FlexWiki

ASP based wiki software requiring Microsoft IIS webserver and .NET framework. More info can be found at c2.

Homepage: http://flexwiki.com
Project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/flexwiki/

Anti-spam recommendations for flex-wiki administrators

Some basic information: http://www.flexwiki.com/default.aspx/FlexWiki/WikiSpam.html

Check that you have a recent version of the flexwiki software, which includes the hyperlink blacklist feature. Use this to perform ContentBanning. Keep your blacklist up to date.

You will need to decide if you want to switch on nofollow for all links, or not. It is available in recent versions and switched on by default, but it is optional. You may decide you want to allow legitimate links from your wiki to boost page rank, however you then need to ensure that all links are legitimate.

See also the general AntiSpamRecommendations.

Problems for users despamming flexwikis

Aside from specific anti-spam features, there seem to be several problems with this software, which the flexwiki developers should address.

• Flexwiki doesn't have EditSummaries, which makes despamming flex wikis extremely difficult.
• If legitimate users always set their name, it makes it a bit easier. Note that to do this you simply enter a name in the right hand side form, when editing, but you have to follow the wiki standard name format, with at least two capital letters (for the first name and last name), otherwise it ignores it and you continue to show up as an IP address (this is a bug, but maybe its gone in newer versions)
• Flexwiki is unusable when surfing with a standards compliant brower. Any anti-spam people working with flexwikis will find they have to switch to internet explorer. In Firefox, the edit form only displays correctly half the time, the submit button doesn work, the recentchanges table gets munged, etc.

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Comments / Discussion

What a perculiar project. It seems they've developed some extremely complex features such as wiki talk "a simple object-oriented language that advanced users can use to add dynamic behavior" (err what happened to keeping wiki text simple)

Despite this, they have failed to pay attention to even the most basic web design principles (no consistent navigation links/layout/colors), and cross-browser compatibility is hopeless. It also doesn't have EditSummaries, which makes despamming flex wikis extremely difficult. – Halz - 2005-04-19 21:12 UTC

I don't know much about this one. It is a Microsoft Shared Source (their version of Open Source) Wiki and uses its own odd syntax so has not interested me much. – Joe - 2005-04-19 21:19 UTC