In view of the recent bout of vandalism in the HA Wiki, instead of one-by-one locking the page (and thus blocking rightful users their right to complete the knowledgebase), why not turn off online registration?

Then we can put in a notice where the online registration should be, informing them that they must first register to HA, and perhaps PM Jan (and/or whoever he designate) with a request to be a Wiki registered editor.

I believe this will reduce your stress level greatly, Jan.

That would actually, be a very good idea, but due to the fact that traffic for HA has picked up substantially in the last year or so you can expect a bunch of people who have nothing better to do with their lives to spam the wiki.

As I see it, only a bunch of people keeps maintaining the Wiki. Since the HA Forums already have a quite solid anti-spammer registration procedure, why not leverage it then?

I'd rather we disable online registration. I'm kinda tired reading the "Recent Changes" page just to discover that 80%+ of the changes are either vandalism or blocking a spammer.

The worst spammer was notably one idiot who totally deleted one page and replace it with invisible links.

However, there's more serious issue: What if someone edit a page, not noticing that it has been vandalised? Now the Wiki maintainers face a difficult issue: If he/she tries to restore to the pre-vandalised version, the latest edits are gone. Or he/she can try to remove the spam him-/her-self. Yeah, fat chance.

EDIT: Oh no, the "Recommended Ogg Vorgis" page has gone into Wikiness Protection Program... I can now no longer edit it... oh! The Humanity!...

Hey... yes I have had to protect 3 pages due to repeated vandalism. I appreciate the suggestions and it might very well be that I have to follow your suggestion but I have one more trick up my sleeve before I do that.
The spam filter I installed earlier has an option to log all activity. And since all the latest spam seems to be from the same person on the same pages I might be able to find a way to exclude this spammer (by IP(-range)).
Since the filter is suppose to block proxies and bots there is a chance this is some idiot doing things manual or something.
I will have to see what is going on since what he is doing is hardly effective spamming only editing one page most occations (god I would love if he is not behind proxy so I can track him down).

Nope... Worst spammer was a bot that edited 20-30 pages in 5 seconds .



Hmm... yes I agree I need to find some solution. I'd just rather keep an open system unless I have no other option. The easier it is for people to contribute the more they will... I hope...

You and me both, brother.


My hope too

A thought comes to mind... what if the Wiki's user database integrated with HA Forums' ?

You know, even I start to grow tired of reading the "Recent Changes" page and sees that it contains mostly anti-spammer-war

Sooner or later what I was worried about will happen. Plus, so many users are blocked, new users wanting to use a certain login name will be prevented.

It seems I was not lucky and he changes IP... What I will do is set up another usergroup that will get edit privileges.. and remove edit privileges from normal users...
Then people that want to edit pages will have to PM me to get access (don't PM me just now!).