wiki main page

[Ichthus]

Could the wiki main page get some security put on it? j-random spammers keep getting ahold of it and replacing large sections of text with spam links. It didn't used to be a problem, but has increased greatly in the past couple days.

[Kreistor]

Five attacks so far. And no sign it will abate.

[raphfrk]

It looks like all the edits are by IP address based users.

Is there a flag that can be set to only allow registered users edit the main page? Registered users + 1 week old account would probably catch most of these.

[Sethram]

It looks like all the edits are by IP address based users.

Is there a flag that can be set to only allow registered users edit the main page? Registered users + 1 week old account would probably catch most of these.

That and add a captcha to the account registration page. We installed one onto our forums that a lot of bots were attacking and now only a couple get through every once in a while.

[harknell]

Hmmm, I'm not a wiki expert so I'll have to see what our options are.

[harknell]

I've added in the spamblacklist extension, but am not sure how much this will really help (they say it's pretty conservative in what it blocks). If need be we can always add more invasive things like captchas, but we'd prefer not to impact user experience.

[Kreistor]

The attacks are coming regularly every 3-5 hours. Last was 8PM EST May 19.

Personally, I don't think it impacts User experience at all to require at least a Login to edit the Main Page. That page is full of important Legal informatoin that not jsut anyone should be allowed to go in and re-word. That page protects Rob and Jamie: allowing anyone to go and remove that protection isn't a good idea.

[Ichthus]

It appears to still be getting attacked. A little less often than before, but that could just be a coincidence.

MediaWiki page on protecting pages: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Prot ... ting_pages

[harknell]

The main page is now "protected" and only admins can alter it. It's somewhat unlikely we'll need to alter the main page on an ongoing basis. We will probably be adding a basic captcha soon also which will fire up when a url is added to a page but not basic edits.

[Kreistor]

Thank you, Harknell. We'll watch for the attacks to shift to other pages.

[Kreistor]

I'm not aware what Captcha means, but I'm guessing that it's the little math problem you have to answer to post a link. I've done that half-a-dozen times now, and I'm happy with it. No problem: it's easy and doesn't slow me down enough to matter. Thumbs up.