Esolang talk:Community Portal

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The IRC log page doesn't work in Safari at all.

I find that odd. Are you sure it isn't just timing out (the server is a bit slow)? Does it work in other browsers? Other KHTML-based browsers? Anyway, you can try the other site with raw logs. --Graue 21:54, 29 Jun 2005 (GMT)
I'm not sure what it is. It seems when I go to the log page the first time, some part of the styles fail to load or something. Sometimes the links to the individual daily logs themselves don't work. Today, though, the links worked and when I clicked back to get to the index of dates, suddenly the rest of the page style loaded and it started working fine. Maybe it is just a server problem of some kind and it coincidentally worked when I tried Firefox the last time. --BigZaphod 17:35, 30 Jun 2005 (GMT)

Contents

[edit] Link style

It's the strangest thing. When I log out and reload everything (Ctrl-Shift-R in Mozilla), none of the links have underlines. When I log back in and again reload everything, the underlines are back (except on the stuff at the top of every page). This is using the Monobook theme of course. Is this the way it is for everyone else? --Graue 15:07, 18 Sep 2005 (GMT)

This has happened to me as well, though I haven't seen any pattern to when it happens. And I use Opera, so it is not a Mozilla issue. --Rune 15:36, 18 Sep 2005 (GMT)

[edit] All the spam lately

To the best of my knowledge, the ridiculous amounts of spam here over the past day or two are fairly normal for a wiki on the public Web. The only reason we weren't getting any before was because of the extensive filtering done by my web host. They are now reconfiguring their filters or something, it seems like... hopefully the problem will go away on its own, but I will see if there's anything I can do to mitigate it in the meantime. By the way, thanks to everyone who's helping revert such pollution. --Graue 22:51, 18 Oct 2005 (GMT)

It seems the Esolang:Help page is currently being spammed systematically every two hours. Each time it's from a new IP, so it's hard to block, but hopefully they'll run out of IPs eventually. However, if they use hijacked windows boxes to spam from this might not happen...
On the wikipedia they often block certain pages from editing. I think it would be a good idea to do this with the help page now. --Rune 23:09, 18 Oct 2005 (GMT)
It seems that with my new admin privileges this is something I can do myself, so unless anyone protests I will write-protect the help page for the time being. --Rune 23:13, 18 Oct 2005 (GMT)

Does mediawiki allow blocking like 123.45.6.*? We just got spammed by someone whose IP is just one-off from a blocked spammer. BTW, I think I will write protect that page myself unless you beat me to it; anyone who wants to modify it for the time being can post on its talk. --Graue 00:21, 19 Oct 2005 (GMT)

In MediaWiki 1.9, you block 123.45.6.0/24 (i.e. any IP whose first 24 bits are the same as 123.45.6.0); I'm not sure whether that would work on the older version of MediaWiki that Esolang is running.

Is it possible to only allow people who made an account to edit articles? Maybe the spam script isn't able to make accounts. By the way how do those filters work? --Aardwolf 07:16, 19 Oct 2005 (GMT)

Yes, it is possible to only allow registered users to edit, and if the spam problem gets worse that is the way to go. However, it is IMHO preferable to allow anonymous edits as it lowers the threshold for contributions. --Rune 13:27, 19 Oct 2005 (GMT)

In the change log Graue writes that the spam problem should be fixed now. I'm curious: how was it fixed? --Rune 15:36, 21 Oct 2005 (GMT)

The "mod_security" Apache module, which has some spam-blocking rules, is now enabled for this site. It was off before. --Graue 23:47, 21 Oct 2005 (GMT)
Aha. Good to know. --Rune 00:35, 22 Oct 2005 (GMT)

The spamming has started again :( Some of the spammers even have user accounts now, so disabling anonymous editing will not get rid of it completely either. Any suggestions to what we should do? --Rune 11:20, 13 Dec 2005 (GMT)

