Classic WoW Wiki talk:Violations

I got blocked!
The good news is we know IP blocking works. The bad news is one of the spammers (Smcn) was using my IP address. Fortunately, I'm using a dynamic IP, but it was a little bit of a pain to get a different IP.

I do think this tells us that IP blocking isn't always the good answer. Spammers aren't restricted to unique IPs if they have their own DHCP server or can manipulate the one that's giving out their IPs. --Fandyllic 12:45 PM PST 14 Mar 2006

KBot destruction
There is an easy way to identify and destroy the K-Bots, but it would require a re-working of the URL scheme. If your up to it, Rustak, I can tell you what we did. &#8465;ilver&#167;&#8465;ide|undefined 05:52, 11 Mar 2006 (EST)

Rash of spam-bots
Lately we've had a rash of spam bots. Frankly, I'm tired of it. What can we do about it? Schmidt 01:04, 10 Mar 2006 (EST)

Someone asked if we could get an IP block on these bots. If you see Special:Ipblocklist, it will say that a user was blocked because he shared an IP address with a user. So each block is an IP block. Schmidt 09:02, 10 Mar 2006 (EST)


 * There are several things, but they would require the help of the head admin / site owner.


 * 1) Require manual account activation ( that will make people less likely to edit though )
 * 2) Insert a validation image ( whatever they call it ) that requires people to type in the letters / numbers they see in that image in order to create an account. this, usually prevents a number of bots from automatically creating an account, then going ahead and posting crap. CJ 13:27, 10 Mar 2006 (EST)
 * 3) Email verification. when you create an account, send an email to validate you exist. this will stop a "few" bots, but not all.
 * 4) combination of 2+3


 * I think a validation image would work best, but any of these solutions might need either a new version of the wiki or some hack. I sent e-mail to Rustak and asked him to give his thoughts, if possible. --Fandyllic 1:34 PM PST 10 Mar 2006

Captcha
Argh, spammers are annoying. So, a few things: 1) new wiki hardware + mediawiki 1.5 will be ready to go in like.. a day.  The person who was supposed to rack the machine for me has avoided going in to work since apparently the air conditioning is broken and is keeping the office at ridiculously freezing temperatures (also found a nice extension to solve the image-link problem, that all works well and I modified one of the media wiki bots to go through and make most of the changes automagically).  2) I've got some spam blocking extensions in the new install that are working well for us on the mozilla wikis; I can add in something captcha based, but do you think that'll get too annoying for people doing real edits? You'd need to type the random image-words for every edit... 3) I'll turn on account email verification, it should stop some of the bots as you guys suggest. --Rustak 17:38, 10 Mar 2006 (EST)


 * More active protection would be good. This last spam bot crazy was most likely just someone with a computer automatically making accounts every few minutes, and spamming the same page over and over. A single IP block eariler would have made the whole thing quicker. Then again, I was bored enough to manaualy change back the first 50 or so changes :) --Stfrn 17:54, 10 Mar 2006 (EST)


 * ""captcha"" for every single edit would be too annoying. but it'd be a start to turn it on just for creating a new account or logging on. and then see how well that prevents problems. CJ 05:45, 11 Mar 2006 (EST)


 * I vote against validation for every edit. I don't think an IP block would work, since a smart spammer can easily hook his stuff up to a DHCP server and renew leases after every spam attempt. --Fandyllic 9:52 AM PST 12 Mar 2006


 * I think putting in Captcha's for Logon, and creating an account will at least stop this: from happening for a while, it seems someone is using an automatic account creator. i wouldnt go as far as putting captchas on every edit.. that will just impede normal users too much. CJ 05:06, 16 March 2006 (EST)

SilverSide
Sooooo am I on here or not? rofl
 * &#8465;ilver&#167;&#8465;ide|undefined 16:41, 8 Dec 2005 (EST)

You're not. On a different topic, I've been reading about some problem where multiple uses of templates doesn't work after a certain number and I seem to be seeing that on this page where the template doesn't get used, but a link to the template itself appears. Is this a known MediaWiki bug?
 * --Fandyllic 11:27 AM PST 12 December 2005


 * Yes. It was fixed in 1.5 (dear god v1.6 comes out in less than a month, and we are still on 1.3!)... till then, you can simply duplicate the template. -- &#8465;ilver&#167;&#8465;ide|undefined 16:57, 12 Dec 2005 (EST)

Puta vs. Pornbot
I am not quite sure the same bot is doing all of this; it seems that someone has distributed a bot that searches google for the http://www.wowwiki.com/stylesheets/images/poweredby_mediawiki_88x31.png image found at the bottom of any mediawiki installation and spams all mediawiki wikis. However this is not always the same person spamming, nor the same methods; I have seen spam for scat pr0n, lolicon (dear god), 'free' drugs, and other things, however any one spammer account only seems to post one such denomination. Anyway, for now I am redisginging the page a little to reflect said beliefs. -- &#8465;ilver&#167;&#8465;ide|undefined 00:27, 14 Dec 2005 (EST)

P.S. to my opponents (sad that I have to call anybody that on a wiki) - how's that for good communication about what I do?

Vandal Template
I've changed template:vandal to be tabular. Who likes, who dislikes? It could be hammered out a little more. But the width shouldn't be set to 100%, because i have a high-res widescreen. +.+ Schmidt 22:33, 19 Dec 2005 (EST)

If we settle on the format of this template, we can subst the template in rather than calling the template each line. This way we can get the whole thing. Does anyone want it to look special in any way? I don't like the way it looks, but I can't think of a good way to format it (like with nice colors, and what-not). Also, as I said, anything I do might not look good on any other computer because the technology my computer uses is so far superior to anyone else's. haha j/k. Schmidt 23:55, 15 Jan 2006 (EST)

New vandal
Could not figure out how to add a new one. User name "Holy Shit". Destructive Vandalism removed. --Dracomage 14:16, 9 Jan 2006 (EST)

Sangridar
Or however you spell it, I removed him - only one edit. Not a basis for a ban or even a lsit here yet. -- &#8465;ilver&#167;&#8465;ide|undefined 17:59, 17 Jan 2006 (EST)

Anony
Not sure if he warrants being added to the list yet. His only contribution has been to reintroduce a false epic coin reward rumour on the Lunar Festival page. This is getting quite a bit of attention on the Blizzard forums, so I think it's important to revert these changes as soon as they are made to demonstrate the integrity of the wiki.--Aeleas 13:41, 31 Jan 2006 (EST)

Fun fact
The vandals we see have often names made like : (A curse or explicit word in Spanish) --Kirochi 15:08, 1 Feb 2006 (EST)

Quests
Quests was changed, I noticed too late to revert, so I manually reworked it (while making some updates) - someone should examine this more closely --Flotsam 22:57, 9 Mar 2006 (EST)

targets
Bots seem to target : Drink / Cloth, quite a lot.