Talk:Spam Blacklist

Spam Blacklist

The Spam Blacklist is used by the MediaWiki Spam Blacklist extension, and lists regular expressions which cannot be used in URLs in any page in the MeFi wiki. Any MeFi Wiki administrator can edit the spam blacklist. All additions and removals to and from the Spam Blacklist should be logged here so that future users can easily find the reason. Please sign your posts with ~~~~ after your comment. This leaves a signature and timestamp so conversations are easier to follow.

2010

November

I've added an initial set of spam-detecting regexp to the Spam Blacklist page that prohibits edits containing one or more links using a few dozen spammer domain names. I got these domain names by extracting them from the last 365 days of spam edits to the MeFi wiki. Probably the only really useful ones are the domains being used by the UGG boots / NFL jersey spammer and the college paper spammer, as they are the only spammers who appear to have been really persistent. Please feel free to prune domains from my initial go at the Spam Blacklist page if you see any you don't agree with. Some of these may overlap with entries on the global MediaWiki spam blacklist. —RichardP ^(talk) 14:08, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

December

User Jacksmith linked customcourseworks - blocking, deleting, & blacklisting. I hope that covers it, for the purpose of these notes. - Pronoiac

Yeah, he's the college paper spammer (the "order now" button on customcourseworks page links to the already blacklisted besttermpaper.com domain). I moved your regexp for customcourseworks to his section on the blacklist. The other persistent spammer (the UGG boots guy) spammed the wiki today so I added his new domains to the blacklist. —RichardP ^(talk) 14:32, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

2011

January

I've added the new payday loan spammer (maketodaypayday.co.uk) to the blacklist. He also linked to a page he created on another wiki containing his spam (that has now been deleted at that other wiki) so I've tried to use a slightly generic regexp for that link incase he recreates the page on the other wiki with a slightly different page name. —RichardP ^(talk) 02:24, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I've added the acai berry spammer (truthaboutacaiberry.com) to the blacklist. —RichardP ^(talk) 01:35, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

For the last few days the MeFi wiki has been besieged by the "job search" spammer who is using an automated spamming tool that creates accounts for each edit and has no trouble defeating ConfirmEdit's simple captcha. I asked Adrian to install the reCAPTCHA extension (as well as the User Merge and Delete extension) and he has been kind enough to do so. Now creating an account or adding new external links requires the user to enter the two words in reCAPTCHA's image rather than solving the simple math problem previously required. This appears to have stopped the "job search" spammer cold. —RichardP ^(talk) 09:22, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

December

I removed the really broad entries that blocked whole ranges of URLs containing certain key words. I did each removal as a separate edit so that it would be easy to restore any of these blocks. If it turns out that any these broad blocks is actually still needed, a simple "view history, undo" will restore the block for that keyword. —RichardP ^(talk) 16:09, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

2013

July

We migrated to the new wiki about a week ago. We just had our first spammer following the migration (FrancisCelso, spamming a resume service, created Physical Barriers around the World). So it looks like the upgrade to a modern version of MediaWiki (eliminating a couple of automated spam-bot exploits) and the new anti-spam "QuestyCaptcha" are working pretty well, albeit not perfectly. Hopefully spam will continue to remain rare. —RichardP ^(talk) 23:40, 12 July 2013 (UTC)