Hmm. We could disallow <span> tags, or too many line breaks, or something like that.
Is there a simple way to auto-revert a page that has been spammed? I just did a couple manually, but I noticed that one of them had gone through and changed every '"' to a '& quot;' (minus the space) thing. In this case, a simple find/replace was easy, but I can foresee situations where a spammer might intersperse changes through the text in an annoying-to-fix way. --Duerig 10:15, 14 Dec 2005 (GMT)
When you compare the current article version with a previous one in the history there is a Rollback link near the top which does exactly that. Though it might be available only to admins. --Rune 10:26, 14 Dec 2005 (GMT)
After thinking about the spammer's strategy last night, there may be a relatively easy way to stop a lot of spam. The last several batches of spam have all used CSS tricks to make the links invisible when just viewing a page. They aren't trying to get users of this wiki to click on them. They are trying to increase their page rank on google. This means that if the change isn't initially noticed, it may be a long time until it is fixed. On the wiki, users don't really need to embed CSS into their edits. I therefore propose that the spam filters be changed to reject edits which have a 'style' attribute in an html tag. A simple reg-ex should be sufficient to detect it. This would turn their 'camouflage' against them. --Duerig 06:44, 15 Dec 2005 (GMT)
Great idea! Hope this gets implemented. If I can help, let me know. --calamari 09:14, 19 Dec 2005 (MST)
It would be nice to have some sort of CAPTCHA for anonymous edits and user registration. Don't know why mediawiki doesn't have that. --Rune 08:30, 15 Dec 2005 (GMT)
"CAPTCHAs considered harmful" because I browse with w3m and can't see them.
CAPTCHAs don't have to be graphical. For example, check out my qemu wiki edit page: [1]. It requires the user to type a short password (which the browser can then save, so edits don't become annoying). If every site did this then of course the spammers would catch on, but I doubt they will go to the trouble of customizing their spamming software for a couple sites. The only problem is that this solution requires modifying the wiki software. --Calamari 21:42, 23 Dec 2005 (GMT)

I forbade some new strings, so the spam should decrease. --Graue 21:36, 18 Dec 2005 (GMT)

We've just had another spam attack. What strings did you forbid? I would have thought <span and <div (without the >) would block all the spam we've seen. --Safalra 17:20, 20 Dec 2005 (GMT)
Look on the bright side: now the spam is much more noticeable! --Ihope127 22:46, 20 Dec 2005 (GMT)
Good idea. I've blocked <span and <div. -Graue
Some more strings maybe worth blacklisting: the word URL in square brackets, and the letter a in angle brackets. These are consistently generated by spambots that are programmed to hit forums rather than wikis, and dump lots of HTML or forum markup onto a wiki page; as neither has a meaning in wikimarkup, we can easily type them using &...; markup if needed. ais523 08:45, 2 Mar 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The forum

Anybody actually using the forum? A quiet community, this one. --ORBAT 19:13, 2 Nov 2005 (GMT)

Hey, the forum is brand new. Give it some time :) --Rune 20:03, 2 Nov 2005 (GMT)
Edit: found it. Woot! :) --Aardwolf 03:54, 3 Nov 2005 (GMT)

[edit] mailing list archives

The archive at http://esoteric.sange.fi/archive/ doesn't go further back than 2001. Does anyone have a link to an archive of older messages? --Rune 10:52, 7 Feb 2006 (GMT)

Ask the forum. Esowiki is not a discussion board. --Graue 00:07, 10 Feb 2006 (GMT)

I wasn't trying to start a discussion. I merely wanted to get a link to add to this article. I didn't occur to me to use the forum for that. --Rune 13:12, 10 Feb 2006 (GMT)

[edit] Links from outside not working

What is the correct place to report faults with the wiki or its server?

In particular, there seems to be a strange bug whereby links from outside don't always work. For example, look at [2] and try following the link to User:Ais523 there, I get this:

[edit] Precondition Failed

The precondition on the request for the URL /wiki/User:Ais523 evaluated to false.

