Wiki Link Farming

[pants123]

I don't know if this has come up before or not, but recently I was randomly browsing the wiki and could not help but notice the blatant link farming happening on many of the less used pages.

An example:

Do people already know about this? Is this a recurring problem? Something should probably be done about it.

[Shaun]

I don't know if this has come up before or not, but recently I was randomly browsing the wiki and could not help but notice the blatant link farming happening on many of the less used pages.

Do people already know about this? Is this a recurring problem? Something should probably be done about it.

That's because Famicoman was responsible for holding back the hordes of spammers in the past, but stopped doing it some months ago.

[Darren Kitchen]

damn that sucks. we could really use a wiki moderator. if anyone is interested let me know.

[Tenzer]

Looking at the recent changes there aren't really any other changes than the spammed links: http://wiki.hak5.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges

However, I would be glad to help out even though I don't have much experience with administrating a MediaWiki, but I guess there is a ban function for IP addresses, right? Many of the links come from the same IP address: http://wiki.hak5.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/200.63.42.89

[moonlit]

It's a WIKI.

Let's look at the definition of a wiki, shall we?

"a Wiki is a type of website that allows the visitors to add, remove, and sometimes edit the available content."

Right, seems simple enough. What are you again? Oh yeah, that's right, a VISITOR.

So if we add these two factors together, we end up with a pretty simple answer... do everyone a favour and delete the spam as you see it. It's not difficult, it doesn't take a lot of time, but I'm really sick of hearing people whine about how something's not to satisfaction when they could really just make a little, tiny effort, just for 15 seconds, just to fix it.

That's what a goddamn wiki is for, community editing, so WHERE'S THE COMMUNITY?!

[pants123]

It's a WIKI.

Let's look at the definition of a wiki, shall we?

"a Wiki is a type of website that allows the visitors to add, remove, and sometimes edit the available content."

Right, seems simple enough. What are you again? Oh yeah, that's right, a VISITOR.

So if we add these two factors together, we end up with a pretty simple answer... do everyone a favour and delete the spam as you see it. It's not difficult, it doesn't take a lot of time, but I'm really sick of hearing people whine about how something's not to satisfaction when they could really just make a little, tiny effort, just for 15 seconds, just to fix it.

That's what a goddamn wiki is for, community editing, so WHERE'S THE COMMUNITY?!

Sorry, being a new wiki user I couldn't edit the places that the links were placed :P

[VaKo]

The wiki has always been neglected tbh. Managing something like that is very hard without some kinda planning and series of goals to aim for. Just having a moderation team like a forum doesn't work.

[Famicoman]

That is one of the reasons I stopped moderating it. Also, if you are any sort of decent person, you would register an account on the wiki which allows you to edit 99% of the pages. I one by one changed the access rights to several hundred wiki pages throughout the last year or two to prevent spam. if you think its bad now, you should have seen it before.

As for how the hell is there spam now, bots can now register accounts, that technology hasn't always been around, but I have seen it develop here, so back a year or so ago, I made suggestions on getting a captcha either for account registration or page edits. Never heard anything back about that.

As for the wiki itself, fuck it. It used to be a thriving part of the community that has since been killed in accordance with the rest of the shit around here. I say good riddance. I stopped my duties in late May of this year, so all that spam has had time to build up. If you love the community as much now as I did oh so long ago, edit the spam out of your favorite pages, pick up a moderating gig, I personally challenge everyone to bring back the wiki in full force. I'll buy everyone a round if they do.

Moonlit speaks the truth, there was a time around here when if people saw something wrong, they would go about fixing it or creating a solution themselves just to help out the place they love. Now its just all this cry home to mom shit. Where the fuck did the initiative go.

"You must be the change you want to see in the world"

If this community is going to last for another year, there needs to be more new leaders of this place stepping forward to help. All the old figures are tired of the way shit is and they don't want to contribute to something that shuns them and basically gives a "fuck you", or for that matter countless people who just go "this shit is broken" instead of "thank you for setting up a bbs" or "nice job removing the spam".

