[Pmwiki-users] Preventing "comment spam"

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud at pobox.com
Mon Jan 31 09:10:22 CST 2005


On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 07:08:47AM -0500, Neil Herber wrote:
> I had hoped that the rel='nofollow' attribute would be switchable via 
> config.php such that:
> 
> 1) by default it is turned off - the current behavior, does not break 
> existing sites (by break, I mean does not change the behavior that authors 
> are used to)

Unfortunately, the "behavior that authors are used to" is the one that
encourages wiki spam.  If PmWiki ships without rel='nofollow' enabled
by default, then the majority of PmWiki sites will end up running 
without it.  By association, *all* PmWiki sites will become preferred 
targets for spammers, regardless of whether an individual site has 
rel='nofollow' enabled or not (a spammer isn't going to bother to check).

I'd prefer things to be the other way around; I'd prefer that spammers
avoid targeting PmWiki sites since they tend to have rel='nofollow'
enabled, benefiting everyone (including those who decide not to use
rel='nofollow' in their links).

Unfortunately, I just now realized that setting $UrlLinkFmt the way I
did in beta20 sets rel='nofollow' for *all* external links (including 
InterMap links), which wasn't what I intended at all.  So I need to 
rethink that part a bit.

> 2) can be turned on for wikis where URL approval is not required
> 3) if the URL approval script is installed, becomes a bit of a moot point, 
> and so is turned off

It may or may not be a moot point, depending on how url approvals
are enabled.  (Some sites, such as pmwiki.org, selectively disable
url approval requirements for certain groups/pages.)  

At any rate, a site administrator should be able to completely control
things via the $UrlLinkFmt and $UnapprovedLinkFmt variables.

It may be worthwhile for us to introduce an $ApprovedLinkFmt variable,
used in place of $UrlLinkFmt when urlapprove.php is loaded.  Or I may
just need to define special variables altogether for http: and
https: links.

Pm



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