Reloading makes no difference. However, the page is otherwise alive - it works OK if I:

  • follow a link to it from here
  • key in the URL of the page
  • after trying to open it from my site, click in the URL box and press Return (under both SeaMonkey and Safari)
  • follow a link to it from Wikipedia

Clearly it is playing up depending on the referrer URL. Links from my site to other pages on this wiki (e.g. in the A-Z of languages) are also failing. -- Smjg 14:19, 15 Nov 2006 (UTC)

Same result for me when visiting from Smjg's website. ais523 15:23, 15 Nov 2006 (UTC)
What is port5.com? My web host has its referer blocked. There must be spammers or something there. --Graue 16:14, 15 Nov 2006 (UTC)
It's one of the domains owned by Portland, a provider of both free and commercial web hosting. Any idea what it (or one of its users) may have done to warrant a referrer block? -- Smjg 01:43, 17 Nov 2006 (UTC)

Anyone still there? -- Smjg

I'm currently trying to get this fixed. If you have further concerns, please email me (graue@oceanbase.org). Nobody besides me can fix these sorts of problems, and wiki talk pages are way too easy (in fact trivial) to ignore. --Graue 23:25, 23 Nov 2006 (UTC)
Fixed. --Graue 15:19, 24 Nov 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What does this error mean?

I irregularly get a Database error (normally refreshing the page will fix it):

Here it is in plain text: 

Database error

A database query syntax error has occured. This may indicate a bug in 
the software. The last attempted database query was:

 (SQL query hidden)

from within function "MediaWikiBagOStuff::_doquery".
MySQL returned error "1030: Got error 127 from storage engine (localhost)".

Here is the original HTML, from View > Page Source in Firefox: 

<html>
		<head>
		<title>Database error</title>
		</head>
		<body>
		<h1><img src='/w/skins/common/images/wiki.png' style='float:left;margin-right:1em' alt=''>Database error</h1>
		A database query syntax error has occurred.
This may indicate a bug in the software.
The last attempted database query was:
<blockquote><tt>(SQL query hidden)</tt></blockquote>

from within function "<tt>MediaWikiBagOStuff::_doquery</tt>".
MySQL returned error "<tt>1030: Got error 127 from storage engine (localhost)</tt>".</body></html>

What on earth does it mean? And what can be done about it?

Alksentrs 00:04, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to know that too -- I mentioned it here ... http://esoteric.voxelperfect.net/forum/kareha.pl/1197250585/l50 but there was no reply. I haven't had it happen today (yet). --r.e.s. (Talk) 06:02, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] User Permissions

I think users should have the permissions to lock their User and User_talk pages and all other pages underneath the same including to prevent people from creating page under them or creating specific pages under User and User_talk pages. Melab 20:17, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New Bulletin Board Software

The current forum software in my opinion is not well good I think you try PhpBB which has alot more control over the forum and gives users more options. Melab 20:58, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

  • It is intentionally that way, there's an old thread about it. However since people keep complaining about it Graue might just want to switch it over. Beh. -ehird

[edit] My Language

Hey I need some help on naming this language: User:Melab/Esoteric Languages/Language Number One. Melab 20:59, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikitext won't work

There is this wikitext that I'm trying to put on my userpage that I also use for my Wikipedia userpage but it won't accept it I HTTP ERROR 403 This website declined to show this page.

You probably hit the spam blacklist. Specifically, it bans the div tag, which tends to stop a whole lot of spambot tricks in their tracks, but can be annoying because it's so commonly used. Try something more creative instead, like using a p tag or a table element. --ais523 07:57, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] This user is spamming.

This user is spamming.

