Editing Appropedia:Anti-spam and anti-vandalism

The most effective anti-vandalism measure is an active community. We have a team of people (the [[Appropedia:Recent Changes Patrol|Recent Changes Patrol]] monitoring all edits made, and vandalism and spam are quickly reverted. 

We are also looking at other measures such as [[Appropedia:Bots|bots]] (as used with great efficiency at Wikipedia) to monitor and quickly revert vandalism. 

See also [[Appropedia talk:Anti-vandalism measures|the talk page]], for further discussion. 

== Settings ==

=== Restricting permissions for page moves ===

Page moves are harder to revert than other changes, so we added this to our [[mw:Manual:LocalSettings.php|LocalSettings.php]]:

 # To thwart vandalism these adjustments (intended)
 # to limit move permission to "autoconfirmed" users
 [[mw:Manual:$wgAutoConfirmAge|$wgAutoConfirmAge]]                             = 3600*24*10; // 10 days
 [[mw:Manual:$wgAutoConfirmCount|$wgAutoConfirmCount]]                           = 10; // 10 edits required
 [[mw:Manual:$wgGroupPermissions|$wgGroupPermissions]]['user']['move']           = false;
 [[mw:Manual:$wgGroupPermissions|$wgGroupPermissions]]['autoconfirmed']['move']  = true;

(Note: the variables are linked to relevant resources, above, but you can ignore that in LocalSettings.php and just paste in plain text.)

==Suggestions==
*implement a bot or bots taken (with permission) from Wikipedia spam & vandal-fighters. E.g. {{WP p|User:Tawkerbot|Tawkerbot.}} These could run on the server, for faster, 24-hour operation.
*<s>ban page creation by anons & new accounts (like Wikipedia)</s> - On Appropedia, it is likely that some readers will never sign up until they are ready to create a page based on their project. 
*implement soft-protection for pages that are spam targets
*reverse Turing tests
**Currently implemented in some cases.
*Implementing the {{WP p|Project:Semi-protection|semi-protection}} function  ['''DONE''' - this option is now available to admins], to use when existing, legitimate pages become repeat targets for negative behavior of any kind. For technical details, see:
** [[mw:Manual:Administrators#Protection]]
** [[mw:Manual:$wgRestrictionLevels]]
** [[mw:Manual:$wgRestrictionTypes]]

=== Extensions ===

* We have a simple CAPTCHA: [[mw:Extension:ConfirmEdit]] - a minor bother to users, but it has stopped the "nonsense bots." Only needs to be set for anon editors, and for account creation. (Any stricter is unneeded, and is a nuisance for contributors.)
* We have [[MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist]] and [[MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist]] via the extension - [[mw:Extension:SpamBlacklist]].
* We have (the currently unused) [[MediaWiki:Titleblacklist]] and [[MediaWiki:Titlewhitelist]] from [[mw:Extension:Title_Blacklist]].
* Bad Behavior blocks a lot of spam without bothering users, by examining how an editor accesses the site. See [http://web.archive.org/web/20120509181719/http://bad-behavior.ioerror.us:80/documentation/mediawiki/ Bad Behavior on MediaWiki] (official site) and [[mw:Extension:Bad Behavior]]. (The official site has up to date info and the MediaWiki.org page may have other useful info. (See also [http://web.archive.org/web/20160309050217/http://wiki.evernex.com/index.php?title=bad_behavior_2_extended Bad Behavior 2 Extended] - additional add-on for MediaWiki which adds a special page for Bad Behavior.)

== Patterns ==

Patterns of spam (e.g. particular forms of url, HTML markup, or words) can be noted on the [[Appropedia:Anti-spam and anti-vandalism/patterns|'''patterns subpage''']]. This can then be used to tighten our [[MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist|spam url blacklist]] and [[Special:AbuseFilter|AbuseFilter]] settings.

Patterns in pagenames can be blocked too - admins can edit these patterns at [[MediaWiki:Titleblacklist]].

==See also==
*[[Appropedia:Recent changes patrol]]

==Interwiki links==
*[[meta:Anti-vandalism ideas]]
*[[Wikipedia:Project:Bot policy]]
*[[Wikipedia:Project:Spam]]
*[[wikipedia:Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 92#How Wikipedia stops the nonsense bots|How Wikipedia stops the nonsense bots]] - discussion thread on Wikipedia's Village Pump.
*[[Wikipedia:Project:Vandalism]] - and note the '''See also''' links at the bottom. 
*[[Wikipedia:User:Lupin/Filter recent changes]]
*[[meta:Vandalbot]] - a script which automatically performs some kind of malicious edit or similar operation to a wiki at high rate.
*[[wikipedia:project:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-07-18/WikiProject_report|Interview with member of Wikipedia's WikiProject Spam]] - note the question about tools.
*[[mw:Manual:User rights]]
*[[mw:Manual:User rights management]]
*[[mw:Manual:Preventing access]]

[[Category:Spam on Appropedia]]