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Apple Bottom
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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by Apple Bottom » November 9th, 2016, 10:21 am

Kiran wrote:Why not enforce Scrypt proof of work on new users? This would make it computationally difficult for spammers to make new accounts, and the few they create can be banned quickly. Also, post rate limits can be imposed on new users, to ensure they do not spam too much. Someone who actually wants to join can wait a few minutes for PoW to be solved.
Another idea: if it's not done yet, restrict page creation to autoconfirmed users. Wikipedia uses an account age of 4 days as a default for this, IIRC, which works well; most spammers don't create accounts in advance and then use them later.

MediaWiki also has a rate-limiting feature that could be used to set limits on the number of actions (edits etc.) that users could perform in a given amount of time. This works per user-group, so different rates could be set for anonymous users, registered-but-not-yet-autoconfirmed users, (regular) registered and autoconfirmed users and trusted users. See the manual entry for edit throttling, too.

MediaWiki has quite a few useful features for ensuring the operational safety of a wiki. :)

What I'm taking home from all this is that fighting spam needs a two-pronged approach:
  • keep spammers from registering accounts in the first place; and
  • keep those spammers that somehow do manage from creating too much trouble.
So far we've mostly focussed on the first -- but I think we should also look into the second more, e.g. using the above features.
If you speak, your speech must be better than your silence would have been. — Arabian proverb

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Kiran
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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by Kiran » November 9th, 2016, 5:15 pm

Even better idea:
Use GoL based PoW, while collecting soup data!
Enforce that a new user must contribute some amount of work to apg-search, proven by the PoW system in apg-search, to start posting.
Kiran Linsuain

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Apple Bottom
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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by Apple Bottom » November 9th, 2016, 6:10 pm

Kiran wrote:Even better idea:
Use GoL based PoW, while collecting soup data!
Enforce that a new user must contribute some amount of work to apg-search, proven by the PoW system in apg-search, to start posting.
Are you sure that's a good idea?

The bar for constructive contributions by genuine, well-meaning users should be as low as possible. A contribution, especially from a new user, is a gift. Do we want to charge for accepting gifts?
If you speak, your speech must be better than your silence would have been. — Arabian proverb

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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by BlinkerSpawn » November 10th, 2016, 12:58 am

Kiran wrote:Even better idea:
Use GoL based PoW, while collecting soup data!
Enforce that a new user must contribute some amount of work to apg-search, proven by the PoW system in apg-search, to start posting.
...I haven't even gotten Python to run on my computer, let alone run apgsearch on it.
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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by Scorbie » November 10th, 2016, 7:48 am

Apple Bottom wrote:The bar for constructive contributions by genuine, well-meaning users should be as low as possible. A contribution, especially from a new user, is a gift. Do we want to charge for accepting gifts?
I'm remembering that in case I get to use it later.

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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by Kiran » November 10th, 2016, 12:19 pm

Apple Bottom wrote:The bar for constructive contributions by genuine, well-meaning users should be as low as possible. A contribution, especially from a new user, is a gift. Do we want to charge for accepting gifts?
I see your point there, I see a trade-off between getting clogged with spam and blocking contributions from new users. Is there a better way of resolving this? One idea is to allow new users to post only in a designated sub-forum until the mods allow them in, another idea is to have them PM the mods for an "interview" to be allowed to start posting.
BlinkerSpawn wrote:...I haven't even gotten Python to run on my computer, let alone run apgsearch on it.
It is sad that those scripts require so much set-up, how much effort do you think it would take to make them user-friendly enough to just install and run? Perhaps we could ask the golly gang to make a nice GUI for apg-search.
Kiran Linsuain

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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by dvgrn » November 10th, 2016, 12:52 pm

Kiran wrote:It is sad that those scripts require so much set-up, how much effort do you think it would take to make them user-friendly enough to just install and run? Perhaps we could ask the golly gang to make a nice GUI for apg-search.
One step in the "just install and run" direction is the addition of Lua as a scripting language to Golly 2.8. I don't know if anyone is interested in the challenge of converting the old apgsearch script to Lua, but once that's available it would run in Golly with no additional install headaches.

It's not quite a trivial conversion -- there would be some library code to track down or create, that comes with Python but not with Lua (SHA hash functions, communication with Catagolue, and so on) -- but it seems like it would be doable.

On the spam question: at the moment, I'm much happier deleting the occasional post flagged as spam, or even cleaning up a relatively rare bigger mess like the one that started this thread, than I would be answering new-user PMs or endlessly managing who is allowed to see what. Seems to me that either of those options would also have the effect of discouraging valid new contributors.

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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by Apple Bottom » November 10th, 2016, 8:01 pm

dvgrn wrote:On the spam question: at the moment, I'm much happier deleting the occasional post flagged as spam, or even cleaning up a relatively rare bigger mess like the one that started this thread, than I would be answering new-user PMs or endlessly managing who is allowed to see what. Seems to me that either of those options would also have the effect of discouraging valid new contributors.
Indeed, this!

