How Should We Deal With Spam

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It has been suggested that this page or section be merged into [[::spam|spam]]. (Discuss)

In 2007, automated spam-bots spewed stuff all over Open Circuits. Reverting any one instance only took a minute (see How to delete spam). But there were so many that the nice people of Open Circuits were annoyed that they were spending all their wiki-time dealing with spammers, rather than doing something productive.

What should we do about it?

Lets put our discussion here.

Current Spam Prevention

Secret we cannot let the terrorists know

How Bad is it Now

• Dec 2007

A real problem, reverting takes a lot of time and seems to last about a day.

• Mar 10 2008

Seems much better, perhaps acceptable. DavidCary ? must have changed something.

Methods We Might Use

One goal of Open Circuits is to help people build amazing and wonderful things by giving them plans they can use and improve. Spam is a problem when it distracts us from that goal. Alas, the "easy" solutions to spam also prevent us from achieving that goal -- they make it so difficult to help us improve these plans that most people aren't going to bother. Fortunately, people are working on better solutions.

If you have something new add it

Method	In use	Brief Discussion Pro/Con	Vote For with your user name
Shoot Them	No	Pro: Last time they spam. Con: Cost of ammo	Hitler Bush
Edits from Registered User Only	No	Pro: Might help Con: Some may not want to have to register prior to editing. How can we be Open Circuits if we are closed?
Captcha for Non-Registered Users	?	Pro: Might help, lets unregistered users comment. Encourages registration Con: Who wants to type in a Captcha
Captcha for All	No	Pro: Might help Con: Sucks
Register after Email Confirmation	?	Pro: Might Help Con: Makes it even harder to register.
Block Users or IP addresses that Spam	Yes	Pro: Might help if spammers do not spoof thier ip addresses or have means of changing them. Con: Lots of work for admin. Ther may be too many of them for the number of us.

further reading

spam, CommunityWiki: WikiSpam, Meatball: WikiSpam, Meatball: shared anti-spam