[ip lookup results redacted, it may be copyvio and I'm sure it would violate the privacy policy if we had one --ais523 19:12, 7 June 2008 (UTC)]

He's a regular #esoteric denizen, not a spammer, thanks. And you didn't get the joke. -tusho/ehird
Whoops. Sorry, he didn't have an edit history so I assummed he was spamming. Sorry 82.126.71.76. Melab 18:59, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
I deleted the page anyway, because that joke was done to death on Wikipedia and then Uncyclopedia ages ago, and because it was a broken redirect, technically speaking. And 10 GOTO 10 isn't recursive anyway, the Wikipedia version was at wikipedia:Endless loop which makes much more sense. --ais523 19:12, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The latest wave of vandalism

Can anybody hazard an explanation of the vandalism we're getting a lot of at the moment, whereby a few random letters are added to the beginnings of pages and a few equally random letters put in the edit summary? There are a few things to explain about it:

  • who/what is doing it
  • why whoever/whatever is doing it
  • why it's coming from various, completely different IP addresses

-- Smjg 14:37, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm pretty certain it's vandalbots which go around attacking wikis at random, probably from compromised/zombie computers. That explains points 1 and 3 but not 2. The random letters make blacklist-based anti-spam methods unusable, although obviously a behaviour-based anti-spam method would detect it without trouble. --ais523 21:05, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The vandalbots are at it again

It's happening several times a day, and has just escalated to a few times an hour. There must be something we can do about it. Possibilities:

  • Run a bot to keep an eye on the wiki and auto-revert this form of vandalism
  • Set up some kind of edit filtering at least on "FIELD_OTHER" in the summary line
  • Enable captchas for anonymous editing (I've heard MediaWiki supports captchas, but have never seen it)
  • Since those whose machines it runs on probably don't know about it and possibly don't even know about this wiki, but some of them may read and/or contribute to Wikipedia, whenever we spot one, we could leave a message on the Wikipedia user talk page for the offending IP address giving advice on how to deal with it.

The trouble with the last of these is: How can we find out more about the vandalbot? The anti-virus companies I've checked don't seem to have caught onto this as yet. Can we do anything in this area other than wait and hope?

There are a few that we could block as they've been responsible several times, but that won't help to stop the flood of new IP addresses it's coming from. -- Smjg 00:47, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I've blocked all the IP addresses involved in the recent vandalism. CAPTCHAs are already running on this wiki, but only blocking new posts containing links by anons, and user registration; tightening the CAPTCHA to all posts by anons would seem a reasonably precaution now, although I can't do that myself. Leaving a message on the Wikipedia talk page is probably a bad idea; Wikipedia might not want that. There are extensions to block edits following particular patterns (such as edit summaries matching a certain regex) available; as far as I know, none of them are installed here yet. --ais523 15:06, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
Thank you. I've noticed that the other form of automated vandalism, where a few random letters are added at the beginning of the article, has come back. Are these going to be blocked as well?
Maybe what we need is one of the anti-vandal bots that runs on Wikipedia to take up the job here. -- Smjg 01:17, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Admins: please delete the page/user User:454_buy_viagra

Trying to edit it, move it or view its history results in: 

Precondition Failed

The precondition on the request for the URL /w/index.php evaluated to false.

How on earth was it created? Alksentrs 23:02, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I can't delete it either, I get the same error. (And the same error when I try to block the user.) My guess is it's a newly-introduced spam filter gone wrong. --ais523 14:53, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
Hi peeps... No luck here, either. Very strange. A bug in the wiki system? --Keymaker 20:51, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
This is getting silly. Who has checkuser access? Is it coming from the same or similar IP address each time? That might be what we need to block. -- Smjg 12:54, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure it's a different IP each time; although I can't discover the IP that the new users are coming from, I've been putting 24-hour bans (the maximum possible for an unknown IP address) on the IP that they're using. (The ability for a non-checkuser to ban the last IP a blocked user used is relatively useful (for other admins: it's a checkbox on the block form), and also relatively new.) The checkuser extension probably isn't installed here, but Graue will have the relevant logs, and could find out the IPs that way. --ais523 15:28, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
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