Classic WoW Wiki talk:Violations

E-mail validation for account creation not working
Add the need to get your password from e-mail is not working to discourage spammers. I think we need something harder for them to get past, but not so far as to validate every edit.

Some suggestions: --Fandyllic 11:07 AM PST 21 Mar 2006
 * Have the password e-mail change the text around the password randomly (or randomly enough), so it is hard to parse the password, but easy for real person to figure it out. Not sure how this would be done, but it's an idea.
 * Graphic validation: Where some text is put into a graphic and warped so character ecognition can't easily parse it and that code is used to validate the account.
 * Have admins approve each account manually. This really isn't a good idea, but I'm running out of ideas.

Rustak aware of e-mail validation not working
I've been telling him about our woes via e-mail and he's going to look at getting e-mail validation on account creation before allowing accounts to edit working this weekend. He's also going to look into image validation on account creation. Cross your fingers. --Fandyllic 1:58 PM PST 25 Mar 2006

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


 * well,,, that is hmm, interesting. couldn't we sic FBI or whatever on this..?  doubtful as the spammers are probably operating from some backdoor middle of nowhere country where they're lucky to have electricity in the first place... right. ? CJ 03:24, 17 March 2006 (EST)


 * I got the message that I was blocked because Smcn was using my IP as well, only the IP given wasn't mine. User:Tyroney reported the same thing. --Aeleas 11:49, 17 March 2006 (EST)

The same thing happened to me with Smcn at my school (gets boring between classes after work is done XD). Odd... --Cigawoot 14:10, 17 March 2006 (EST)

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
 * 5) IP Verification. since the spammers are unlikely to use their own IP, and blocking by IP is dubious at best.. would there be any kind of verification that could be done upon logging on to make sure the user is legit?


 * 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


 * The rash of spam bots seems to be subsiding for some reason. Maybe they read these comments and know we are actively blocking them and working on better ways to prevent them from doing their evil deeds and decided to move on. Who knows? --Fandyllic 5:52 PM PDT 4 Apr 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 or 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)


 * Captain's log, stardate 170320061020: This matter is getting out of hand, the Borg are going rampant, and adding more spam than any sane person would want to clean up. Something needs to be done..... Perhaps a "panic" button.. that reverts "all" changes a single user made. would make cleaning up this crap easier, and faster. CJ 03:20, 17 March 2006 (EST)


 * Agreed, that's a great idea. Just one click to undo spam by a user!  Wonder how much processing power that would eat up... --Cigawoot 15:51, 17 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 : Sea / Drink / Cloth / Quests, quite a lot.

the divs they put in the pages so far i seen are some casino link, and some pharmacy link... the odd thing is that neither of those pages actually have any content... just more spam, and junk text.. no actual content at all, nothing imo that they'd be able to make any money from.. very odd. CJ 03:17, 17 March 2006 (EST)

They also seem to like the API pages. --Montronax 07:26, 24 March 2006 (EST)

Fake Anti vandals
This might be a long shot... but. i think we are dealing with a new type of bot... i've seen it a few times now that some bot comes in and posts all his crap,, then another person, or bot comes in and edits the spam from that previous bot ( changes pixel size from 2 -> 4, or from 4->2 ), or even weirder... posts a spam fix,, and "removes" about half of the spam that one bot posted,, but sneaky as they are.. "leaves" some spam behind to confuse regular editors...
 * The edit comments are filled in just like any other user, but uses a random text :
 * reverted
 * reverting is fun
 * unrelated links removed
 * deleted spam links
 * Removed unrelated links
 * rv (damn spammers)
 * rv
 * SPAM removed
 * spam cleanup

Check this guy's contributions out: Special:Contributions/Logicalentity odd no? Yesterday there was "another" user with a new account who posted "exactly" the same type of comments.

As i said,, it's probably a loooong shot.. but i've seen it a few times now. it seems odd if a new user would create an account, just to remove spam, immediately know how to fill in the summary, AND always post the same set of comments. ? very odd....

could you do a database search for the last 7 days and see: ""reverting is fun"" if that quote in the summary occurs more than once? im pretty sure it does.. and that one kinda gave it away. compare the IP address of those users that posted that comment, lets see what we can clean up because this is getting ridiculous.

