We have created a private area of this wiki, which is not accessible to most website visitors. This is a Meatball:GatedCommunity for trusted spam fighters and wiki developers. Any page name beginning with 'Private' is part of the private area. e.g. PrivateForum.
In general we want to keep our discussion out in the open, to make this useful spam fighting information available to the users and adminstrators who need it. Not to mention all the open philosophies we know so well. Of course many anti-spam discussions could potentially benefit spammers, allowing them to develop work-arounds, but in general the benefits of openness outweigh the risks.
However there is some information which we spam fighters would like to share, which is just too sensitive. It would be foolish to publish this information publicly:
This forum is invitation only. You may ask to join but your request may be denied. We have to confirm you are an active spam fighter or wiki engine developer. You should be active and visible on this or other major wikis. We do this to ensure no spammer becomes a member.
A list of the users currently equipped with an editor password can be found on the EditorUsers page.
(Original discussion moved from GhostTown 2005-03-31.)
I'll have to check whether a gated community system could be done with Oddmuse. But it seems possible to hide pages from users that aren't editors (or at least have a username). – Manni - 2005-03-30 19:01
I think it would have to be a page hidden from everyone lower than editors. Some spammers do login, if they realized this was a good source to find GhostTowns they would use it. It might be nice to have an area where only trusted users are allowed. But I don't like the idea of sharing one password between all editors. I have no problem trusting our regular posters, but the idea of a single password still bothers me.
If this can't be done with OddMuse, what do you think about a totally seperate wiki. If we aren't in a hurry for this, DokuWiki is getting a lot better. Its a very different style wiki some of the syntax is different, but not that different. Looking at their change log for the next version in addition to what I got from emailing Andi, it looks like the next version will be a very big improvement. One of the things I really like about it is real logins with setable permissions. So when a user named Joe makes an edit you know its me. The current version does not have an interface for that, but the next one will. There are still some things that I am not totally happy with, such as their handling of CamelText? and lower case page names and user names, but those can be lived with.
– Joe - 2005-03-31 01:43 UTC
Joe, OddMuse supports multiple editor passwords, so there is no reason why you couldn't hand out a unique editor password to each trusted user. To set up multiple editor passwords, just separate each password with a space in $EditPass?, ie. 'pwd1 pwd2 pwd3'. On a related note, if you are considering using another wiki you might consider MoinMoin: it supports access control lists with page level granularity and user/group permissions, as well as the ability to restrict both editing and/or viewing.
I too would be interested in a semi-private forum. For instance, related to an issue Halz mentioned as an aside, I originally intended to make the code to my anti-spam bot WikiMinion generally available. However, a prominent wiki administrator offered a convincing argument in a private conversation that general release of well-written wiki bot code could aid the cause of spammers more than that of anti-spammers. While I was initially skeptical, I was willing to put the planned release of my code on hold. I used to feel that the spammers certainly could write a bot as easily as I could, so I didn't think the release of my code would advance the state of the art in wiki spamming tools. However, as time has passed my opinion of the coding ability of spammers has dropped - as my experience with the activities of spammers has increased I've it has become quite apparent that the vast majority of spam bot software is of astonishingly poor quality. Now I find myself in agreement with the aforementioned wiki admin, a general release of the WikiMinion code would would risk advancing the state of the art in wiki spamming tools.
– RichardP - 2005-03-31 04:46 UTC
I have never actually used MoinMoin other than to leave a few comments or clean spam here and there, but it is written in Python so I have always liked it. If its possible to setup multiple passwords and a private section of the wiki with OddMuse then it would be simplest to just stick with that.
MoinMoin is a really popular and established wiki engine. It might be nice to play with a newer wiki engine still in the growing stages. I have it installed on my local machine, but I don't find reasons to use it often enough.
– Joe - 2005-03-31 06:17 UTC
What's the verdict then? I see you've set something up. Working OK? I guess MoinMoin and some of the other wiki engines are more sophisticated with thier permissions, but sticking with the same engine will be a lot easier. From what I understand there's a couple of minor limitations:
These could be problematic if in the future lots more people are to have access, but at the moment it's fine yeah? Shall I drop you an email to set my password? or is this still in tentative experimental phase? – Halz - 2005-03-31 18:14 UTC
OddMuse has an editor level and administrator level user. Editors can view private pages and edit locked pages. Admins can do a bit more. The password thing isn't great with Oddmuse, but maybe that will be improved in the future. For now Manni will have to manage setting and changing your password. I don't think having the private changes show up on the RecentChanges page is that bad. We aren't making existance of the private area secret, just the contents. All you need to do is email Manni. We are ready for creating editors now. – Joe - 2005-03-31 19:26 UTC