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