EddyFamily Genealogy:Current events
From EddyFamily Genealogy
There seems to be lots of user registrations with zero edits as of late, and the few edits that do get through are spam.
So I will start blocking and deleting users that have not created a userpage for themselves.
To confirm your user account is not yet another human assisted spambot, YOU MUST CREATE A USERPAGE or your account will be subject to deletion. ---Jonathaneddy 00:28, 20 July 2011 (MDT)
Please forgive the lack of updates. The basic mission, which was to convert my father's old website to wiki, was complete (for the most part) a long time ago, but I have no solid plans as to how to open this site up for editing, nor do I have any solid plans as to how I would incorporate a more formal database based on GENCOM files my father helped produce. The opening up for editing part has been particularly painful. I have no desire to force every potential editor or contributor to create a login. I would much prefer to have anonymous users factor polynomials or use some other form of captcha that goes beyond word recognition. However past attempts to install a math captcha have failed, and leaving the website open to editing without a captcha, even only for registered users, resulted in this site being flooded with spam.
In fact, only one real (so far as I can tell) human user has followed my "create userpage" requirement since the creation of this wiki. For now I have been playing with select and delete SQL commands on the user table with some success. All the obvious spam gmail accounts and all accounts registered to users with email addresses @gmx.com have been removed, and there seems to be no integrity problems caused by removing users with edits, but I created a backup user table just in case. I plan to delete more zero-edit users as time goes on, but I will let some of those who registered this past month a chance to create userpages for themselves. If after some unspecified number of days they do not, their accounts will be either blocked or deleted. Jonathaneddy 19:15, 10 March 2012 (MST)
I take it that it is the wordfilters that are doing the bulk of the work here preventing spam, which is why there where so many users with zero edits, and why there where three consecutive registered users who used mailmetrash. Spammers are manually typing in the captchas (they have to in order to register), but nothing is getting saved as the wordfilters currently do not allow most URIs along with a lot of other things I will not disclose.
Now, I have nothing against using a temporary email to register for things. After all, I still have not put up a formal privacy policy (or copyright for that matter). I do not like having a prolethora of user names and passwords to keep up with, and I am sure many others feel the same. As soon as I have a decent way to allow anonymous edits, or at least use some other login, say FaceBook, and the time to do so, I will do so. However, given past experiences, I feel I have little choice but to block users who use mailmetrash. I have opted to block instead of remove, so they have a chance to appeal their case on their user discussion page just in case they have registered without any mal intent. I highly doubt it though. To the few spammers who actually read this page: this is a low traffic website. The total visit numbers since I created this wiki july of last year are at the bottom of each page. They may seem like alot, but compared to websites that advertisers actually pay to get clicks from, it is nothing. Even if us stoopid 'muhricans are as gullible as you think (protip: we are not), you will get very little clickthru from this website. It is not worth the manual labor needed to register and try and get clicks here. Jonathaneddy 12:09, 12 March 2012 (MDT)
