Talk:ActionsAgainstWikiAbusers
The discussion here under is dated before july 2006
I believe it is time we at WikiWorld lay down some anti-abuse processes. I know that WikiPedia uses some method of blocking IP addresses, I'll try to find out how.
If you look in the history of the HomePage, you would notice an Inappropriate picture and a line calling us "wiki-terrorists". Every time someone has done this, we change the page back and go about our business. Does anyone have any proposals as to courses of action? --KenSchry
--Actually, I don't know if they were calling themselves the Wiki-terrorists, or us.......
Good idea blocking that IP, that pic is the grossest ever.
I've been FightingHackers for 35 years. The first rule of security is to keep your measures secret.
Wiki terrorists are just hacker wannabees seeking attention by annoying you for no reason except their personal humor. Hackers often have purpose, the build pirate networks. But once they get in, whole communities of them are in, not all of them nice, you got to rebuild all your systems from scratch, no fun. Here the damage is easier to fix, no harm done really.
As HumanBeings we should offer attention to the lost soul and see if we can heal each other. Antisocial action often has a reason that can resolved. People, all of us, become antisocial when we feel helpless about our control of our life situation. We are greater as a whole than individuals cherishing one troubled soul at a time.
Our EIES Legacy policy was to reward hackers who exposed a hole in our security with free accounts etc. in exchange for their security services.
My suggestion is we promise Wiki terrorists anything they want to leave us alone and sincerely facilitate they getting what they want so long as it is a reasonable thing for a human being to want, and let them be WE. -- JimScarver
But this isn't a secure network. I understand the idea of rewarding people for exposing Network flaws for you to fix, but PhpWiki and WikiWorld is an Open post program. There is no need to reward these assholes (pun intended for all who saw the picture), and them doing this in no way helps us. They may be HumanBeings, but these people made the choice to be HumanAnimals. Their being lost souls does not justify action of "wiki-terrorists", and I stick firmly by the course of action I suggested before. We DO need some sort of a way to block repeated abusers. We just need to know how.
Rather than figuring out a way to block, thus increase the irritants efforts to "get in," I suggest what we have been doing, which is talked about at meatball as MeatBall:SoftSecurity -- Best, MarkDilley
See http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dealing_with_vandalism, and http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vandalism_in_progress.
I started a discussion on what seems to be to be related issues under WikiWorldCourt. I now see part of that could be refactored to here. Please feel free to do so... I don't mind. ;)
As far the the wiki-terrorists, I believe they were calling themselves the WT.
And that is not the most disgusting picture I've ever seen on an open community. Heck, it's so over-used now, it just makes me roll my eyes.
I find it funny that Jim says to use secret security on an Open site. Something about that just tickles my funny bone... Mind you, I understand why he says that. But I still find it a funny.
I think that Home page should have simply been rolled back to the point it was prior to the Goat Sex pic linkage. That seems to me to be the best answer, and it would have not preserved the incident whatsoever in the history of HomePage (and WikiWorld). However, I feel this idea of simple rollback to its 'pristine' state should be discussed, as if that is what had happened, I would not have known precisely what had happened, only that someone had vandalized our home page (not the details). Of course, I (and others) do not need to know the precise details in this case. So opinions? ---StarPilot
Well, that's always what we do (Roll it back to the state before). I brought up the subject about WikiWorld having no security about this, and it sort of went from there ;). Originally a couple of days ago I came to the home page to find it vandalized, I changed it back and brought up this page. After talking to Jim extensively on the subject of security, and several times having to argue with him that these people are not the "lost children", he agreed that a person should be given 3 strikes and then is blocked (IP Blocked). Of course, this is open to debate. I sort of agree with some of the things in MarkDilley's proposal, but not all of it. --KenSchry
Well, there is a real problem with IP blocks... you block all who use that particular IP. Now, in my case, and IP block wouldn't work. I'm on DHCP at both work and home providers, so you would have to block all of my local government network branch and my commercial ISP (for their Rocketcity branch). So, just to keep a bad me out, you have to effectively block out about 100,000 other potential users. And then, of course, I could just pop in a free AOL dial up disk, or my free MSN dial up disk, or my free earthlink dial up, and have a whole new set of IPs to use to go back to whatever silly games I wanted to play here. Something to keep in mind.
Personally, I think the best answer is to just log their IPs, and notify their ISPs that they are causing problems (and the kind of problems they are causing, like vandalizing the site with pornographic material, destruction of content, etc). Most ISPs do not want to keep a customer that will cause them trouble, and this will cause them, on average, to get dropped by their provider, forcing them to find another.
Well, just my thoughts and experiences... ---StarPilot
You have some good points. AOL and others are hard to block but a majority of people I think use IE, Netscape, Mozilla and Opera, which broadcast your IP (Harder if this is an experienced vandalizer and uses a masked IP). But one of the things I brought up in the beginning is the lack of security for WikiWorld. Why not do both? Even if we don't block IP's, we should keep a list of strikes against an alias or IP with Aliases, as well as your suggestion. --KenSchry
Just a note that someone has recently decided to use our little Wiki to advertise a long range of spam links. I've been zapping it whenever I notice it, but I'll be happy when they get tired of trying to raise their Google ranking and stop spamming us.
---StarPilot
Don't forget TOR
Looking over this article and its talk, I notice that the old discussion on IPs didn't even touch things like TOR (The Onion Router), and other anonymizers. There is just so many ways to hide your actual access point, from a wiki website. Of course, if we wanted secure, we'd be invitation only, with lots of security measures and such. But that runs counter to WikiWorld.
--StarPilot 14:10, 11 July 2006 (EDT)