Difference between revisions of "Site:Spam"
m (→How users can help: updating--non-admin users can't use the revert feature I think) |
m (Titlecased/lowercased "spam" where found. Explained in discussion page, q.v.) |
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| − | Here are a few notes on | + | Here are a few notes on spam. |
==What is it?== | ==What is it?== | ||
| − | Any commercial links are | + | Any commercial links are spam. (There could be an exception for a link on the [[Site:Other scripture resources]] page to a commercial site that people find valuable for studying the scriptures. In fact though, not sure that such an exception is needed. Currently there are no commercial sites like that on that page.) |
| − | + | Spam sometimes is done manually and sometimes is automated. | |
| − | Some | + | Some spam is intended for direct human consumption on this site. The spammer is hoping that a user will see the link and follow it. Other spam is only there in order to increase the google ranking of the site. Google, and other search engines, use the fact that other sites link to a site in order to increase the rank of that page in search results. |
==How do we deal with it?== | ==How do we deal with it?== | ||
| − | ===Built in features to minimize | + | ===Built in features to minimize spam=== |
This site is run using the software [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki Mediawiki]. Built into the version we currently use is a rel="nofollow" attribute for all links. Essentially this means that no external links from this site are used to increase page rankings for sites we link to. The downside of this is that links from this site to, for example, the Church's website will not increase the Church's website's rank in Google search results. The good news is that this takes away the incentive for people to post links simply in order to increase their google rank. Unfortunately, not all spammers are aware that we (and most other wikimedia wikis) implement this feature. This means that they may mistakenly believe that by posting links they are helping their google rank. | This site is run using the software [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki Mediawiki]. Built into the version we currently use is a rel="nofollow" attribute for all links. Essentially this means that no external links from this site are used to increase page rankings for sites we link to. The downside of this is that links from this site to, for example, the Church's website will not increase the Church's website's rank in Google search results. The good news is that this takes away the incentive for people to post links simply in order to increase their google rank. Unfortunately, not all spammers are aware that we (and most other wikimedia wikis) implement this feature. This means that they may mistakenly believe that by posting links they are helping their google rank. | ||
===How users can help=== | ===How users can help=== | ||
| − | Users, please remove any | + | Users, please remove any spam you see. Sometimes you will need to look in the history and add back stuff if the SPAM bot deleted something while adding the spam. |
===How admins can help=== | ===How admins can help=== | ||
| − | Admins, please block all IPs used for automated | + | Admins, please block all IPs used for automated spam. In theory there are a limited number of possible IPs that such a spammer could use. When blocking use an expiry time of "indefinite." |
| − | Another thing that admins can do to block | + | Another thing that admins can do to block spam is to protect pages that are frequent targets of spam. |
===What actually worked=== | ===What actually worked=== | ||
| − | This site has had a couple of | + | This site has had a couple of spam attacks. In the first case the spam bot (or bots?) was continually targetting the same page. Blocking the IP didn't help as the bot kept changing ip addresses. To deal with this bot we protected the page the bot was targetting. That solved the problem. In a later case a bot was hitting various pages from various ip addresses with essentially the same content. It was all pharmaceutical stuff. To deal with this we took some key words that were always used in the posted content and put them in a list mediawiki has of prohibited words. The point of this list is to prevent this type of spam. Any post with one of the prohibited words in it cannot be posted. Adding those words to that list solved the problem. There was one later case where spam of all the same variety was being posted that was also fixed by adding some words consistently used in those post to that list. |
Revision as of 14:07, 15 August 2011
Here are a few notes on spam.
Contents
What is it?
Any commercial links are spam. (There could be an exception for a link on the Site:Other scripture resources page to a commercial site that people find valuable for studying the scriptures. In fact though, not sure that such an exception is needed. Currently there are no commercial sites like that on that page.)
Spam sometimes is done manually and sometimes is automated.
Some spam is intended for direct human consumption on this site. The spammer is hoping that a user will see the link and follow it. Other spam is only there in order to increase the google ranking of the site. Google, and other search engines, use the fact that other sites link to a site in order to increase the rank of that page in search results.
How do we deal with it?
Built in features to minimize spam
This site is run using the software Mediawiki. Built into the version we currently use is a rel="nofollow" attribute for all links. Essentially this means that no external links from this site are used to increase page rankings for sites we link to. The downside of this is that links from this site to, for example, the Church's website will not increase the Church's website's rank in Google search results. The good news is that this takes away the incentive for people to post links simply in order to increase their google rank. Unfortunately, not all spammers are aware that we (and most other wikimedia wikis) implement this feature. This means that they may mistakenly believe that by posting links they are helping their google rank.
How users can help
Users, please remove any spam you see. Sometimes you will need to look in the history and add back stuff if the SPAM bot deleted something while adding the spam.
How admins can help
Admins, please block all IPs used for automated spam. In theory there are a limited number of possible IPs that such a spammer could use. When blocking use an expiry time of "indefinite."
Another thing that admins can do to block spam is to protect pages that are frequent targets of spam.
What actually worked
This site has had a couple of spam attacks. In the first case the spam bot (or bots?) was continually targetting the same page. Blocking the IP didn't help as the bot kept changing ip addresses. To deal with this bot we protected the page the bot was targetting. That solved the problem. In a later case a bot was hitting various pages from various ip addresses with essentially the same content. It was all pharmaceutical stuff. To deal with this we took some key words that were always used in the posted content and put them in a list mediawiki has of prohibited words. The point of this list is to prevent this type of spam. Any post with one of the prohibited words in it cannot be posted. Adding those words to that list solved the problem. There was one later case where spam of all the same variety was being posted that was also fixed by adding some words consistently used in those post to that list.
