On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 10:45:21 -0000, Frank Shearar  
<Frank.Shearar at rnid.org.uk> wrote:
> These bot-driven defacements are EASY to fix(*).

If they're really bot-driven, they're even easier to prevent, I think. Add  
a gif-with-numbers (should be easy enough to create a Squeak snippet to  
generate that) for human-presence confirmation on edits, and add  
'rel="nofollow"' to all the links and prominently display that fact on the  
edit page (actually, I have mixed feelings about that latter bit as well).

> Don't lock down the Swiki just for these. Yes, it's annoying. It's like  
> someone throwing garbage on your lawn just after you've cleaned it. But  
> I don't think that the price is worth what little we get from it.
>
Would you feel a Terminus-based solution, where only Apprentice+ people on  
SqP could add links, to be too high a price? Not that I'm in any position  
to add Terminus to minnow, just feeling around for the general sentiment  
on this.

> Having said that, MediaWiki have a very nifty feature where admins can  
> ban IPs or even IP ranges for limited periods of time. (I don't know  
> what the upper limit is: the field is a text field, so presumably you  
> could even specify "10 years".)
>
Problem is, most of these seem to come from dynamic IP address ranges (I  
have a lot of trouble with bots on www.cdegroot.com wiki's, so I'm a bit  
experienced, alas). So by the time you discover this and add the IP these  
guys probably already are working from another one.