Let's also not forget we do not have a persistent spam problem, we only had one attack. The spammers were able to cause a fair amount of damage, but they aren't a constant problem.

So let's solve the problems we had and have, and not the ones we might have in the future (at least until we actually have them.)
If you speak, your speech must be better than your silence would have been. — Arabian proverb

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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by Saka » November 26th, 2016, 10:07 pm

Can someone add me to the trusted list (Username is Saka)

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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by Nathaniel » November 27th, 2016, 10:20 pm

Saka wrote:Can someone add me to the trusted list (Username is Saka)
Done. Sorry for the delay (and sorry that needing to be "trusted" is still even a thing).

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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by muzik » December 15th, 2016, 4:19 am

viewforum.php?f=7

ARE YOU joking ME





I think forum accounts might need to be trusted as well if this happens again
Last edited by muzik on January 14th, 2019, 11:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Saka
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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by Saka » December 15th, 2016, 5:13 am

muzik wrote:viewforum.php?f=7

ARE YOU SH*TTING ME

I think forum accounts might need to be trusted as well if this happens again
How would that work? Maybe if their first post has been reported they get banned?

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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by muzik » December 15th, 2016, 7:26 am

Saka wrote:
muzik wrote:viewforum.php?f=7

ARE YOU SH*TTING ME

I think forum accounts might need to be trusted as well if this happens again
How would that work? Maybe if their first post has been reported they get banned?
He posted way too fast

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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by Naszvadi » December 15th, 2016, 9:21 am

Another bot found in the forums: http://conwaylife.com/forums/memberlist ... ile&u=1714

it should be removed && kickban(time=infty)

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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by praosylen » December 21st, 2016, 5:24 pm

May I please be added to the "trusted" list?
former username: A for Awesome
praosylen#5847 (Discord)

The only decision I made was made
of flowers, to jump universes to one of springtime in
a land of former winter, where no invisible walls stood,
or could stand for more than a few hours at most...

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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by Naszvadi » January 2nd, 2017, 9:34 am

Spam in 3rd party content (external image links):

http://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic. ... 417#p12732

Please delete the broken links, they became commercials!

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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by Apple Bottom » January 9th, 2017, 10:27 am

Nathaniel, could you be so kind and add User:Apple Bot to the "trusted" and "bot" usergroups (see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Bots for more info on the latter? This account may be used to semi-automatically update glider synthesis data, as per my and dvgrn's ongoing discussion.
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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by Nathaniel » January 12th, 2017, 2:20 pm

Apple Bottom wrote:Nathaniel, could you be so kind and add User:Apple Bot to the "trusted" and "bot" usergroups (see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Bots for more info on the latter? This account may be used to semi-automatically update glider synthesis data, as per my and dvgrn's ongoing discussion.
Done, sorry for the delay.

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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by Mr. Missed Her » February 21st, 2017, 12:48 pm

I have a wiki account under the same name as my forums account, Mr. Missed Her. May it be set to trusted?

Edit: Here's changes to the OTCA metapixel article that I'm not able to make at the moment.

Code: Select all

{{UnitCell
|name         = OTCA metapixel
|pname        = otcametapixel
|c            = 64691
|bx           = 2058
|by           = 2058
|sx           = 2048
|sy           = 2048
|p            = 35328
|discoverer   = Brice Due
|discoveryear = 2006
|rle          = true
}}
The '''OTCA metapixel''' is a 2048 × 2048 [[period]] 35328 [[unit cell]] that was constructed by [[Brice Due]] between the autumn of [[:Category:Patterns found in 2005|2005]] and the spring of [[:Category:Patterns found in 2006|2006]]. It has many advantages over the previous-known unit cells such as the [[p5760 unit Life cell]] and [[deep cell]], including the ability to emulate ''any'' [[Life-like cellular automaton]] and the fact that, when zoomed out, the ON and OFF [[cell]]s are easy to distinguish (the ON version of the cell is shown to the right and the OFF version of the cell is shown below). 

It is designed to run quickly under the [[Hashlife]] algorithm, and thus [[Golly]] is generally used to view and/or manipulate meta-patterns made up of OTCA metapixels (and some such patterns even come packaged with Golly).

To tile these unit cells to emulate other patterns, place them so that the cornermost [[block]]s overlap; the unit cells will physically overlap by 5 [[cell]]s in every direction. The overlap will place [[tub]]s inside cross-corner neighbours.

==Details==

The metacell uses a period 184 [[tractor beam]], which acts as a clock. It pulls a block downwards by eight cells per impact, releasing a glider in the process. Some of the gliders are utilised; the rest are eaten. A new block is created from the third impact to be used when the timer restarts. Period 46 and 184 technologies (which are compatible) are used extensively throughout the configuration.