This is no longer my community, I come here for topics just like this. There are so many loose ends around here and a limitless number of people coming into irc asking what happened with old projects and nobody is around to answer them. This if your community. I have more things on the horizon now; things that value my thought and input in ways I haven't seen since 2006.

I predict a topic about how the forums have come to a dull roar... oh wait.

[SomeoneE1se]

I know the exact time I stopped caring about the forums, back when Matt said "IPB is the best SMF is crap so fuck you!" with out talking to anyone (VaKo) who had been completely managing on his own I feel worse for him because he totally got shit on

y'all used to care about the community around here now y'all don't care ro take an interest for shit!

I say just shut the damn community down right now and let rev3 handle it because it's clear cast and crew don't care anymore

[Darren Kitchen]

I know the exact time I stopped caring about the forums, back when Matt said "IPB is the best SMF is crap so fuck you!" with out talking to anyone (VaKo) who had been completely managing on his own I feel worse for him because he totally got shit on

y'all used to care about the community around here now y'all don't care ro take an interest for shit!

I say just shut the damn community down right now and let rev3 handle it because it's clear cast and crew don't care anymore

Far from. I really care about the community because to me its the biggest reward to doing the show.

I've been working to make it a better place. Shannon has done a great job of outreach outside the domain, on social networks, and I've been working to get our noob servers and bbs servers back up. We need to organize events and projects outside the standard LAN Parties and integrate them better with the show. Now that we're going weekly I think this is doable.

I'm really interested in hearing constructive thoughts on what would make this community even better. And to that point if you want to volunteer some effort helping to keep things going like the forums, wiki, game servers, bbs, microblogging network, jabber service, etc just let us know.

[Saxon]

Darren although I am new here I have a fair bit of mod experience if you need help taming the wiki I am more than glad to help after all you guys inform an entertain me I should be able to do something back for you guys an the community at large.

Also I know this might not seem the best idea in the world what about a public or semi public FTP server, users can use if to swap new code an freeware tools around the place an also allow for some great home brew apps an such get a little notice, It will need moderation to stop people from uploading junk or copywrited material but it might be worth looking into.

[VaKo]

Far from. I really care about the community because to me its the biggest reward to doing the show.

I've been working to make it a better place. Shannon has done a great job of outreach outside the domain, on social networks, and I've been working to get our noob servers and bbs servers back up. We need to organize events and projects outside the standard LAN Parties and integrate them better with the show. Now that we're going weekly I think this is doable.

I'm really interested in hearing constructive thoughts on what would make this community even better. And to that point if you want to volunteer some effort helping to keep things going like the forums, wiki, game servers, bbs, microblogging network, jabber service, etc just let us know.

I have said this time and time again. All the issues with disgruntlement and the hak5 community can be traced back to 2 issues. Lack of project management and lack of communication. We all know that some of the regulars and long time community members have had issues with the way things have been run but it never seems to be voiced in a constructive way. I know that getting together to bitch about things is cathartic but there needs to be more done than just that. Don't let your complaints eat away at you until there all you have, voice them in public, ask for a debate and push for change where you think its needed. Unless we talk about things *nothing will change*. If all you want to do is post about how shit things are now, why even bother logging in anymore?

As for project management, this is the plague of online community projects. And this shows with the Hak5 wiki. Its all very well throwing a copy of mediawiki on a server and saying "make something fantabulus!" but after nearly 4 years this approach still isn't working. Fixing the wiki is going to be a big task, its not something that you can just find a person or 2 to do on there own. Give the community goals, projects etc Make small parts of the task into a competition even (do an article on subject X, best one wins a crate of beverage, submit here, vote there). You have an amazing community here, with lots of talented people but without some kinda direction to aim in all the efforts will be sporadic and uncoordinated. Yes, people will get bored and projects will die, but with some project management work the impact of things like this can be reduced. Darren, the cast members need to at least get the ball rolling on something like this.

