There are many things which any normal user of a wiki can do to fight WikiSpam.
Reverting Spam
You can manually fix vandalism as soon as it happens. Wikis allow you to overwrite the current spammed version of a page with an older version (or a least any serious wiki software allows this). This is how wiki '
soft security' works. The name of links may vary, but in essence the steps are as follows:
- Click "View other revisions" or "Page History"
- Click on the link of the revision you want to recover. This will take you to a page with the text of the old revision.
- Click "Edit revision ## of this page" or "Edit this Page"
- Add a summary, such as "revert spam" and click the 'Save' button. (It's best not to tick this as a 'minor edit')
Other anti-spam notes for wiki users
When you revert a change in a wiki, the previous spammed version of the page is still available under the "View other revisions"/"Page History" link. As a user, there is nothing you can do about this. It has to be this way, because otherwise vandals could do malicious reverting of changes. Provided that the wiki uses 'noindex nofollow' meta tags on old revisions (administrators need to set this up manually if it is not provided by the wiki engine), the old revisions should not be seen by search engines bots, which means the spammer won't gain Google rank after you remove their spam.
If you are in the business of watching out for spam, you should set 'Show minor edits' in your 'Preferences' (option names vary with different wiki software). Some spammers will attempt to hide their spam this way (though only a few are smart enough to do this). It would be nice if spam and spam reverting edits could disappear as minor edits from 'RecentChanges' page, however it should be noted that ticking your revert as a 'minor edit' does not have this effect, it just hides the fact that you have reverted the spam (better not to).
Other action which any user can take:
Create pages to explain the problem
Create a page called [[WikiSpam]] or [[Wiki Spam]] to explain the problem, and report incidents of spamming.
Create a page called [[LinkingPolicy]] or [[Linking Policy]] to clarify what kind of linking is encouraged/discouraged on your wiki, and what constitutes Spam.
Steal spammer's rankings with chongqed.org links
Here at chongqed.org we are fighting wiki spam by building a database of spammers and also their favourite spamming keywords. We ask the wiki community to link to this database with keywords which the spammer was trying to gain google rank on. This is an easy way for everyone to fight back against this menace. Place the links somewhere on your wiki, where it is tidy to do so (e.g. on a spam reporting page) see
our linking guidelines. If you perfer not to use those keywords (we wouldn't blame you), just link to the main page of our site(s).
Write abuse complaints
Write to the providers and hosters of the spammers. Use
whois on the spammer IP to find out his ISP and his web hoster. Then write a friendly letter to them describing what the spammer did to your wiki. Be friendly! An abusive rude complaint is not going to help. Also make sure that you really write to the provider or hoster, and not to the spammer. You could try directly
ContactingSpammersByEmail, though we have not had much luck with this approach.
Remote anti-spam bots
Advanced users might run an
AntiSpamBot to remotely clean up spam on a wiki. However you should take care with this 'machine-gun' approach.
Ask your wiki administrator to take action
Wikis are designed to give users the power to protect good information, but with regular spam attacks, and if there is only one or two real users, this can be too much of a burden.
As a wiki user, you may need to ask the administrator of a wiki to take some action against the spam problem. Refer them to our AntiSpamRecommendations page, and ask them if they are making use of those anti-spam ideas. These are spam solutions which the server administrator will need to install on the server.
Contact the administrator by leaving a message on the wiki, or if that doesn't work, email them. Make it clear that spam is indeed a problem on the wiki, since this may not be immediately aparent (if you have been spending a lot of time reverting spam edits).
If the admin can't be bothered to take any protective or cleanup actions, continuous spam attacks drive people away and the wiki will often become a GhostTown where spammers are the only ones left. We have some last resort suggestion for these cases too.