[dev-context] Re: Options that will work for blocking this spammer.

Hi Brooks and others,

* Block all edits that contain "

" tags.

I have added protection against "

* Set things so that all of Musa8's edits (as tracked by username) get ignored rather than actually applied.

With the new software, one can block single users.

* Put in an "are you human?" test for all anonymous users, and for all logged-in users who haven't been approved by the site admins. (Something like one of the "type in the numbers in this warped image" things that some sites have.)

* Change the edit page urls from "&action=edit" to "&action=editpage". My guess is that this person is using an automatic script that's aimed at bunches of MediaWiki sites, and changing the url will break his script, and he's unlikely to change it just for one site. (This trick works pretty well for weblog spam, apparently.)

Pretty neat tricks, but require more hacking than I like...

Meanwhile, is there a community of MediaWiki users somewhere that we can talk to about this?

There is the mediawiki-l mailing list, and I think that this is all. The spam problem comes up once in a while. Patrick -- ConTeXt wiki and more: http://contextgarden.net