You picked me to be a mod way back in season 1, why not keep your ear to the ground and get a wiki team together out of people you think can work in a way that will gel with what you want to see happen. Give them aims, goals and a direction and most importantly manage the project initially. We have ideas, we have man power and we have the talent. Your trying to make hak5 bigger and better and to do that the way things are run in the community needs to be changed. Think start-up to an actual company style transition, at some point someone needs to put a suit on. You've said yourself that the blogging scene is going to change and go through some harder times, don't focus on loads of cool extra bits that will interest a mere handful of people, focus on making the core components of your product rock solid.

[pants123]

Ok, I found the edit link at the bottom of the page (*jjhappypants beats himself in the face with his laptop) and have spent the last hour or so digging through pages and deleting the problem links.

My problem before was that I had only seen the sectional edit buttons :P

**edit** just read VaKo's post, and I agree. Going from page to page I noticed quite a few more signs of disuse than just the links. More than I would be able to fix, given my amount of free-time and limited knowledge. If we want to save the wiki, we really need to get a team together. Many of the community projects haven't been touched for years :P

[Tenzer]

As the wiki is now, it has not really any purpose of cleaning up the links on the pages... I corrected the Asterisk page yesterday, and 12 hours later it has been edited 8 times by spambots. Unless we have people monitoring every change at any time of day there aren't really a way to keep it clean.

I think we have to get some captchas involved, or maybe just ban some of the worst IP addresses where the spambots are coming from.

Btw. Maybe there are some anti-spam methods mentioned on the mediawiki wiki: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Combating_spam. Maybe we could get some of them set up? Does anybody have access to that other than Darren?

[Mr Funk]

With it being a wiki I think the community should handle it - as that is the purpose of a wiki.

If the community gradually maintains it it wouldn't get so messed up - obviously we need to get a way of crushing the spam bots as soon as possible - but overall if everybody edits out the crap as they find it then it will eventually clean up in theory.

[darkjoker]

Im up for helping out with the wiki and forums if you guys need me. I have had experience being a mod and a admin, so if you need me send me a pm or email. and if I see mess ups in the wiki i'll do my best to fix it. And if your setting up a team for all this sign me up for it.

[VaKo]

With it being a wiki I think the community should handle it - as that is the purpose of a wiki.

If the community gradually maintains it it wouldn't get so messed up - obviously we need to get a way of crushing the spam bots as soon as possible - but overall if everybody edits out the crap as they find it then it will eventually clean up in theory.

Thats good... in theory. In practice you actually need to have people looking after it, because as we can see most people don't care.

[Mr Funk]

Thats good... in theory. In practice you actually need to have people looking after it, because as we can see most people don't care.

Then we need to get a team together, ill be happy to volunteer, always happy to help the community.

[Joerg]

Concept for improved registration process (Nah, no new thread):

User needs to answer five questions out of a pool of, let's say 50.

It should be possible to google the answers e.g. "what's the melting point of gold in kelvin" and there should be community related questions e.g. "what episode featured an underwater camera".

[Mr Funk]

Concept for improved registration process (Nah, no new thread):

User needs to answer five questions out of a pool of, let's say 50.

It should be possible to google the answers e.g. "what's the melting point of gold in kelvin" and there should be community related questions e.g. "what episode featured an underwater camera".

But, with the community question its a bit unfair to the hak5 newbies who may have only just got into the show - and to force them to watch EVERY episode for a silly wiki seems a bit harsh.

I personally think that creating a team and having a moderated registration process for the wiki is the best way forward.

[VaKo]

A regular capatcha should do the trick, from my experience killing spam on the forums the trick is to make it impossible for the bots to register along with having a team of people who will remove anything that slips through the net within 12hrs or so. Ideally you want a mixture of Americans and Europeans to cover timezone differences.

[RogueHart]

im going to the local fair with my gf today but when i get back ill start working on the wiki. trying to update it. ect. ect

[Tenzer]

...and to force them to watch EVERY episode for a silly wiki seems a bit harsh.

Especially considering that they can't find the information about which episode it is in the wiki, since it is just filled up with pr0n links atm. :P

[Joerg]

I thought they look up the show notes and by thus having an appropriate knowlegde about the community.