Forum:My wiki is under spam attack - please advice
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Greetings
I admin the Bad Webcomics Wiki - and over the last several days bot scripts have been able to sign up and create spam spages unhindered. The spam filter simply isn't catching them anymore.
Is there anything I can do to tighten the controls for what newly registered wiki accounts can do? I can't seem to find any controls to edit this.
I figure if I could set it so that newly made accounts can't actually make any edits for 24 hours, or if they require admin or moderator approval before their accounts activate (we already have that on our forums) then it would probably stem the tide.
Please advice Webkilla (talk) 06:56, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
- An abuse filter like
action === "edit" & user_age < 86400
would stop anonymous users and registered users less than a day old from editing anything. (Anonymous users have a user_age of 0.) You should probably throw other conditions on there (e.g., to limit which pages are prohibited), otherwise you're really discouraging new users. The bots are frequently smart enough to wait a day. There's no such thing as "activating" an account. Accounts are valid over the entire wiki farm. A user can register on one wiki and edit on all of them. mw:Manual:Combating spam/AbuseFilter examples has some examples of how to write AbuseFilter filters. --Saftzie (talk) 18:55, 17 August 2023 (UTC)- Thank you for this information. I've added this filter to my wiki, lets see if it works. In the mean time, could you tell me if that filter would also prevent new users from creating own user page? These spam accounts appear to be putting as much spam into their own user page, as they do in the other random pages they generate on the wiki. Webkilla (talk) 05:28, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
- As long as you specify "Prevent the user from performing the action in question" (i.e. disallow), they won't be able to edit anywhere, including their User: pages, for 24 hours (86,400 seconds). You could also block them or warn them. I've found that warning them is sufficient to stop many (but not all) bots, probably because it's not what their scripts expect. --Saftzie (talk) 21:37, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
- Thank you for this information. I've added this filter to my wiki, lets see if it works. In the mean time, could you tell me if that filter would also prevent new users from creating own user page? These spam accounts appear to be putting as much spam into their own user page, as they do in the other random pages they generate on the wiki. Webkilla (talk) 05:28, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
- Man, this whole issue with spam bots has been getting out of hand on ShoutWiki lately. If only there was a way to put a stop to it or at least minimize it. SuperStreetKombat (talk) 3:22, 17 Auguest 2023 (UTC)
- Preventing new accounts (including spambots) from editing is effective at stopping spam, but not effective at preventing spambots from showing up to your wiki. The only way to truly stop spambots is to prevent them from creating accounts at all via a regular expression. I've implemented an abuse filter doing just that on two wikis I manage (Tiresome Wikis Wiki and Rotten Websites Wiki), and the number of weekly (I'd say even monthly) spambot registrations has dropped to virtually 0 on both; the one downside is that the filter will catch legitimate users who choose a username matching the username pattern that spambots usually use, but the number of false positives is somewhat low. I can't post the code for the filter here or else spambot operators would simply change the username pattern and make the filter useless, but I can help you set it up if you'll appoint me as an administrator temporarily (1-3 days should be good, longer if need be). Tali64^2 (talk) 21:33, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
