[OSM-talk] Spam spam spam spam

[Hugh Barnes]

On Sunday 02 November 2008, 23:06:05, Richard Fairhurst did write:
> Tom Hughes wrote:
> 
> > A wiki admin can delete it properly, and block the account.
> 

I guess that would involve nasty backdoor business in the database. Probably 
best to start working within the Mediawiki app, I reckon.

I remember when Wikipedia announced that they were adding rel="nofollow" 
attributes to all external links to deter spammers. That's because 
$POPULAR_SEARCH_ENGINE honours it. Not sure if it had the desired effect. 
Relies on spammers knowing this and caring/bothering (in our case).

> Hokay. I guess what I'm trying to ask is whether there's a procedure  
> (e.g. flagging spam on a wiki page, or category, which several people  
> can follow) which might reduce the inevitably OSM tendency for "the  
> way to get something fixed is to mail TomH". I'm trying to be  
> considerate. ;)
> 

Wikibots, possibly assisted by user-contributed flags. Check out which bots 
Wikipedia use. I think they are open sourced and even have articles! (Sorry, 
it's too late to research this better.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bot_policy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bots/Status

Perhaps you could name the first bot in Tom's honour? ;~)

Good luck.