What the Wiki Committee did in July

[aethel]

For those who are not subscribed to the otw_news community, you can read the Fanlore section of the OTW's July newsletter here. Here is a modified and updated version of the Wiki Committee news:

This month we implemented ReCaptcha with the help of Systems to battle the spambots. Unfortunately, it didn't work as well as we hoped (details here), so we're back to looking for other options.

Wiki has two new members who volunteered to help us fight against spam and upgrade our version of mediawiki: Welcome, Emufarmers and Phoenix!

We are also happy to welcome three new Fanlore gardeners: Sparcicle, Espresso Addict, and Greenygal.

Our second big project, the forum, is still under construction and looks better every day.

Comments

[greerwatson.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, it didn't work as well as we hoped...

Yeah, I guess it didn't! At five to six on August 10th the "recent changes" page was literally all red spam.

[tuuulia]

We know it didn't work as well as we hoped, but it does take some time for us to find a right solution for this problem. We understand that users are frustrated to see all the red sea of spam bots.

On my fanlore.org profile page is a filter link what removes all the spambots, so if you wish to use it, just search Tuulia and you will find it from there.

Hopefully we get rid of spambots soon.

[greerwatson.livejournal.com]

Actually, you know, it is pretty funny that you decided in the end to use a Captcha program that is harder for humans than it is for bots.

[tuuulia]

I'm not so familiar with Captcha programs, so I can't say what is the best program and what's not. I think it was mostly Systems who decided the program at the time... I'm so new staffer that I'm not actually sure. But now we have two people in our committee who knows more about these and we are searching a better solution.

We know it's annoying, but just hang on there hopefully soon we can say bye to spammers for good (:

[greerwatson.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. (So nice to see a sea of blue. A much more appropriate sea colour!) I've now bookmarked it.

[tuuulia]

No nproblem, hope it helps (:

[kylara]

So this happened...



Yikes. Good luck to everyone working on fighting the spam!

[tuuulia]

Like I replied to greenwatson, you can find a filter link from my fanlore profile (just search Tuulia), what will hide the red sea of spambots (: you're free to use it and share it if u want (;

[kylara]

Thanks, but I prefer knowing when they're around to keep tabs on things. When I don't want to see them, I select "User" and click the invert button.

[tiyire]

Me too - it's so bad, I can't look away...
At the moment the situation is a bit confusing. Systems was working with us, but left it up to us to find and choose an option to fight spam, and none of us knew anything about spam-fighting. We decided to try ReCaptcha, with known results. Now we have our own experts, but they need time to become familiar with the tools and our mediawiki version etc. We can't even give an approximate time on when we'll have something better, but we all hope it'll be soon!