Getting slightly out of hand

Brother None · Post by **Brother None** » Sat Mar 25, 2006 1:01 am

The whole spambot thing is getting a bit out of control.

For those unclear on it; two spambots register. One edits links to cialis and online casinos or whatever to the page, the other pretends to remove them but doesn't.

It's a bit annoying to dig back all the time to remove it and I'm sure we've missed quite a bit.

Looks like requiring registration isn't helping. Any other ideas? Maybe some bot-prevention? On NMA we recently added a question with a box one had to fill in. The question is not important. It could be "What is Dark Underlord's name?", answer; Dark Underlord. Spambots won't figure it out, though.

Jesus Christ · Post by **Jesus Christ** » Sat Mar 25, 2006 1:28 am

Does it work?

baby arm · Post by **baby arm** » Sat Mar 25, 2006 1:43 am

DU's real name is Petunia.

edit: Nevermind. You're talking about the shitty wiki.

VasikkA · Post by **VasikkA** » Sat Mar 25, 2006 1:49 am

Question or a number box... a bot wouldn't figure it out. Why not implement one on the forums, too. There's at least 1000+ bots that've registered on the forum during one year. Looking at their profile page, I'm starting to believe some aren't bots, but rather spammers or corporate whores of some sort.

Brother None · Post by **Brother None** » Sat Mar 25, 2006 2:03 am

Jesus Christ wrote:Does it work?

Hey, Jesus, you still around? Thanks for dying for my sins and all, that was pretty decent.

But, uhm, yeah, it works, perfectly. I think the basic question "Who is not allowed here" might be a bit confusing, despite the site title "No Mutants Allowed"

Question or a number box... a bot wouldn't figure it out. Why not implement one on the forums, too. There's at least 1000+ bots that've registered on the forum during one year. Looking at their profile page, I'm starting to believe some aren't bots, but rather spammers or corporate whores of some sort.

We installed it for much the same reason. Those bots are a real annoyance, they almost flooded NMA.

Wikis are worse, though, they eat bandwidth for breakfast, better to prevent it then to get Sorcerer's pissed off again.

Jesus Christ · Post by **Jesus Christ** » Sat Mar 25, 2006 5:30 am

Malicious sinners will always be around to install the bots...

Maybe ask some FO related question, that would keep the ones looking for a quick buck away. unfortunately it would also scare off the ones who are genuinely interested in the site and who are not FO savvy.

Ausir · Post by **Ausir** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 12:29 am

Maybe we should just turn registration off in the wiki so that people can register only if they PM me or DU so that we'd create accounts in the wiki for them. It's not like there are many new editors there, anyway.

VasikkA · Post by **VasikkA** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 1:11 am

Ausir wrote:Maybe we should just turn registration off in the wiki so that people can register only if they PM me or DU so that we'd create accounts in the wiki for them. It's not like there are many new editors there, anyway.

Wouldn't that be against the basic principle of wiki?

The Vault - The World's first despotic wiki!

Surely you can figure out some way... perhaps enter a number code whenever posting/editing an article. How do other wikis deal with this problem?

Naked_Lunch · Post by **Naked_Lunch** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 4:54 pm

Is anyone still working on this?

Baby arm's evil twin · Sat Apr 01, 2006 11:33 pm

Unfortunatly for you Naked...

There is no vaccine against stupidity.

Ausir · Post by **Ausir** » Sun Apr 02, 2006 8:15 am

Naked_Lunch wrote:Is anyone still working on this?

Yes, although not as often as I used to.