[SAC] Spam on the OSGeo Wiki

[Arnulf Christl]

On Sat, January 13, 2007 11:13, Mateusz £oskot wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Today, I removed a huge number of spam URLs from the OSGeo Wiki frontpage
> and the FDO Provenance Review
> (http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/FDO_Provenance_Review).
> I also scanned the wiki for some dirty words using the search engine, but
> there may be still some accounts in the database which are used by
> spammers.
>
> Could you please check the database and remove suspicious accounts.
> I now one spammer to check, which spammed the FDO wiki page, it's called
> "Explosive ice".
>
> Cheers
> --
> Mateusz £oskot
> http://mateusz.loskot.net

Hi Mateusz,
thanks for the maintenance.

Hi All,
when we started the Wiki I repeatedly suggested to limit access to
registered users and to block pages with content that is approved policy.
To my surprise (and happiness) both ideas were broadly rejected. Security
is lo, it i only required to create an account.

Now that we do seem to have the on and off Spammer I exerted my
considerable WikiSysop powers for the first time and blocked two users.
This has never happened before and therefore I think it is valid to post
this to both WebCom and SAC. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Additionally I want to remind that currently Frank Warmerdam, Markus
Neteler, Arnulf Christl and the default WikiSysop have Bureaucrat and
sysop powers.
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php?title=Special:Listusers&group=sysop
WikiSysops can block users or IPs, Bureaucrats can add others to the
WikiSysop group (to prevent power accumulation with one individual these
are separate groups).

I would suggest to add some more people to the sysop group to make sure
that any time around the world someone with this power can keep an eye on
the Wiki. Mateusz, if you accept that role maybe Frank could add you.

Currently the Wiki is kindly hosted by terrestis and runs on a separate
server outside the OSGeo infratructure. Now that OSGeo has some hardware
under control we could move the Wiki too giving us a chance to give
broader accees to the software and database. To do this MediaWiki and
MySQL need to get installed (I guess MySQL is already there) and the DNS
for wiki.osgeo.org has to be changed to the new server, dump the database.
The transition should be very smooth. There is no hurry.

Best regards,
Arnulf.

-- 
Arnulf Christl
http://www.wheregroup.com