Here, just found some others : Same thing,, poor reverts, completely new users, and all of them posting the EXACT same list of Summary reasons.... this may be some "smart" spammer, doing this to confuse a kind of anti spam bot that other wiki's might have been using or whatever... either way its annoying. CJ 08:36, 17 March 2006 (EST)
 * Special:Contributions/Logicalentity today.
 * Special:Contributions/Egagztrevor
 * Special:Contributions/Naivete
 * Special:Contributions/Meeko
 * Special:Contributions/Ebanis
 * Special:Contributions/D1sturb3d
 * Special:Contributions/Biddle

Now.... since someone seems to have made a bot to chase the bots around, why dont we start our own bot.? Search for: Should be doable.. ? CJ 09:08, 17 March 2006 (EST)
 * < div id="
 * and remove all content from there, until: < /div >


 * This seems like a tactic to make us think someone is cleaning spam when they really aren't. I'm gonna start blocking them as spammers, since they pretend to clean spam which is almost worse than just adding it. It's like a bad cop. I noticed that Logicalentity left tons of spam after a supposed "cleaning" of Battle Shout. Do a diff between the last non-spam edit by My0p1c and Logicalentity. There is way too much spam left to be an oversight by a conscientious cleaner.


 * Keep telling me about these suspicious users. --Fandyllic 11:58 AM PST 17 Mar 2006

I did a bunch of cleanup from Yourname, I tried to be careful about not leaving spam behind... but I was fooled by the Fake Cleanup. I went back and double checked by reverts to make sure that they were complete, to my knowlege they were. EDIT: Another thing, what if a few "catch" pages were setup that were checked consistantly for edits, so you can tell if a spambot went through and started to vandalize? Kind of like a trap so to speak. --Cigawoot 14:18, 17 March 2006 (EST)


 * see above, they usually target those pages first. other than that,, just double check the edits from any users who have a red name and red talk page. its easy enough to find spammers.. its harder to properly ban them before they do too much damage.. since there are only a few admins, and they cant be online 24/7  CJ 15:49, 17 March 2006 (EST)

Damage control
The most recent spam bot: User:Kristchan, has been going all morning. 0800 - now, 1600, CET. If we had more admins, or at least people who could block or give temporary bans to bots. there would be much less spam to clean up.

I suggest we get either more admins with the ability to block bots, or a new kind or user permission which allows certain assigned users to block bots for up to 24 hours, so that the admins can look at their work, and make the ban last longer. a year, or permanent. CJ 08:54, 21 March 2006 (EST)


 * The spam bot User:Sandino, has been at it from 05:25, 24 March 2006 till 12:20, 24 March 2006 (The moment he was blocked). Which is about 7 hours of spam clean up. With those 7 hour he managed to corrupt 45 pages which is about one spammessage per 9 minutes. Most spambots are blocked within 12 hours of starting. So a 12 hour temporary ban would work. --Montronax 07:25, 24 March 2006 (EST)


 * This sounds like a great idea to me, but while I don't know a whole lot about this software, I don't see how something like that would become available. In any case, such a decision would not be left to me unless someone else gave it to me. Schmidt 07:29, 24 March 2006 (EST)


 * Not all bots produce spam at 1 per 10 minute, some produce 1 per 2-5 minutes. if such a user could be banned faster, there wuold be less to clean up. CJ 07:33, 24 March 2006 (EST)


 * I agree with CJ those spammers should be banned earlier, 7 or 8 hours of spamming is too long. --Montronax 08:02, 24 March 2006 (EST)


 * How many do we have that can ban? At least 1 per time zone area would be nice, like 1 in US, 1 in europa and 1 for Asia and Australia. That way we can have bans in place 24 hours a day. Btw, Im in Sweden and it looks like there is no one in europa that can ban since most bots continue untill US wakes up. Westin 08:23, 24 March 2006 (EST)


 * Schmidt, alex, rustak and fandyllic.. the last 2 are not online often / barely ever. and the first 2, i "think" are in somewhat the same timezone. CJ 08:25, 24 March 2006 (EST)


 * I'm in U.S. Eastern time, so about GMT -5. Something like that. Sometimes I don't have a lot of time to contribute, though, because or school or work. Other than that, probably the most of the time that I'm on is either Sunday pretty much all day, maybe Saturday night; any other night I may or may not be able to help because of studying and whatnot. Schmidt 08:52, 24 March 2006 (EST)


 * I'm in the Netherlands, but I'm working too :) that limits my time here --Montronax 08:43, 24 March 2006 (EST)


 * I'm on hardly ever? I'm in the Pacific time zone and I think I've blocked more bots than anyone by a large margin. The solution is not more admins or people to block, but to institute measures to prevent them from making accounts. If we can prevent bots from making accounts, that will slow down the problem a huge amount.
 * Also, you can rest assured that if I block a bot, I will clean up the mess if no one has added an edit on top of the spam. Admins can do rollbacks (one click) much faster than a manual removal of spam. --Fandyllic 2:05 PM PST 25 Mar 2006


 * What CJ probably meant (just guessing) is that Alex and Rustak are rarely on, and he just listed our names in a wierd order, is all. Schmidt 18:33, 25 March 2006 (EST)