WikiSpammers

I use the term WikiSpammers to denote all sorts of people using a wiki in a not-OK way. Like people trying to boost other sites Google-rate by linking them from various wikis. Or others acting out bad self confidence by trying to insult other people. Or... (your example of not-OK wiki usage). -- PEZ

This problem has become rather big on the RoboWiki lately. Particularly the activity of linking up external sites. This is most often done by web robots I think. Which means a solution might be to password protect the edit action of the wiki. The problem with this is that I'm not entirely sure on how to do this without my precious mod_rewrite (which isn't available to me in the current wiki hosting environment). Meanwhile, I need your help. Whenever you see that a page has been vandalised;

• use the "view other revisons" link to find the latest non-vandalised version
• click to edit that revision
• IMPORTANT Enter a Summary mentioning that you are reverting vandalism.

The last part is important because this summary will show up in the Changes list and I will see it. If the vandal has entered links to boost search engine ratings for some sites then those links will still be around via the "view earlier revisons" and "diff" links. Which means I must recreate the page entirely to really remove the links.

Thanks in advance,

-- PEZ

December 20 2004

A major spam attack last night (CET). Alcatraz defended the wiki well. Thanks dude! I have now locked the Robo Home page for editing. This is because it's a special page for the wiki script and it's a tricky and error-prone process to fix it recover it from vandalism. Anyone wanting to edit that page will have to edit the Home page instead. And if I see it's a non-spam edit I'll move the changes to the real page. -- PEZ

There are approx. 25 bots missing from the mini-, micro-, and nano-rankings. Is this a result of this latest spam attack and will they recover automatically (when a battle is fought)? -- GrubbmGait

Answering myself: This was a result of messing-up the participants-list. It will recover automatically when a battle is fought. -- GrubbmGait

Yup: The actual ratings got screwed up pretty good though, and it might take a good while to recover. Everybody should stand up and start their RR@H clients. -- PEZ test