		Revision as of 20:12, 3 March 2012
Line 9:		Line 9:
	;Looking for patterns in IP addresses used		;Looking for patterns in IP addresses used
	:We have installed the [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CheckUser CheckUser] MediaWiki extension. This allows us to see the IP addresses used for page edits from logged-in users as well as anonymous users. We intend to block IP addresses that are the source of repeated spam for much longer than the default autoblock period of 1 day.		:We have installed the [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CheckUser CheckUser] MediaWiki extension. This allows us to see the IP addresses used for page edits from logged-in users as well as anonymous users. We intend to block IP addresses that are the source of repeated spam for much longer than the default autoblock period of 1 day.
		+
		+	The above measures have sadly not stemmed the rising tide of spam; we have now also disabled anonymous article edits, and new user accounts will require confirmation from an administrator.

@@ Line 6: / Line 6: @@
 :On the basis that the motivation for link spam is to increase the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank PageRank&#8482;] of the spammers' sites, we aim to make that ineffective by ensuring that the edits are not indexed by Google.  We have disabled indexing of all pages in the "Special:" name space, which includes the change history, using a [http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html site robots policy].  External links from this wiki are ignored for ranking due to the inclusion of the <code>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nofollow nofollow]</code> attribute.  Indexing of deleted content from page histories is disabled using the [http://www.robotstxt.org/meta.html robots meta tag] with <code>noindex</code> and <code>nofollow</code>.
 ;Blocking references to known spam sites
-:We have installed the [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SpamBlacklist Spam Blacklist] MediaWiki extension.  This uses an [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Spam_blacklist actively maintained blacklist] to block edits containing URLs of sites included in spammed content.
+:We have installed the [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SpamBlacklist SpamBlacklist] MediaWiki extension.  This uses an [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Spam_blacklist actively maintained blacklist] to block edits containing URLs of sites included in spammed content.

@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 ;Disabling indexing and ranking of link spam
 :On the basis that the motivation for link spam is to increase the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank PageRank&#8482;] of the spammers' sites, we aim to make that ineffective by ensuring that the edits are not indexed by Google.  We have disabled indexing of all pages in the "Special:" name space, which includes the change history, using a [http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html site robots policy].  External links from this wiki are ignored for ranking due to the inclusion of the <code>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nofollow nofollow]</code> attribute.  Indexing of deleted content from page histories is disabled using the [http://www.robotstxt.org/meta.html robots meta tag] with <code>noindex</code> and <code>nofollow</code>.
 ;Blocking references to known spam sites
-:We have installed the [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SpamBlacklist Spam Blacklist] MediaWiki extension.  This uses an [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Spam_blacklist actively maintained blacklist] to block edits containing URLs of sites that have been included in spammed content.
+:We have installed the [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SpamBlacklist Spam Blacklist] MediaWiki extension.  This uses an [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Spam_blacklist actively maintained blacklist] to block edits containing URLs of sites included in spammed content.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 We have had a significant problem with [http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/LinkSpam Link Spam] on this wiki in recent months (late 2011).  We do not wish to prevent public contributions altogether, as any corrections to the [[Symbian OS Platform Security]] book are still very welcome and some new material is about to be added to the site which we hope will promote some public participation.
-A while back we disabled anonymous page creation and added a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA CAPTCHA] to user registration, but that hasn't reduced the quantity of spam; it has continued to increase until we're deleting spam articles on an almost daily basis.  We are now taking the following steps:
+A while back we disabled anonymous article creation and added a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA CAPTCHA] to anonymous article edits, but that hasn't reduced the quantity of spam; it has continued to increase until we're deleting spam articles on an almost daily basis.  We are now taking the following steps:
 ;Disabling indexing and ranking of link spam

@@ Line 3: / Line 3: @@
 A while back we disabled anonymous page creation and added a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA CAPTCHA] to user registration, but that hasn't reduced the quantity of spam; it has continued to increase until we're deleting spam articles on an almost daily basis.  We are now taking the following steps:
-;Disabling indexing of link spam
+;Disabling indexing and ranking of link spam
 :On the basis that the motivation for link spam is to increase the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank PageRank&#8482;] of the spammers' sites, we aim to make that ineffective by ensuring that the edits are not indexed by Google.  We have disabled indexing of all pages in the "Special:" name space, which includes the change history, using a [http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html site robots policy].  External links from this wiki are ignored for ranking due to the inclusion of the <code>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nofollow nofollow]</code> attribute.  Indexing of deleted content from page histories is disabled using the [http://www.robotstxt.org/meta.html robots meta tag] with <code>noindex</code> and <code>nofollow</code>.

← Older revision	Revision as of 15:26, 30 December 2011
(No difference)