Why so much spam on the GCC wiki?

Why so much spam on the GCC wiki?

[Steven Bosscher]

Hello,

How is it possible that there is so much spam all the time on the GCC
wiki? And is there something we can do to avoid it? It makes the wiki
an unpleasant place to visit...

Ciao!
Steven

Re: Why so much spam on the GCC wiki?

[Daniel Berlin]

Is anyone still actually updating MoinMoin on gcc.gnu.org?

There have been some spam prevention measures over the past few versions.


On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 10:31 AM, Steven Bosscher <stevenb.gcc@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> How is it possible that there is so much spam all the time on the GCC
> wiki? And is there something we can do to avoid it? It makes the wiki
> an unpleasant place to visit...
>
> Ciao!
> Steven

Re: Why so much spam on the GCC wiki?

[Ian Lance Taylor]

Steven Bosscher <stevenb.gcc@gmail.com> writes:

> How is it possible that there is so much spam all the time on the GCC
> wiki? And is there something we can do to avoid it? It makes the wiki
> an unpleasant place to visit...

We get a lot of new spam pages, but I and others delete them as they
come in.  I don't see any spam when I visit the wiki, so I'm not sure I
understand what you mean when you say it is an unpleasant place to
visit.

As you know, there is a trivial password scheme--you have to answer one
of two questions to make a change.  I assume that the two possible
answers have been built into spam programs, so I bet we could eliminate
a lot of new spam for a while by just changing the passwords.  I think
this is in /wiki/gcc.py on sourceware.  Anybody have any good
suggestions for new questions?

I also think it would be a good idea to require a comment for every
change to the wiki.  That would also make it easier to spot spam changes
since it would be harder for the bots to create a coherent comment.  I'm
not sure if there is a simple way to do that.

Ian

Re: Why so much spam on the GCC wiki?

[Steven Bosscher]

On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 8:32 AM, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> Steven Bosscher writes:
>
>> How is it possible that there is so much spam all the time on the GCC
>> wiki? And is there something we can do to avoid it? It makes the wiki
>> an unpleasant place to visit...
>
> We get a lot of new spam pages, but I and others delete them as they
> come in.  I don't see any spam when I visit the wiki, so I'm not sure I
> understand what you mean when you say it is an unpleasant place to
> visit.

I use the RecentChanges page a lot to see if there's something new and
interesting. ;-)

Ciao!
Steven

Re: Why so much spam on the GCC wiki?

[Steven Bosscher]

On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 8:32 AM, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> As you know, there is a trivial password scheme--you have to answer one
> of two questions to make a change.  I assume that the two possible
> answers have been built into spam programs, so I bet we could eliminate
> a lot of new spam for a while by just changing the passwords.  I think
> this is in /wiki/gcc.py on sourceware.  Anybody have any good
> suggestions for new questions?

Suggestions for new questions:
- release dates
- date stamp of the latest trunk snapshot (if updating the password(s)
can be scripted on sourceware.org)
- output from dummy C programs that "decrypt" a string

But why not just somehow restrict wiki change access to sourceware
account holders? The openness of the wiki is a noble goal, but AFAIK
there are no non-contributor pages on the wiki anyway.


> I also think it would be a good idea to require a comment for every
> change to the wiki.  That would also make it easier to spot spam changes
> since it would be harder for the bots to create a coherent comment.  I'm
> not sure if there is a simple way to do that.

That's certainly a good idea. Can it be done?

Ciao!
Steven