Swiki Repair (was RE: Swiki locked)

Peter Crowther peter.crowther at networkinference.com
Wed Jul 17 10:40:20 UTC 2002


Whilst I hate to say 'I told you so'... see appended message from March :-(.

I think the quick hack would be to password-protect all the pages on that
Swiki and to mail the password to the current members of the list (*not* to
the list as the list is archived, and not with the reply-to set to the
list).  This would provide a certain amount of discouragement to the
graffiti artists whilst we work out what to do next.

It's funny - I'm in Manchester, England, and all the graffiti around the
town that has accumulated over the last 40 years is being washed off to
present an inaccurate picture of the city to the Commonwealth Games
visitors.  Evidently the Law of Conservation of Graffiti applies...

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Crowther 
Sent: 12 March 2002 12:39
To: 'squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org'
Subject: RE: Porno links in the Swiki


> From: Alan Kay [mailto:Alan.Kay at squeakland.org] 
> If these swiki pages are editable, then why not just edit them out?

The long-term success of that depends on the tenacity of the authors, and
whether they revisit and just edit them back in again --- the perennial
problem with content that is editable by anybody.

Actually, I'm very surprised that the Swiki pages have not previously been
defaced.  Now that the Swiki has been found, I would expect to see an
increasing number of attacks once this particular person tells his [I
assume] mates about it and the information spreads.  Whilst I'm well aware
that it *may* be an isolated case, we may wish to plan how to 'harden' a
Swiki against this kind of attack.  Not easy, as the usual trade-off between
freedom and security raises its head almost immediately.

		- Peter



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