Huge amount of spam at Avisynth wiki

[AlanHK]

There is a huge amount of spam at the Avisynth wiki.

See http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Special:RecentChanges
Many new pages of obvious spam.


I blanked and renamed some articles but I can't delete them.

Is there an admin at the wiki here who can clean this up?

[Wilbert]

The only one who can do that is Richard, but he doesn't respond to my requests. The only option is the move the site to a different host.

[jmac698]

Aha, which was my point previously. I started a new wiki already and copied most of the old wiki over, and I'm willing to give out control to several members. No one believed there was any point at the time, so :P

It was at http://avisynthnew.wikinet.org/
unfortunately they shut down :( So, it turns out you were right about finding a stable host. But, these things will always happen at some point, so we just have to make a good guess at a stable host.

It is possible to do a data dump of the wiki, I've done this. I'd like to import it to a newer version of the wiki with the syntax coloring plugin.

[AlanHK]

The only one who can do that is Richard, but he doesn't respond to my requests.

All that would have to be done is to prevent anonymous edits and require new editors to be confirmed by an admin -- the number of legitimate editors is probably a few dozen at most. Previously there were only a few edits a week. Now there are few dozen a day, 99% spam.


The only option is the move the site to a different host.

If you can't get admin access to fix the existing wiki, yes, please move it ASAP, before these bastards start corrupting important pages.

[Wilbert]

It was at http://avisynthnew.wikinet.org/
unfortunately they shut down
Yes, if there are no edits within some time they shut down without notice. Also I think they were spamming that wiki too at some point. So they are not suitable as as table host imo.

If you can't get admin access to fix the existing wiki, yes, please move it ASAP, before these bastards start corrupting important pages.
Moving and maintaing for a long period yes. So we have to find a suitable host. Anyone with suggestions?

before these bastards start corrupting important pages.
I always keep on eye this. There are no good pages corrupted afaik.

[jmac698]

No, all of wikinet.org is gone. And there was spamming because I left the permissions open and didn't maintain it. I'd found a few other places in my research, but you should know we are looking for a place with the same software.

[AlanHK]

The Battlestar Wiki seems to run reliably.
http://en.battlestarwiki.org/
hosted at http://www.pair.com/

[pbristow]

I'd found a few other places in my research, but you should know we are looking for a place with the same software.

The name of which is...? (I'm, guessing at "MediaWIki", given the "powered by MediaWiki" logo on teh front page.)

If someone could put together a brief spec of what we need from our host and post it (or link to it) here, I'll put the word out asking for recommendations / reviews of hosts.

[TheFluff]

The name of which is...? (I'm, guessing at "MediaWIki", given the "powered by MediaWiki" logo on teh front page.)

If someone could put together a brief spec of what we need from our host and post it (or link to it) here, I'll put the word out asking for recommendations / reviews of hosts.

To whom are you referring when you say "we" and "our"?

Hosting a MediaWiki is absolutely trivial and can be done on the cheapest shitty php5/mysql shared hosting you could possibly find. Shell access is a convenient bonus but not strictly necessary. Installing the software is trivial, so it's just a matter of someone shelling out the cash for the hosting and actually doing the work. I really don't know what you think you're going to accomplish by creating an unofficial wiki though. If you just want somewhere to "store" the documentation, you can just use a free Wikia or something.

[pbristow]

To whom are you referring when you say "we" and "our"?


Ummm... Us? :) I mean the Avisynth community; The people who benefit from the continued existence and availability and non-spamminess of the Avsynth Wiki.


Hosting a MediaWiki is absolutely trivial and can be done on the cheapest shitty php5/mysql shared hosting you could possibly find. Shell access is a convenient bonus but not strictly necessary. Installing the software is trivial, so it's just a matter of someone shelling out the cash for the hosting and actually doing the work. I really don't know what you think you're going to accomplish by creating an unofficial wiki though. If you just want somewhere to "store" the documentation, you can just use a free Wikia or something.

Who said anything about "unofficial"? I thought the idea was to create a backup for the official wiki.

