Wiki restrictions

Anything and everything that's related to OGRE or the wider graphics field that doesn't fit into the other forums.
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sinbad
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Wiki restrictions

Post by sinbad »

From now on, only sysops or nominated persons can register new accounts on the wiki. I've had to take this extreme action since we're being spammed to hell, and even with content filters it's impossible to keep up with all the sh*t these people post. I've deleted no less than 344 accounts, all created today by bots.

From now on, if you want to edit the wiki, you have to ask a dev team member or MVP to create an account for you. Sorry I've had to do this, but these people suck.

Eventually a less blunt security measure may make it in, but every hour I spend on this is another hour lost to ogre development. I played briefly with trying to adapt the WordPress captcha plugin, but it didn't go smoothly and I don't have time right now. Assistance welcome from anyone who has time.
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alphageek
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Post by alphageek »

Wiki maintainers: Thanks for all your effort keeping the wiki clean, it is much appreciated.

I am sad to hear that captchas nolonger work.
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shaft
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Post by shaft »

But now how will I know where to buy herbal SPAM???!!!!
- Shaft (He's a bad motha... Shut yo' mouth)
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jacmoe
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Post by jacmoe »

If you have been trying to keep the wiki clean - fighting hordes of spam bots - you'd probably agree with me that that's *not* funny.
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Kentamanos
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Post by Kentamanos »

Sweet...this means the recent changes page might be usable now ;).
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Kencho
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Post by Kencho »

@Jacmoe: Totally agree. It's awful to remove spam, and see that it was added again at the same time!!! :x Well, will have to ask for an account... :roll: Sad to see what you've been forced to do, but it will be better now, I guess...
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Antiarc
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Post by Antiarc »

Sinbad, I recommend a simple fix: Change one or more field names on the registration page, as well as the registration handler page. If they're bots that aren't specifically targeting the OGRE site, then foreign field names will confuse it, and should cause registration attempts to fail.
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DarkSeraph
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Post by DarkSeraph »

Or put one of those "write down what's in the image" things. Those are a pain for people registering, but will keep out bots.
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Kentamanos
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Post by Kentamanos »

DarkSeraph wrote:Or put one of those "write down what's in the image" things. Those are a pain for people registering, but will keep out bots.
That's what sinbad was talking about when he mentioned captcha.
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lhunath
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Post by lhunath »

What's wrong with a simple php plain text random generated number à la:

Code: Select all

Enter the following number <?=$randnumber ?>:
 <input type="text" />
<input type="hidden" value="<?=$randnumber ?>" />
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Kentamanos
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Post by Kentamanos »

lhunath wrote:What's wrong with a simple php plain text random generated number à la:

Code: Select all

Enter the following number <?=$randnumber ?>:
 <input type="text" />
<input type="hidden" value="<?=$randnumber ?>" />
It's not too hard to adjust the "bot" to handle that.

The idea on the captcha type stuff is OCR on certain types of images is VERY difficult. It's a nasty AI problem as opposed to just parsing some HTML.
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lhunath
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Post by lhunath »

That's supposing the bots are after the Ogre Wiki; meaning people are actually targetting it, and even still, it's no 5 minutes work to move the HTML block around in the code randomly so a bot can't find it.
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Kentamanos
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Post by Kentamanos »

lhunath wrote:That's supposing the bots are after the Ogre Wiki; meaning people are actually targetting it, and even still, it's no 5 minutes work to move the HTML block around in the code randomly so a bot can't find it.
You're right, that assumes they're targetting the Ogre site in particular. That said, it also doesn't take 5 minutes of work to fix a bot after you move it either (again, assuming they're targetting the Ogre wiki) :).

I think the real issue with the solution is sinbad doesn't want to go messing around with a Wiki solution that he didn't write etc. (I wouldn't really want to either). His time's spent better in other places.
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