# Administration Category > Administrative issues >  Set wiki contributions to members only?

## Dave A

I have left the wiki open for contributions by unregistered members. Mainly to give unregistered folk at least some sort of opportunity to get involved. But so far all I've got is spammers  :Mad:  1 ciallis, 1 viagra and 1 hardcore porn in 48 hours.

Perhaps I need to force contributions from registered members only, or do we just clean up regularly and bite the bullet? Maybe start banning IP ranges? None of the spammers have local IPs so far.

BTW - we *do* have a much higher rate of attempts to spam the forum with this stuff, but our anti-spam measures ensure that no-one but the mods ever get to see it.

I shudder to think what wikipedia has to deal with.

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## duncan drennan

I suspect that most people who are going to contribute meaningfully to the wiki are probably going to register here (and contribute too).....

In terms of time and effort saved, it would seem to make sense to just limit the users to those registered here. Will it help though? Possibly the same people trying to spam the wiki who try here?

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## Dave A

I've just started blocking IP's now. Let's see what effect that has.

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## stephanfx

I think that only registered users should be able to add to the wiki.  This would should ensure the value of the entries to that which would truly contribute. 

On the other hand, an expert might just browse, see something he can be able to add to, see he needs to register, and keeps on browsing.






Okay, I am stuck 2  :Frown:

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## Dave A

> On the other hand, an expert might just browse, see something he can be able to add to,(


That's what I want to allow for - the quick edit that is just a tweak but adds value. I expect regular contributors will register.

From time to time I see an unregistered browser trying to reply to a thread, find you have to register and the moment is gone.

What is really nice about the wiki is it tracks the history of pages so well. Reverting an unsuitable edit for admins and mods is just a click away.

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## stephanfx

The let it be open, isn't there some kind of mod for the wiki for spam protection?

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## Ann Williams

The same spammers have also found my new blog (www.2b-marketing.co.za/marketing-blog) as well! They seemed particularly attracted to a post called "Stick it on the fridge" about a fridge magnet business card from a dietician. In a week it had received more than 60 spam messages (viagra, pharmacies etc)... 

I have taken the post off of the blog, and put it back up as a new post under the heading "Fridge magnets are magnificent" and have had no problems since.

I also noticed that even though I 'blacklisted / listed as spam' every single one of the entries, they still just kept flooding in.

So it looks as if the viagra sellers have put lovely spiders into the system that are now finding any format of internet comms where a message can be placed, targeting a whole bunch of key word phrases and then doing the usual trick of ransacking e-mail addresses to pump out posts...

 :Rant1: I'd like to take these pirates of the electronic highways and make them walk the plank! When this platform of marketing is continuously highjacked by impersonal, program driven, ultra-mass dumping of garbage like this it gives even honest electronic marketing efforts a really bad name.

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## duncan drennan

There are some decent spam plugins for Wordpress (just google for wordpress spam) Ã¢â¬â you might want to try one of them out. Also, you could always set it that all comments are moderated, i.e. you have to approve them first. The problem with that is that you end up spending too much time deleting junk (but at least your users don't see it).

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## Ann Williams

Thanks for the WP anti-spam tip Duncan. Will scratch around this weekend and see what can be done....

Thankfully I already moderate all the messages or else I think my blog would have been 20 times as big as it is now due to all of the rubbish comments. So at least none of it has actually appeared on the site yet. I currently do a daily sift through the comments folder and delete the crud. (I seem to be doing that more regularly at the moment than actually writing posts!)

Cheers
A

www.2B-marketing.co.za
Your free-to-view website packed with interesting practical marketing info to support the South African entrepreneur.

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## Dave A

> The let it be open, isn't there some kind of mod for the wiki for spam protection?


I'm still getting the hang of the built-in features which are pretty powerful as it is. I've put in the member bridge, but I'm not planning on any further mods until I've got a better understanding of the back-end.

I expect just as with the forum software, we'll get more sophisticated in pre-empting challenges over time.

Thank goodness the spam problem seems managable for now.

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## Dave A

It is with a sense of sadness I inform you that I've decided to lock down editing permissions for the wiki to members only. 

I had hoped not to resort to this, but thanks to one _pissant_ who has steadfastly insisted on repeatedly spamming the wiki and has circumnavigated each measure I've introduced to date, this sorry day has come.

I don't have the time nor the energy to fight this asshole. Between the combined security of the forum software and the wiki software, hopefully this will make this little bastard's job a little more tedious than it will be mine to clean up his/her sorry mess.

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## Eugene

Dave, forward his details to Riaan and let him return the favour of spamming the living snot out of him through his blog.

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## Dave A

Nah. That one wasn't an email spammer - it was links to stuff in the distinctly adult audience realm. Those folk thrive on spam visitors.

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## RKS Computer Solutions

:Frown:  No one has used my spamkiller blog yet...  :Frown:   --The one person who did, did not include the spammers email addy, so no use yet

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## Dave A

That blog's scary. I'm nervous even putting the addy into my URL bar.

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## RKS Computer Solutions

why?  no dodgy stuff, i promise...

google analytics, to see who's coming to visit...  spammail adress openly visibly to humans and spiders....

the nastiest thing there i reckon is the header image :O

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## Chatmaster

I missed the spamkiller blog! Can someone pop me that URL? I can definately sent you a few emails.

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## duncan drennan

> I missed the spamkiller blog! Can someone pop me that URL? I can definately sent you a few emails.


After a quick scratch around, have a look at this thread for the blog.

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## RKS Computer Solutions

http://be-a-pain-in-the-butt.blogspot.com/

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## Chatmaster

Riaan any way you can add Forum spammers too?

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## RKS Computer Solutions

If Dave makes their email addresses known, we could probably ship that off to the blog...  But that would most probably be in contravention with the privacy policy of TheForumSA...  If they do however spam on the forum and posts email addresses with their posts, sure we can forward it to the site...

Other than that, right now we can only forward emails to the site and have it posted...

What do you think of the blog?

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## Dave A

The problem with forum spammers is that they tend to use drop emails for registering. And their goal is to either link build or to get some traffic to their site (I'm assuming it isn't just to *P* forum admins off). The spam blog idea only works if the person is relying on contact via their email address. I suspect the idea is to get their inbox so flooded with spam that it becomes quite troublesome for them to find the emails from genuine victims.

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## RKS Computer Solutions

Or at least get them looking half as bad as the oke in the blog...

Whatever we do, spam will always be a problem, I just reckon that although 90% of emails sent today is spam, we still have a fighting chance if we at least try and stand up to them....

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## Chatmaster

On some of my forums I specifically state that forum spammer's emails will be made public. If there was a way for me to distribute their email addresses to other lists as well, I would.

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## RKS Computer Solutions

Send it in a nice list to my blog, hopefully it will help alleviate spamming to some degree...  At least we are doing something to try and fight back...

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