MediaWiki talk:Community Portal/Vandalism

Our new resident vandal.....

Well, it seems that we might have a new resident vandal on our hands.

I suggest we block this guy, ban his IP if he continues, play whack-a-mole with his IPs if he's on a dynamic-IP, and if all else fails, temporarily block all account creation. ---Blackout- 14:53, 24 August 2009 (EDT)

He is likely still Assaulthead.--Rosicrucian^Talk 14:55, 24 August 2009 (EDT)

Yeah, he does have Assaulthead's rabid obsession with reproduction, although this time he no longer appears to be repressing homosexual urges. I swear he'd be a perv if I thought he was old enough to understand half of this.
Still, this is starting to get out of hand. Our policy of "deny recognition" is starting to become "ignoring a problem". There was talk about contacting AT&T or something along those lines to prevent him accessing our site anymore. What happened with that? -- SFH 14:59, 24 August 2009 (EDT)

We need McFly and Scout to pull out the logs, except we haven't heard from either of them in a long while. --Lonegamer78 15:05, 24 August 2009 (EDT)

Well, he has to run out of proxy servers sometime.....

At least, we can limit his choice of user and article names via the title blacklist. ---Blackout- 15:19, 24 August 2009 (EDT)

*takes another quick look at the RC* I really need to create the remaining SG pages tomorrow. That way, he'll stop messing around with them. ---Blackout- 15:24, 24 August 2009 (EDT)

I have to admit I keep putting off making the Ark and Nemesis articles because of all the fiction-writeups they'll need... *needs to stop procrastinating and get back into things* --Jeysie 20:10, 24 August 2009 (EDT)

Er, on that score, regular backup are still being done, right? Anyone? --abates 20:46, 24 August 2009 (EDT)

Look who's back.

And guess what: he's decided to confirm our suspicions and reveal that he's Assaulthead. The title of one of the articles he made is a giveaway.

But seriously, can't we just get this guy off our backs for a while by blocking him, putting his user and article names on the title blacklist and temporarily disabling account creation? At least it'll buy us some time while we try and wake up McFly and Scout. ---Blackout- 12:26, 25 August 2009 (EDT)

PLEASE, SOMEONE KILL THIS GUY ALREADY.

THANK YOU. ---Blackout- 12:17, 26 August 2009 (EDT)

Alright, I need to get this off my chest.

This guy is seriously disturbed. ---Blackout- 14:33, 28 August 2009 (EDT)

We have logs going back two weeks. Anyone want an 80MB gzipped apache log? Any tracking that I've done in the past showed that he was coming from multiple IPs as he's blocked, so the sad fact is, he's NOT running out of proxies. I'd almost propose that we start looking into blocking edits from proxied users. I understand the negative implications, but this isn't exactly a hotbed of political commentary. All that said, the records I have for edits made to articles that were obviously kicked off by him have IPs coming from blocks owned by Bank of America, Best Buy, Level 3 Communications, Verizon, Bell Canada, BellSouth, and AT&T. Some of those might be editors cleaning up the mess from home, some of them might be people catching the issue from work, I don't know. We *could* attempt a banhammer of epic proportions, but I suspect that we're going to take out a lot of innocent bystanders. --McFly 11:08, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

As many have suggested, repeatedly, have we considered title/username blacklist? If only to keep the recent changes page a bit less... obscene?--Rosicrucian^Talk 11:28, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

This. Takes away all his fun. As for blocking proxies.... how common are legitimate anons using proxies? We need to have a grasp on that before we take that step. -- Repowers 11:37, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

Just brainstorming ... I don't think my ideas are a good solution exactly, but maybe they'll spark something.

• 1: A waiting period for new accounts - a big turn-off for new users.
• 2: A way to flag certain keywords so that users employing them have their edits shunted into some sort of moderator-approval required place. Pornography, vagina, asshole, etc ... I suspect he'll have less fun if he can't use his naughty words. (Feasibility?)
• 3: A credit-card required for new accounts. Violations result in a fine. (Only kept for, say, a week. Has serious data-security and storage implications and opens us up to potential liability. Also a big turn off)
• 4: Some combination of 1 and 3, with a credit-card as a bypass for the waiting period.
• 5: Some combination of the above and proxy-detection.

--Jimsorenson 11:28, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

I think the credit card ideas (3 and 4) are an absolute-no-no. Restricting account creation would only be worth doing if anonymous editing was disabled, which there's been heavy reluctance to do in the past. Otherwise flagging keywords = yes; restricting page creation to autoconfirmed users = yes; proxy blocking = maybe, if other measures fail. - SanityOrMadness 16:33, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

flag certain keywords

That sounds like the simplest solution, to my admittedly layman ears. Make it impossible to create an account or a new page that includes "Detour" or any of the usual dirty words. --Thylacine 2000 12:05, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

As stated above, if the title/username blacklist extension is installed, which is a very common one for MediaWiki, we can do exactly that. It has full wildcard functionality. I know some users have argued that the obscene titles and usernames are what make Assaulthead easy to spot, but I tend to disagree. The sheer volume of edits when an Assaulthead sock pops in make him easy to spot regardless of what username he's chosen or what his article titles are.--Rosicrucian^Talk 12:47, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

2 and 5 seem to be good. The credit-card idea seems to be not ideal, since the card number could be fake or using other's card. --TX55^TALK 12:51, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

We want TFWiki to respect privacy and be free!

If you use a credit-card for authentication, might this be bad as we want anyone from any background editing TFWiki.net. TFWiki could discrimanate certain groups of people with this messaure, such as people who don't have credit cards. Why not use CheckUser like Wikipedia does to find sockpuppets? With TFWiki rules and Wikipedia ideas, you can block User:Assaulthead and his/her socks. ArchtransitLightspeed333 13:33, 3 December 2010 (EST)

Hmmm ... what about we slow down new page creation and/or edits for new users only? Once every couple of minutes for your first week might be good. (Suggestion 6) --Jimsorenson 13:09, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

Install the title/username blacklist extension, and flag certain keywords.

If all else fails, nuke all proxies. ---Blackout- 14:10, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

Yeah, and I'd also support restricting page creation and file upload to the "autoconfirmed" group (that is, users who have been registered for X days and made Y edits), the same way page moves are already restricted. - SanityOrMadness 16:33, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

That's a good idea. It's VERY rare that a first-time editor starts off by making a new page that actually belongs here. -- Repowers 16:52, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

I agree wholeheartedly with restricting page creation for new users. Also, there's very words that we'd want to ban that would be in legit article titles (a new character named Detour, maybe), so a mod could create those pages if needed. But I honestly thought such restrictions would be impossible, otherwise they'd have been put in effect ages ago. - Cattleprod 13:19, 3 September 2009 (EDT)

My own thoughts:

I agree that having creating new pages and uploading files be restricted to autoconfirmed accounts is a good idea. New editors should really be encouraged to make smaller edits and read up on