Fake users
The spammers are getting better, or the users are getting weirder. Every so often, a spammer comes in with fake posts and those are easy to deal with by clicking the "mark as spam" option for the posting. But what do you do about the people who are likely not legit users and change main page names?
Case in point: the user "jessica5898" just changed the title of the Download page to "Glee Thriller". There's no way to mark their edit as spam or malicious (but I made a log entry to remove the user), and I can't mark the user as suspect. With these cases, what can be done... have an option when viewing the user info to mark user as suspect and for review?
The following users have been noted by me, over the past few weeks, to do strange page name changes and no other posts, so I suspect they are not legit. I noticed the name change and corrected it back.
jessica5898
KaitlinP
This one I am not sure about as the name change to the page was subtle. But it was the only post/change made, no other activity.
kittycatclaw
Comments
Just perusing the Revisions on certain Handbook pages, I can spot several other "fake" users. Since it seems so easy to create a disposable user, lets have a way to also mark and deal with them swiftly.
So, no one else finds the spammers annoying, esp those that make themselves harder to deal with? I always check the postings through the Recent Posts link, and so spot the crap very quickly and mark it as spam when I am on, but I can't do that in the non-forum areas. At least one of the (ab)users in my first posting has not been dealt with, and I suspect none of them have.
In reply to Spam by schepers
I haven't seen the malicious wiki-editing cases you describe - just the occasion spam post. I had often wished there was something we as users could do to take care of such postings, but obviously I hadn't even noticed there is a "mark as spam" button. So thanks for pointing that out! I'm not sure what can be done about people maliciously editing other aspects of the site, though, as I don't know what sort of protections the wiki system offers.
In reply to I haven't seen the malicious by Marc Sabatella
Click on the Download link and then click the Revisions tab at the top of the page. You will see an entry by me correcting the page title edit that the previous user "jessica5898" had just done. I've done those type of corrections several times lately. There's no way to mark the user as malicious (or just stupid), but of course maybe she just made an honest (!?) mistake. I don't know how changing the page title from "Download" to "glee Thriller" can be classified as an honest mistake. However, such users _never_ post anywhere again, even though their accounts still exist. (Edit, the account of Jessica5898 has finally been dealt with. Maybe the others I posted about have been as well.)
When you peruse the wiki pages enough, esp the revisions as I do, you start to see very strange edits. My favorite was the user who deleted the entire contents of one page. David Bolton restored it shortly after that.
In reply to See the Download page by schepers
I also check the recent posts and mark all spam I find, but that is only partially helpful.
I can't think of a way to completely avoid these problems, but perhaps someone should be tasked to check all page revisions before they are reflected on the site.
I am prepared to assist at this, but cannot fully take this on, I would want others to help.
Regards,
In reply to I also by xavierjazz
I would be willing to help too. I could see this working similarly to how moderated newsgroups/forums work - when a change is made, email goes out to all moderators, and someone has to approve the change before it goes online. Moderators wouldn't be editing for content, just making sure nothing completely bogus gets in. Not sure if the framework allows for that, but that's what I have in mind.
In reply to I would be willing to help by Marc Sabatella
content would be a very reasonable thing to do, to maintain the integrity of the documentation.
-- J.S.
In reply to I would be willing to help by Marc Sabatella
Perhaps a simpler approach might work, also dependent on implementation. All new users cannot make changes to the wiki (non-forum) pages for some pre-determined time (e.g. 1-2 weeks). That would keep the spam to the forums where they can be marked and the user dealt with, and no spammer would stick around for the waiting period just to screw up a wiki page and get booted off.
In reply to Something simpler... by schepers
a very good idea.
I am struck by the swift response of a couple of volunteers. Perhaps this "group" can find a way to collaborate on some aspect??
Regards,
In reply to Something simpler... by schepers
these might be children, not spammers. Your solution would work in either case.
-- J.S.
For spam, we indeed have the 'mark as spam' link. When a certain threshold of spam flags has been reached for one comment, that comment is unpublished, i.e. not visible anymore. Added to this, also the spammer account is blocked.
Regarding bogus or spam edit on book pages, it appears to me that the problem is not that big yet. What I can do is give the frequent scanners of the recent changes stream, the ability to revert to the previous revision with one click. Tbc
Last thing, I will further enhance the spam filter to reduce the amount of comment spam that is currently coming in.
I'll come back to this topic when things are in place.
In reply to Measurements by Thomas
As I mentioned in the initial post, the only thing really missing is the ability to mark a _user_ as a spammer or malicious. Having the ability to restore an altered page is great, but we also need some way to report a user.