[pmwiki-users] Core Spam Blcok Thoughts

Wendell Brown wbrown at arkie.net
Wed Apr 5 13:07:43 CDT 2006


>  1.  Add a "blocklist" recipe to the core (disabled by default). Most
>  sites are wanting to have some form of blocking available and are
>  using some variant of the blocklist.php  or blocklist2.php recipes
>  --- bringing Blocklist into the core would allow it to be more
>  closely synchronized and maintained with the rest of the
>  distribution.

I've been following the comments on adding Spam blocking to the core and 
I'm totally for it, but I think we need to consider what type of spam 
block needs to be added.  It seems that the basic consensus of the list 
is for something like Blocklist2, but we need to keep in mind that while 
most of us on this list are "active" wiki admins there are tons of 
pmwiki's out there that are installed and then left unattended for LONG 
periods of time or even abandoned. 

Adding a spam block to the core that is turned off by default or with a 
default basic block list is going to be a major help to those of us that 
maintain our wiki's, but it's not going to cut down on overall abuse of 
pmwiki by spammers.  And while those other wiki's aren't really our 
"problem", as long as the spammers can get free advertising from pmwiki 
users they are going to keep attempting to spam ALL of us.

IMHO, a script like MTBlackList (sorry, I have a personal relationship 
with it) has a major advantage for this type of situation.  Here is what 
I'm thinking.

   1. Build a list of regular expressions that identify pmwiki spammers
      (url's or keywords) - this list doesn't have to be very aggressive
      but it needs to be updated to reflect the dedicated pmwiki
      spammers as they show themselves.
   2. Add a spam block script to the core that can read the list of
      spammers (and potentially others that are more aggressive but
      disabled by default - like MoinMaster -
      http://moinmaster.wikiwikiweb.de/BadContent) and block posting if
      an expression on any of the active lists matches a post.
   3. To avoid the possibility of a wiki that caters to a generally
      unacceptable content (ie a wiki for a company that distributes xyz
      drug) being blocked, we could create a local white list file that
      could contain expressions that would override the expressions in
      the blacklists.
   4. Blacklist files would only have to be downloaded daily (not much
      bandwidth for either the server distributing the files or the
      server using the black list).

The advantages for this approach are:

    * Once a spammer is identified and blocked on the master list, YOUR
      site is automatically protected.
    * pmwiki becomes a less abusable target - harder targets aren't hit
      as often
    * Even abandoned wiki's (or your site during a long vacation) can be
      protected by the community at large

FYI, MTBlackList already pretty much does all of this with the exception 
of the white lists.
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