From: Patrick May <patrick@...>
Date: 2004-07-07T13:29:25+09:00
Subject: Re: Rubygems Wiki Spam

Hello,

On Tuesday, July 6, 2004, at 10:28  PM, Chad Fowler wrote:

> This is a problem that Wikis all over the web seem to be facing.
> Anyone seen a really good general solution?  I guess not allowing
> edits would be one, but that would be a shame.

You can't have a general solution to stop spammers.  There's a person 
on the other end of that computer too.  The only thing to do is to try 
and waste that person's time, instead of letting them waste your time.

They get the advantage of the first move.  We have another advantage -- 
there are alot more of us.  I restored as much of 
rubygems.rubyforge.org as I could, I hope that buys some time for the 
admin of rubyforge to block that IP address.

Things will get worse, of course.  Tragedy of the commons and all.  
Still, since HTTP is synchronized and point to point, I think there are 
more devious things a site admin can do to an identified vandal :-)

Cheers,

Patrick