From: Aredridel <aredridel@...>
Date: 2004-07-06T08:00:41+09:00
Subject: Re: Wiki spam

On Tue, 2004-07-06 at 06:32 +0900, David G. Andersen wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 06, 2004 at 01:43:34AM +0900, Aredridel scribed:
> > On Mon, 2004-07-05 at 18:31 +0900, Gavin Sinclair wrote:
> > > Folks,
> > > 
> > > As many people will know, the RubyGarden wiki
> > > (http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby) has been under constant spam attacks for
> > > a while now.  Does anyone have any idea how to prevent these attacks?
> > 
> > Yes. Alter the engine so that external URLs go to a non-indexed-by-
> > search-engines "leaving the site" page. It effectively kills any
> > pagerank that adding a link would add to the linkee. That's both good
> > and bad, but it's a short-term solution.
> > 
> > It may be that a simple HTTP redirect script would work, too, but I'm
> > not sure.
> 
>   This removes the long term incentive, but the spammers can't
> be counted on to realize that their spam isn't effective... just
> as they don't care about filling my mailbox, even though I'll never
> click.

I'm not sure. It seems to have effectively cut down on link-spam in a
blog I visted this morning. It's hard to tell, though, with the editing.

They do post that they've done so, though.

>   The capcha solution seems like the most preferable way to go
> about it.  Just make sure it has an alternative non-visual captcha
> for the visually impaired.

I'd only go Capcha if the other failed, though.

Ari