Rosetta Code:Village Pump/Fight spam: Difference between revisions

How can we fight this spam which is attacking RC nowadays? I don't like too much black listing of netblocks as suggested maybe somewhere, since you could block also "common" people. I've seen a brand new spam user after posting to Named Argument, and I've discovered I can't do too much more than saying I've seen it. I've also noticed the name of these spammers follow a pattern which could be identified (but likely will change...) ... --[[User:ShinTakezou|ShinTakezou]] 11:17, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

: On the Tcler's Wiki, we block problem netblocks from making updates (well, we actually show the spammer a preview page but never commit it to the database, which is a nicer solution as they ''think'' they've spammed you successfully) but without seeing the logs for addresses where those spam users are being created from, it's hard to tell whether that will work. It's a fairly stupid spammer though, since external links are all <tt>nofollow</tt>-marked. Maybe simple techniques will work for now. Plus visibly blocking that netblock from creating a new user too. —[[User:Dkf|Donal Fellows]] 13:51, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Couldn't CAPTCHA be disabled for already registered and "tested" users? --[[User:ShinTakezou|ShinTakezou]] 15:03, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

: That's where we were earlier this week. I might reduce the captcha conditions this weekend if the spam doesn't drop off. At any rate, I'm going to have to mod things a bit to deal with spammers, and it might be possible to drop the CAPTCHAs altogether at that point. --[[User:Short Circuit|Short Circuit]] 15:46, 2 July 2009 (UTC)