Have I just stepped in something political? :(

[TheFluff]

Who said anything about "unofficial"? I thought the idea was to create a backup for the official wiki.

If you want to back the official wiki up, go ahead and do it (in the slow and annoying way, since you can't access the official wiki's export functionality or database). Nobody's stopping you, you don't need to ask for permission nor appoint a committee.

Replacing or fixing the hosting of the official wiki though is not a matter for "the community", it's the responsibility of the owners of the Avisynth project. If they don't want to or cannot do it, well, then there's not much anyone else can do about it. I don't know if it's even possible to access the domain avisynth.org without Richard Berg anyway.

[pbristow]

The Fluff: Nothing you've said contradicts anything I've said. I was *offering to help* in way that I thought I could be useful. No more, no less.

[jmac698]

Export does work, and I've done it. While the original wiki will stay out of our control, we can simply advertise the new wiki, or I can arrange a script to make a mirror, but the spam would be removed at the mirror.

I've also run the wiki software locally, it's much easier to edit pages that way.

So again, I will set this up, but I can't reliably maintain it. Is anyone who has previously maintained it willing to delete spam at the new location? Would you rather the original is mirrored, or we just advertise to all to use the mirror instead, effectively bypassing it? You could theoretically place redirects in all the existing pages and effectively bypass it.

It's called a fork; a community can and has taken over dead projects.

[AlanHK]

Well, six months on and thousands more spam pages have been added to the wiki.

I noticed a dead link to a dll on one of the real pages, http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/LoadOldPlugins but when I tried to upload the dll, I get the inane message
".dll" is not a permitted file type. Permitted file types are gif, png, jpg, jpeg, avs, avsi, dll.

So, this wonderful resource that many of us contributed to is now moribund, and 90% crap.

Is anyone who has previously maintained it willing to delete spam at the new location?
If you can set it up, I think requiring editors to be approved by an admin would stop the spam.
And rather than having to wade through dozens of spammers' applications, create a thread here for people to request membership, and ignore the rest, I doubt any real contributors would not be a Doom9 member already. I adminned a forum a while ago that had dozens of spammers applying to join every day, with none else giving a shit I just gave up after a while and let it die.

[Bloax]

Oh dear, this still hasn't been fixed all this time?
Well, I guess I don't really have much else to contribute:

:(
rip avisynth wiki you were gud friend

[AlanHK]

The only one who can do that is Richard, but he doesn't respond to my requests. The only option is the move the site to a different host.
What is his problem?
Why not hand it over to someone who will keep it alive?

I clicked "random page" 25 times.
17 of the pages, 68%, were spam.

[Forensic]

My qualifications are my doom9 discussion contributions and a strong desire to help the community, especially with regards to Virtualdub, Avisynth and those using these tools for media forensics.

[AlanHK]

My qualifications are my doom9 discussion contributions and a strong desire to help the community, especially with regards to Virtualdub, Avisynth and those using these tools for media forensics.

The problem isn't lack of editors. It's that anyone can sign up and edit the wiki. Including thousands of spammers.

What is needed to fix this is to delete pages and users and tighten up registration, action only a wiki admin can take. But apparently the only admin is AWOL, so it seems the only alternative is to clone the wiki to another host and URL with an active group of admins enabled (not just one) and abandon avisynth.org to the spammers.

That's beyond my experience, though I have edited wikis for several years I've never set one up.

[kurish]

avisynth.doom9.org would make a good replacement, IMO. It would certainly be great to have a decently maintained wiki. Cheers to those volunteering, and thanks to those who have done work there in the past. Maybe somebody will feel like hitting up Doom9 with the idea to host here...

[Wilbert]

I have a few days of, so i will see what i can do. Any tips on starting a new wiki (and moving the old contents) are welcome.

[AlanHK]

Now the wiki is 75% spam. Dozens of new spam pages added every day.

[Wilbert]

@AlanHK,

We moved to avisynth.nl: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=168012.

[AlanHK]

@AlanHK,

We moved to avisynth.nl: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=168012.


Excellent.

[raffriff42]

It's a shame that Google is still pointing to the old site - and so are probably thousands of blog posts etc.