The rule is encoded in two columns, each of nine eaters, where one column corresponds to the 'Birth' rule and the other corresponds to 'Survival'. The nine eaters correspond to the nine different quantities of on cells (0 through 8). The presence or absence of the eater indicates whether the cell should be on in the next meta-generation. The state of the eater is read by the collision of two antiparallel LWSSes, which radiates two antiparallel gliders (not unlike an electron-positron reaction in a PET scanner). These gliders then collide into beehives, which are restored by a passing LWSS in Brice's elegant [[honeybit]] reaction. If the eater is present, the beehive would remain in its original state, thereby allowing the LWSS to pass unaffected; if the eater is absent, the beehive would be restored, consuming the LWSS in the process. Equivalently, the state of the eater is mapped onto the state of the LWSS.

‘On’ metacells send a MWSS counterclockwise around the cell, which reacts with twin bees to send gliders to a neighboring cell’s beehive in a honeybit reaction. A 9-LWSS stream then goes around the cell, losing a LWSS for each adjacent ‘on’ cell that triggered a honeybit reaction. The number of missing LWSSes is counted by detecting the position of the front LWSS by crashing another LWSS into it from the opposite direction. This collision releases gliders, which triggers another one or two honeybit reactions if the eaters that indicate that birth/survival condition are absent.

When the display is 'on', two perpendicular waves of [[lightweight spaceship|LWSSes]] collide, mutually annihilating each other. These streams of LWSSes are generated from an [[out of the blue]] reaction, triggered by passing [[heavyweight spaceship|HWSSes]].

==Image gallery==
{|
|-
|[[Image:otcametapixel_off.png|thumb|left|The OFF version of the OTCA metapixel.<br />{{JavaRLE|otcametapixeloff}}]]
|[[Image:otcametapixel_galaxy.png|thumb|left|The OTCA metapixel being used to simulate [[Kok's galaxy]]]]
|}

==Videos==
{|
|-
|{{#ev:youtube|-ogwfn3sqwI|300|left|The metapixel by itself turning from ON to OFF in 35,328 generations}}
|{{#ev:youtube|hsXCKPt8u3I|300|left|The OTCA metapixel being used to emulate Kok's galaxy}}
|}

==External links==
*[http://b3s23life.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_archive.html Brice Due's Game-of-Life Metapixel] -- blog post by [[Dave Greene]]
*[http://otcametapixel.blogspot.com OTCAmetapixel] -- official website of the pattern


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And, for that matter, the Moon, Jupiter, Titan, and 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by eeveeta » March 15th, 2017, 4:37 pm

May I be added as a trusted user? Account is eeveeta

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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by Nathaniel » March 16th, 2017, 8:11 am

Mr. Missed Her wrote:I have a wiki account under the same name as my forums account, Mr. Missed Her. May it be set to trusted?
Trusted now -- sorry for the delay.
eeveeta wrote:May I be added as a trusted user? Account is eeveeta
And you're now trusted too.

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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by Bill Gosper » March 18th, 2017, 5:22 am

Trust me to tweak the r pentomino LifeWiki? --rwg

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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by Nathaniel » March 18th, 2017, 8:54 am

Bill Gosper wrote:Trust me to tweak the r pentomino LifeWiki? --rwg
Of course! Create a LifeWiki account here and then I can mark it as trusted.

(I apologize if you already have a LifeWiki account, but I could not find it.)

Edit: And now that your account has been created, I've "trusted" it. Welcome to the site!

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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by Badmonkey717 » March 28th, 2017, 9:12 pm

Hello!
I would like to join the lifewiki (the one that concerns cellular automata.)
This isn't particularly important for me joining, but I have discovered an infinite pattern that moves at the maximum speed of information, if you find that interesting. However, I believe that keeping it to myself does nothing; discoveries are only important if they are shared with others, not lost when I eventually cease to exist because "I didn't spread the word."

Please excuse this message if I accidentally replied to you, and not posted to the subject. Thank you!

P. S., Did I mention I would like to join the LifeWiki?

Badmonkey717
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Re: Massive spam attacks on the wiki (and forums?)

Post by Badmonkey717 » March 28th, 2017, 9:13 pm

Badmonkey717 wrote:Hello!
I would like to join the lifewiki (the one that concerns cellular automata.)
This isn't particularly important for me joining, but I have discovered an infinite pattern that moves at the maximum speed of information, if you find that interesting. However, I believe that keeping it to myself does nothing; discoveries are only important if they are shared with others, not lost when I eventually cease to exist because "I didn't spread the word."

Please excuse this message if I accidentally replied to you, and not posted to the subject. Thank you!

P. S., Did I mention I would like to join the LifeWiki?
I'm sorry about creating an account for the express purpose of joining. Please lemme in...?

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