Re: spam on the wiki

[Carnë Draug]

On 13 January 2012 13:08, Richard Crozier <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 12/01/2012 16:43, John W. Eaton wrote:
>> I see several spam pages on the wiki:
>>
>>   
>> http://www.octave.org/wiki/index.php?title=Breast_Enlargement_Without_Surgery_-_How-to%27s
>>
>>   http://www.octave.org/wiki/index.php?title=Capresso_Coffee_Machines
>>
>>   http://www.octave.org/wiki/index.php?title=There%27s_a_answer_why_Ne...
>>
>> and looking at the log, it seems we are deleting spam pages fairly
>> often.  I think we are currently using some sort of captcha to try to
>> prevent spam but it doesn't seem to be working very well.  Is there
>> something better we can do?
>>
>> jwe
>>
>
> I suspect these are created by humans in places such as China etc. so
> there's not much you can do. Perhaps we should require the user to
> return the output of a random Octave function!
>
> Richard

It seems that most spam seems to be by accounts and only a small
fraction by anonymous accounts. Still limiting edits to accounts would
reduce spam a bit.

I like the idea of making a simple question. For example, Ubuntu
forums force people to answer a question (such, "how much is 2+2" or,
"what's the color of an orange") before making a search, and I
remember seeing a question on savannah site about the number 1984 (the
question was what was the name of George Orwell book that is an year).
A simple question about octave seems to me the best way.

A search on google limited to the wiki domain retrieves results mostly
about viagra...
http://www.google.ie/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.octave.org%2Fwiki%2F&hl=en&num=20&lr=&ft=i&cr=&safe=off

Carnë