Can't you do a 301 redirect (moved permanently) (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93633?hl=en) or something? (for help, consult the DNS / hosting provider for the old site)

[pbristow]

One thing that would help a bit is to boost the Google ranking of the new site by creating more links to it. I would suggest that all of us who keep a personal blog or Facebook account or whatever (especially if we haven't blocked robots and indexers from seeing it) should make a public post announcing the move, with a link to the new site, (an definitely no links to the old one). Not only would it boost the number of links Google sees, it will also raise awareness amongst any of our friends/readers who are intersted in this video stuff.

I'll do that on mine right now... :)

[AlanHK]

I updated all the links in the Wikipedia Avisynth article.
Wikipedia has a high Google rank so that should elevate the new site.

While the main page of the old site has a notice, all the old articles are still there. That's why I was unaware of the new site and made my post here, weeks after the new site had opened.

[raffriff42]

People really have to work to go to avisynth.nl, unless they start from the main page.
Try doing a typical search like avisynth avisource (https://www.google.com/search?q=avisynth+avisource) - avisynth.nl isn't on the first page.
Or try searching for avisynth.nl (https://www.google.com/search?q=avisynth.nl) - you get "Did you mean avisynth.org?" :rolleyes:

As mentioned above, it's preferable to do a 301 redirect, but this requires administrative control of avisynth.org. Do you at least have administrative control of the wiki? If so, I would suggest inquiring on a Wiki admin support forum (http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Board:Support_Requests_-_Getting_Technical) about deleting all spam pages,
changing all remaining pages to a redirect page (http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Redirects) pointing to the equivalent avisynth.nl page*, and finally
locking the site.Most likely there are scripts ('bots' in wiki-speak) already in existence to do these tasks.

* You will have to redirect the old URLs of the form:
http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/AVISource
to:
http://avisynth.nl/index.php/AviSource

[Wilbert]

As mentioned above, it's preferable to do a 301 redirect, but this requires administrative control of avisynth.org.
Tada. If I had control of avisynth.org i didn't need to register avisynth.nl in the first place. I tried to contact the administrator a while ago about it and he actually responded willingly to cooperate. But when asking for the token of avisynth.org, he didn't respond. (I sent him a reminder again a moment ago ...)

Do you at least have administrative control of the wiki?
Yes i do. I don't think i can lock the site within the wiki though ... You need ftp access to the setting file, which i don't have.

[AlanHK]

People really have to work to go to avisynth.nl, unless they start from the main page.
Try doing a typical search like avisynth avisource (https://www.google.com/search?q=avisynth+avisource) - avisynth.nl isn't on the first page.
Or try searching for avisynth.nl (https://www.google.com/search?q=avisynth.nl) - you get "Did you mean avisynth.org?" :rolleyes:


It's because all the old pages and info are still there, they already have established links and page rank, so Google will keep sending you there.

Would be better to erase them all and next time Google recrawls the site it will remove them from its index.

Just put the same message as on the index page:
"We have moved to a new host - avisynth.nl due to the enormous amount of spam here!!!"
on every (original) page.


If it were possible to do the other things, we could have rescued the site rather than abandon it.

[Gavino]

Would be better to erase them all and next time Google recrawls the site it will remove them from its index.

Just put the same message as on the index page:
"We have moved to a new host - avisynth.nl due to the enormous amount of spam here!!!"
on every (original) page.
I would prefer not to erase the old pages as their history (which was lost in the transfer - see here (http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=1632451&postcount=4) and here (http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=1634026&postcount=7)) is a valuable resource (though probably of minority interest :)).

However, a redirection message on (the final version of) each page would be fine.

[AlanHK]

I would prefer not to erase the old pages as their history (which was lost in the transfer - see here (http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=1632451&postcount=4) and here (http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=1634026&postcount=7)) is a valuable resource (though probably of minority interest :)).

However, a redirection message on (the final version of) each page would be fine.

Erase, not delete. An erased wiki page's history is still accessible.

[Gavino]

^
Great. Thanks, Alan.