Spam edits

Discussion about the site's wikis, including bugs/issues encountered.

Moderator: Moderators

NewRisingSun
Posts: 1510
Joined: Thu May 19, 2005 11:30 am

Spam edits

Post by NewRisingSun »

Is there a point in letting users that are not logged-in create and edit talk pages? Not letting them would at least stop the current spam wave.
User avatar
rainwarrior
Posts: 8731
Joined: Sun Jan 22, 2012 12:03 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Re: Spam edits

Post by rainwarrior »

It's really hampering the ability to check for actual discussions on the talk pages. I guess it's better to start a thread here, at this point, than try to talk over there.

Though over here we still have the timeout problem... :S
User avatar
Quietust
Posts: 1918
Joined: Sun Sep 19, 2004 10:59 pm
Contact:

Re: Spam edits

Post by Quietust »

On the bright side, all of the edits are from the same IP address (38.141.52.250), so in theory we could ban them all at once.

Unless, of course, that happens to be the wiki's misconfigured HTTPS proxy...
Quietust, QMT Productions
P.S. If you don't get this note, let me know and I'll write you another.
lidnariq
Posts: 11429
Joined: Sun Apr 13, 2008 11:12 am

Re: Spam edits

Post by lidnariq »

Yeah, it is the same misconfigured HTTPS proxy.
tepples
Posts: 22705
Joined: Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:12 pm
Location: NE Indiana, USA (NTSC)
Contact:

Re: Spam edits

Post by tepples »

NewRisingSun wrote:Is there a point in letting users that are not logged-in create and edit talk pages?
It was suppposed to be to allow anons to contribute corrections, or to contact an administrator if they have a problem with registering.

Because of all the thesaurus-driven text spinning, it's hard to create a pattern rule for this sort of vandalism. My best attempt was based on the length of the edit summary of a new section. And because of the misconfigured reverse proxy or misconfigured MediaWiki or both, MediaWiki is not seeing the original IP address.
NewRisingSun
Posts: 1510
Joined: Thu May 19, 2005 11:30 am

Re: Spam edits

Post by NewRisingSun »

tepples wrote:or to contact an administrator if they have a problem with registering
That could be handled by posting to this forum, or by contacting the admins via email.
tepples wrote:It was suppposed to be to allow anons to contribute corrections
Seems to be a rather sporadically-occurring scenario.
tepples wrote:My best attempt was based on the length of the edit summary of a new section.
The problem is that the filter definition itself is viewable by everyone, making it easy for a spammer to see how exactly you are filtering. (Why are filter definitions viewable by everyone anyway?)

Given that the intended purposes seem to occur much rarely than the abuse does, I still think that editing by non-logged-in users should be disabled.

(Also, what's the point of spamming without advertising a product link anyway? Pure vandalism?)
tepples
Posts: 22705
Joined: Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:12 pm
Location: NE Indiana, USA (NTSC)
Contact:

Re: Spam edits

Post by tepples »

NewRisingSun wrote:
tepples wrote:or to contact an administrator if they have a problem with registering
That could be handled by posting to this forum
The forum doesn't allow anonymous posts either. Or would you instead expect all wiki users to also already be forum users?
NewRisingSun wrote:or by contacting the admins via email.
Which would require either A. enforcing that all admins regularly check email or B. setting up some sort of email-to-ticket gateway on the server. With WhoaMan being an absentee landlord, I doubt that either of these is viable.
NewRisingSun wrote:The problem is that the filter definition itself is viewable by everyone, making it easy for a spammer to see how exactly you are filtering. (Why are filter definitions viewable by everyone anyway?)
Both here and on Wikipedia, most filters are targeted at errors by novices and non-specific attacks by bots. A filter targeted at one attacker who is specifically evading filters on this particular wiki can indeed be made private.
NewRisingSun wrote:(Also, what's the point of spamming without advertising a product link anyway? Pure vandalism?)
It's no good for direct response or for black hat search engine optimization, but advertising the name of a product is for brand building. Or it could be a test to see if a wiki is abandoned enough that vandal edits will stick.
NewRisingSun
Posts: 1510
Joined: Thu May 19, 2005 11:30 am

