CFD-Wiki:Administration guide

From CFD-Wiki

Latest revision as of 07:41, 31 March 2010

Introduction

This guide is not finished yet. It is intended to be a guide for CFD-Wiki administrators. So far it is mainly focused on how to deal with spam in the Wiki.

Spam

Wiki spam has become very common and spammers are using more and more advanced techniques. It is now common with spam-bots that automatically edit many pages. Spammers also often have access to many different proxies and IP addresses. This makes it increasingly difficult to prevent spam. Due to the advanced spam techniques used by the spammers it is often necessary to ask for help from an administrator to block and efficiently remove spam.

Spam removal action-list:

When you find spam do the following:

1. Block the offending user(s)

This is most easily done by clicking the "block" link in the recent changes list. Use an infinite expiry time. A user, IP address or IP address range can also be manually blocked from the blockip page. If a bot was used to register many users you can identify and block them all quickly from the user creation log (in Firefox hold down control while you click each "block" in order to block in parallel on different browser tabs). Make sure that you only block spam users!

2. Blacklist all spam addresses

Most spam contains external links where the spammer wants people to go. An effective way of preventing future spam is to blacklist these spam addresses. To blacklist an URL address just add it to the spam blacklist. Once an address has been blacklisted it is impossible to add it again to the Wiki.

3. Delete all new pages created by the spammer

New pages can be found by looking for entries with an "N" in front of them in the recent changes list. To delete a page click the "delete" tab as you visit the page. If the spammer created many pages you can mass-delete them all by entering the spammer's user name on the mass delete page (be carefull with this function, it is very powerfull!)

4. Revert all spam edits of already existing legitimate pages

Edits can be reverted by clicking the "Rollback" link which you can find either when you click "diff" on the recent changes list or when you make a comparison between two page versions in the page history. If a spammer edited many pages it might be more effective to instead rollback his edits from his contributions list - go to the spammer's User page (or find him via the user creation log) and then click on "User contribution" in the toolbox menu down to the left. Then each contribution from that user can be reverted by clicking the "Rollback" links one after another (in Firefox hold down control while you click each "Rollback" in order to revert in parallel on different browser tabs).

5. Manually remove any remaining spam

Sometimes the actions above will still leave some spam in the Wiki. This typically happens when two spammers have edited the same page or if other users have edited a page without removing the spam. Just remove any remaining spam manually using the normal "edit" function.