Mailing List Archive

guarding a wiki
If every active member takes one "dead" wiki under his/her guide by
guarding it (and having sysop rights to delete trash) against spam and
immediately greating and talking to newcomers. Than we do not have to
lock inactive wikis! Just a check once every two or three days suffices
like I do at Laotian. You do not really have to speak the language.

Walter/Waerth
Re: guarding a wiki [ In reply to ]
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

well, what about setting it up so you have to enter one of those
randomly generated image sequences that supposedly can't be read by bots
yet to keep them from spamming.

I think another item that could help clean up some spam is to set up a
limit of how small a post can become in one edit. What I mean is, if
there is over 1,000 words, and all of a sudden it sinks to less then 50,
it should be allowed, to stay in the (can't think of the word) of a
wiki, but be flagged on a "spam check" page for other wikipedians to
check and see if it is really spam, and then revert it. obviously it
won't stop the problem, but it can help clean it up faster.

Kyle
- - check out wikimania.wikipedia.org, hope to see everybody there!

Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Dori wrote:
>
>>>On 4/16/05, Walter van Kalken <walter@vankalken.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>If every active member takes one "dead" wiki under his/her guide by
>>>>guarding it (and having sysop rights to delete trash) against spam and
>>>>immediately greating and talking to newcomers. Than we do not have to
>>>>lock inactive wikis! Just a check once every two or three days suffices
>>>>like I do at Laotian. You do not really have to speak the language.
>>>
>>>This won't work when you have to deal with bots. In two to three days they
>>>could have created hundreds of thousands of pages. The worst is when there
>>>are existing pages which could have been edited and moved a hundred times
>>>where the only efficient way would be to restore the database.
>
>
> Dori has a point of course, but do we really have this problem?
>
> If so, then "soft closing" might be a good solution to explore. A "soft
> closed" wiki requires a captcha for posting, disallows external links,
> implements the 'nofollow' tag, etc.
>
> --Jimbo
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFCYYymqTDXh8jUGRYRAjcXAKDoGjSE6s2jVyz4qs1otw4wsbV/qgCgqtqH
bAQ3VAkiR6csIcNfF9ljGtI=
=cmUG
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Re: guarding a wiki [ In reply to ]
On 4/16/05, Walter van Kalken <walter@vankalken.net> wrote:
>
> If every active member takes one "dead" wiki under his/her guide by
> guarding it (and having sysop rights to delete trash) against spam and
> immediately greating and talking to newcomers. Than we do not have to
> lock inactive wikis! Just a check once every two or three days suffices
> like I do at Laotian. You do not really have to speak the language.


This won't work when you have to deal with bots. In two to three days they
could have created hundreds of thousands of pages. The worst is when there
are existing pages which could have been edited and moved a hundred times
where the only efficient way would be to restore the database.
Re: guarding a wiki [ In reply to ]
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Dori wrote:
> On 4/16/05, Walter van Kalken <walter@vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>>If every active member takes one "dead" wiki under his/her guide by
>>guarding it (and having sysop rights to delete trash) against spam and
>>immediately greating and talking to newcomers. Than we do not have to
>>lock inactive wikis! Just a check once every two or three days suffices
>>like I do at Laotian. You do not really have to speak the language.
>
> This won't work when you have to deal with bots. In two to three days they
> could have created hundreds of thousands of pages. The worst is when there
> are existing pages which could have been edited and moved a hundred times
> where the only efficient way would be to restore the database.

Dori has a point of course, but do we really have this problem?

If so, then "soft closing" might be a good solution to explore. A "soft
closed" wiki requires a captcha for posting, disallows external links,
implements the 'nofollow' tag, etc.

- --Jimbo
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFCYcL8PmU5MGI9SZcRAjGHAJ0R3Q1LDMSB0mfitG3i4HKzBBBhggCcDXoj
ccvHuy+wYwBhcjlmS6/5TSs=
=GIPl
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Re: guarding a wiki [ In reply to ]
>Dori has a point of course, but do we really have this problem?
>
>If so, then "soft closing" might be a good solution to explore. A "soft
>closed" wiki requires a captcha for posting, disallows external links,
>implements the 'nofollow' tag, etc.
>
>
Forgive my ignorance as a non geek-english speaking cloggy ........ what
is captcha?

Waerth/Walter

ps) I am willing to take 2 or 3 more wikipedia's under my eye toprevent
it from clutter/vandalisme so it can stay open.
Re: guarding a wiki [ In reply to ]
Walter van Kalken (walter@vankalken.net) [050417 12:40]:

> >If so, then "soft closing" might be a good solution to explore. A "soft
> >closed" wiki requires a captcha for posting, disallows external links,
> >implements the 'nofollow' tag, etc.

> Forgive my ignorance as a non geek-english speaking cloggy ........ what
> is captcha?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha

A captcha (an acronym for "completely automated public Turing test to tell
computers and humans apart") is a type of challenge-response test used in
computing to determine whether or not the user is human. The term was
coined in 2000 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, and Nicholas J. Hopper of
Carnegie Mellon University, and John Langford of IBM. A common type of
captcha requires that the user type the letters of a distorted and/or
obscured sequence of letters or digits that appears on the screen. Because
the test is administered by a computer, in contrast to the standard Turing
test that is administered by a human, a captcha is sometimes described as a
reverse Turing test.

Captchas are used to prevent bots from using various types of computing
services. Applications include preventing bots from taking part in online
polls, registering for free email accounts (which may then be used to send
spam), and, more recently, preventing bot-generated spam by requiring that
the (unrecognized) sender successfully pass a captcha test before the email
message is delivered.

By definition, captchas have the following characteristics:

* They are completely automated. This avoids the necessity for human
maintenance or intervention in the test, with obvious benefits in
cost and reliability.
* The algorithm used is made public, though it may be encumbered by a
patent. This is stipulated so as to require that breaking a captcha
requires the solution of a hard problem in the field of artificial
intelligence (AI) rather than just the discovery of the (secret)
algorithm, which could be obtained through reverse engineering or
other means.


- d.
Re: guarding a wiki [ In reply to ]
Walter van Kalken schreef:
> If every active member takes one "dead" wiki under his/her guide by
> guarding it (and having sysop rights to delete trash) against spam and
> immediately greating and talking to newcomers. Than we do not have to
> lock inactive wikis! Just a check once every two or three days suffices
> like I do at Laotian. You do not really have to speak the language.
>
> Walter/Waerth

Yes, I have done this for the Frisian Wikipedia. Now it is small but
active. There can be made a list of Wikipedias to put up for adoption.
This is the best way to get a dead wiki active.

Walter /Walter
RE: Re: guarding a wiki [ In reply to ]
In regards to adopting a wiki, I'll adopt the Gothic wiki.


James

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces@wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces@wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Walter Vermeir
Sent: Saturday, April 23, 2005 7:23 PM
To: foundation-l@wikimedia.org
Subject: [Foundation-l] Re: guarding a wiki

Walter van Kalken schreef:
> If every active member takes one "dead" wiki under his/her guide by
> guarding it (and having sysop rights to delete trash) against spam and
> immediately greating and talking to newcomers. Than we do not have to
> lock inactive wikis! Just a check once every two or three days suffices
> like I do at Laotian. You do not really have to speak the language.
>
> Walter/Waerth

Yes, I have done this for the Frisian Wikipedia. Now it is small but
active. There can be made a list of Wikipedias to put up for adoption.
This is the best way to get a dead wiki active.

Walter /Walter

_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l