Difference between revisions of "User talk:Robin"

Revision as of 11:08, 17 November 2013

Chat with Cy

Aha, cheers bro :D (Wiki sysop from elsewhere completely forgot about the autosig >.<) Also, thank you for correcting my typos ^_^'Cy 12:06, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Also, also, would you be able to create a user page for me? I hate seeing my name in red on this thing, I plan on sticking around. I really do like fragmented discussions. I'm a sysop on this wiki http://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Main_Page smiting spammers is my thing lolCy 12:17, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you ^_^ On my wiki we disabled posting without an account because there were so many spambot attacks, obviously they would come up in red so I've gotten so used to red = spambot that I was setting off my own spambot radar by contributing >.< Cy 12:32, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

• Shrugs* Nicked it off Arca. If you like I'll write my own "Don't touch this page" template. ^_^; I'm in the process of writing stuff there, I just wanted to stick something there in the meantime. Cy Ciri Thing 13:16, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Oh right, I actually just memorized the code from Arca's edit page and typed it from memory. Force of habit, I don't even press the shortcut buttons for coding on the forums. I started doing it so I could easily find the code later to tweak into something new. Cy Ciri Thing 13:23, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Here's one I memorized ages ago (hopes it works here)

Hi Robin

I was going to create redirects from Grey A and Gray A to Gray-A / Grey-A, but it won't let me. This is an interesting site, by the way; however, I'm still not sure what label to put myself under, or if it can even be simplified that much. Leucosticte (talk) 08:32, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

If your problem was spambots, I've generally found that Asirra works pretty well at getting them to stop editing, although they do somehow manage to keep creating accounts. That makes no sense to me, since I require the same CAPTCHA for account creation and adding new external links, and they get no benefit from merely creating accounts. It's the same spammers who hit wikis all over the Internet; I see the same account creation patterns almost everywhere that doesn't have it locked down. QuestyCaptcha theoretically shouldn't be too hard to beat, but in practice most wikis that use it seem to do all right, probably because spammers don't take the time to solve all the questions and configure a bot to use those answers. ReCaptcha is only somewhat effective, at best, and the others are pretty much worthless.

Unless there would be a problem with humans who have gone through the process of requesting an account creation (submitting a bio and all that, logging in with their temporary password and changing it, etc.) creating spam articles, restricting access to create articles wouldn't really be necessary to stop spam. If you can stop the spammers at the outer gate (account creation), then the second gate (article creation) can be left open (or at least ajar; CAPTCHAs for edits adding new external links are still a good idea) without letting in the spammers. And in fact, in my experience spammers are often happy to edit existing pages (especially talk pages). By the way, the fact that, like almost every MediaWiki installation I know, this one ran into spam problems despite the nofollow settings, pretty much proves some of the arguments raised here about nofollow being a mostly ineffective antispam measure.

Sorry, It's hard for me not to launch into these little dissertations on spam since I've been involved in some of the MediaWiki development work that pertains to the antispam measures. It's definitely a big issue, since a lot of the barriers that have to be erected to keep out spammers also deter good editing. Those wikis that didn't put barriers in place, though, have often been overrun. Leucosticte (talk) 11:08, 17 November 2013 (UTC)