Re: Spam edits

Post by NewRisingSun »

tepples wrote:enforcing that all admins regularly check email
Yes, I actually would expect an admin to regularly check email. :roll:
User avatar
gauauu
Posts: 779
Joined: Sat Jan 09, 2016 9:21 pm
Location: Central Illinois, USA
Contact:

Re: Spam edits

Post by gauauu »

tepples wrote:Or would you instead expect all wiki users to also already be forum users?
Yes. If you can't be bothered to register a forum account, then I wouldn't think you'd have any business editing the wiki.
User avatar
Bregalad
Posts: 8055
Joined: Fri Nov 12, 2004 2:49 pm
Location: Divonne-les-bains, France

Re: Spam edits

Post by Bregalad »

NewRisingSun wrote:
tepples wrote:enforcing that all admins regularly check email
Yes, I actually would expect an admin to regularly check email. :roll:
Thank you very much and lidnariq too for cleaning up all the spam very quickly. Usually it's once-in-awhile but recently it has became insane.

I believe they don't understand it's pointless to spam here 'case it'll be deleted very soon anyway... but hey, go figure.
Sour
Posts: 890
Joined: Sun Feb 07, 2016 6:16 pm

Re: Spam edits

Post by Sour »

Hadn't checked the wiki in a while, but looking at the recent changes, I would definitely agree it should just be locked down to registered users only.
I don't think I've ever stumbled on an anonymous edit that wasn't spam (I'm sure there are a couple, but in that case there are a couple hundred (thousand?) attempts at vandalism for each valuable anonymous edit.)

As is, the "recent changes" page is useless/unusable, and I used to look at that rather often to check if there were any new important emulation-related edits that I needed to read.
tepples
Posts: 22705
Joined: Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:12 pm
Location: NE Indiana, USA (NTSC)
Contact:

Re: Spam edits

Post by tepples »

In the past, the ABUSE filter has been enough to shut down botspam, but it's become more difficult lately for administrators to write a filter without too many false positives. If I had enough authority to log in and disable anonymous editing, I might also have enough authority to log in and see why X-Forwarded-For is not getting through or to fix mail. But a lot of that depends on a shell account, which depends on WhoaMan.
tepples
Posts: 22705
Joined: Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:12 pm
Location: NE Indiana, USA (NTSC)
Contact:

Re: Spam edits

Post by tepples »

WhoaMan wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 9:40 amits related to the proxy setup....should be better now
You fixed it for the BBS, but can you also fix it for MediaWiki? It's still showing edits such as this one coming from inside the same subnet as the web server. MediaWiki can process the X-Forwarded-For header coming from a trusted reverse proxy, but you need to set the $wgCdnServersNoPurge variable (called $wgSquidServersNoPurge prior to MediaWiki 1.34) in order for it to trust that header.
User avatar
Banshaku
Posts: 2417
Joined: Tue Jun 24, 2008 8:38 pm
Location: Japan
Contact:

Re: Spam edits

Post by Banshaku »

Like I mentioned in, hmmm, ~2009 when I first moved the wiki and forced non anonymous edit (and no post for new users but forgot about that one).... Nesdev is a niche community that the chance an anonymous edit will bring the "holy grail" of new information is close to none. If you still think otherwise in 2019 well you're living under a rock :lol:

It seems you guys love unnecessary pain by allowing something that cause more harm than good but what rocks you boat, I guess? ^-^;;; I won't mention it again but just remove it, it's not necessary at all.
User avatar
Bregalad
Posts: 8055
Joined: Fri Nov 12, 2004 2:49 pm
Location: Divonne-les-bains, France

Re: Spam edits

Post by Bregalad »

Banshaku wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 7:05 pm It seems you guys love unnecessary pain by allowing something that cause more harm than good but what rocks you boat, I guess? ^-^;;; I won't mention it again but just remove it, it's not necessary at all.
Right now, it's ridiculous.
But back then it was only one spam input or so per month at worst, so it was OK to deal with it, so that people that couldn't log in or creat an account could still contribute through the talk pages.

This brings back horrible memories of the VGMusic forums being flooded in spam at an accelerating rate, at some point the signal/noise ratio was so low the forums stopped to be usable. And so they died. I hope the wiki won't be like that.
Post Reply