[Pmwiki-users] Wiki spammers (was: external links in page history)

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Wed, Dec 01, 2004 at 09:44:16AM +1300, John Rankin wrote:
> >> >And blocklist.php is now available at 
> >> >http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/Blocklist.  

> Well so far no more spam (what a foolish thing to say).
> 
> Suggestions:
> 1. those who'd like to add some spammers to their blocking page,
>    see http://wiki.lianza.org.nz/index.php/Main/WikiSpammers

Some of those addresses look familiar... :-)

> 2. would it be worth putting up a page on pmwiki that includes
>    the text of various spam blocking pages, so we can go to
>    one place to get an updated list of Bad Santa addresses

I have no problem with hosting a shared blocklist on pmwiki.org --
I suggest either http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/SharedBlocklist
(linked from the Blocklist recipe) or 
http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Main/SharedBlocklist.

To make things easier on admins we should also be sure to note (either
in the SharedBlocklist page itself or in the Blocklist recipe) that
$BlocklistPages can specify an array of pages to be read, thus it's 
possible for a site to maintain a local Main.Blocklist that isn't 
overwritten whenever the admin updates his/her copy of SharedBlocklist 
with the latest version from pmwiki.org.

> 3. should the blocklist.php script block 'post' requests, rather
>    than 'edit' requests; that way
>    - if it's a human spammer (albeit one swimming in the shallow
>      end of the gene pool), he just wasted some of his time that
>      might have been spent spamming someone else
>    - if it's a machine, it might not notice that its post didn't
>      take, whereas it may spot an edit rejection

Well, the script already doesn't block 'edit' requests, it blocks
post requests.  In PmWiki 2 there no longer is an ?action=post,
it's all ?action=edit and the pressing of the "post" button tells
PmWiki when it's time to do the actual save.  So, blocklist.php simply
resets the "post" button (prior to the rest of the edit sequence)
when it detects a post that needs to be blocked.  Human spammers won't 
know they're blocked until they've hit the Save button, and a machine 
spammer would have to have to examine the results of the post to detect 
that what it just "posted" didn't post.

For PmWiki 1 compatibility it might be worthwhile to have the blocklist.php
work for ?action=post as well -- I'll look into this.  Should be pretty
straightforward to do.

There's also the possibility that instead of returning a blocked post
to the edit form with a message (and an opportunity to clean up the
post), that the administrator may want to the system to simply abandon 
the edit altogether.  This can be done as a local customization in config.php:

     include_once('cookbook/blocklist.php');
     if ($Blocklisted) $action='browse';

I decided this is best left as an administrator option rather than
assuming it in blocklist.php, and I wanted to make mention of it in
the cookbook page but couldn't figure out a good way to describe it.
I'd be very happy if someone else could do so.

> 4. for any US readers, can you get Donald Rumsfeld to deal with
>    spammers the way he dealt with Al Jazeera (bomb the bastards;
>    see The Control Room -- essential and compelling viewing)

I can think of ways to do this, but all of them have the outcome of
me likely ending up in prison, and although this might be a noble
cause, it would also drastically slow further PmWiki development.  
So, I'm afraid someone else will have to take the lead on this one.  :-)

> 5. thank you once again, Patrick

You're welcome, as always.  

Pm