[pmwiki-users] How To Help Fight Spam on PmWiki.org

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Fri, Sep 29, 2006 at 01:02:58PM -0500, Chris Cox wrote:
> Pico wrote:
> ...
> > 
> > (4) Blocklist: This is *the most important step*.  
> > If you fix a spammed page, particularly where PmWiki content 
> > was totally overwritten by spam, then you can, and *should* 
> > add the spammer's IP address to the block list at Site.Blocklist.  
> 
> Perhaps most important, but also most FLAWED.  Don't do this unless you
> can correcty identify the netblock or IP and know that it is not
> a dynamic IP (chances are, you won't know this info).
> 
> Better solution is to implement a site wide password for edits.  Any
> spamming beyond that perhaps can be handled with more extreme
> measures.

I think that Pico's instructions are really focused for
dealing with spam on pmwiki.org, where we aren't likely to be 
implementing a site-wide password anytime soon.

As far as dealing with dynamic IPs; I'm not too concerned yet
about the difference between IPs at the /24 netmask level.
I.e., if someone at 24.1.26.127 posts spam to the board, then
it's fine for now to go ahead and block everyone at 24.1.26.* .
As far as I know it hasn't posed a real problem in terms of
blocking legitimate posters, and if it does we'll deal with 
it then.

Pm