Prevent Spam and Vandalism

Vandalism and spam are a major problem in all wikis, but especially wikis maintained by a small group of volunteers, such as this one. To prevent spam, many measures can be taken. Included in these are necessary precautions which can, at a minimum, cause spammers and vandals to think twice before proceeding to attack a wiki.

Administration Related Shortcut
The following are measures suggested by MediaWiki's page, Manual:Combating_vandalism, to be taken by administrators in case of spam or vandalism.

User related

 * User rename: Special:RenameUser (requires Extension:Renameuser)
 * New users log: Special:Log/newusers
 * User list: Special:ListUsers

Block related
Block IP: Special:Block IP block ranges (perform block ranges carefully and in most cases only temporarily such as 24 hours, 3 days, 2 weeks, 3 months and so on depending on the situation):
 * Table of sample ranges
 * Most commonly used (sample blocks):
 * 69.208.0.0/16 (for blocking 69.208.x.x)
 * 69.208.52.0/24 (for blocking 69.208.52.x)
 * Block log: Special:Log/block]
 * Unblocking and list of current blocks: Special:BlockList

Other shortcuts

 * MediaWiki:Titleblacklist - for editing list of bad titles (requires Extension:Title Blacklist)
 * Hide Revisions: For hiding bad usernames still left in logs or bad edit comments etc
 * Special:RecentChangesCleanup - clean up recent changes from vandalism (requires Extension:Recent Changes Cleanup) (always the last step)