All Things Shining: Shining Wiki needs you

[Omega Entity]

He only posts in the Shining Fanwork section, in the Fanfic thread. If you shoot him a PM, he'll probably answer eventually.

[Moogie]

Think I should just shut the Wiki down for now - I won't delete it all or anything, but I'll hide it away until Martin decides if he's going to keep on with it or what.

[Earl]

It would be awesome if it could be integrated with the board somehow, so that people with an account here could move seamlessly to the wiki for editing when the mood struck... and if it worked like MD did, where users would have to ask a mod (in this case to prove they're human) before they were granted editing privileges.

But that's in a fantasy land where someone among us would have the time, skill, and inclination to work out something like that.

[Cullsoft]

I've sen a PM to Martin - hope he spots it and is able to do something to help, even if it's just throwing some options of what can or can't be done.

Whilst I'll accept it's a uftile hassle fixing the Wiki when it can just be re-vandalised again... I'd really hate to see the whole thing have to go. It's a great resource when handled properly and a lot of hard work's gone into it.

[Martin III]

Sorry guys, but the spam problem isn't something that can be handled manually. While I have gotten around to removing a lot of spam and indefinitely blocking over a hundred spam accounts, even if I were to devote myself 24/7 to Shining Wiki editing I wouldn't be able to stop the flow. In the few minutes it takes me to block all the accounts spamming on one article, the "High Wizard" article has reappeared and accumulated four spam edits on it. We need some sort of automated system to stop spamming, and as I believe I mentioned when the Wiki was turned over to private hands, I'm a tech illiterate.

An IP address editor posted the following suggestion on my talk page a few months ago: "You might want to consider getting some anti-spam MediaWiki extensions (or updated blacklists) installed." But other than that, I'm afraid there's naught I can contribute to solving this issue.

One other thing. For some reason, articles whose names begin with a comma don't disappear from the list of all articles once they've been deleted. There are articles which Moogie deleted back in November that still appear on the list. Other articles disappear from the list the instant they're deleted, but not ones which begin with a comma.

[Earl]

From another thread:

I've added a CAPTCHA that asks questions. Hopefully that will help. My version of MediaWiki came with ComfirmEdit, the extension that allows for CAPTCHA, but it can also be easily downloaded and added manually.

I have no idea what goes into the admin end of a wiki, so I can't say how easy that'd be for someone who's unused to messing with that kind of thing, but doing so ought to eliminate the bulk of the spam.

And if CAPTCHA is a foreign term... it's an acronym of... something. The gist is that it's supposed to be a simple test to tell a human from a non-human. You know in some places when you register, you'll see an image of some distorted number or letter combination, and you're asked to type it into a text box? That's a CAPTCHA. People can make out and enter the corresponding string, while the distortion prevents automated software from doing so.

Some CAPTCHAs require some kind of intelligent response instead, by prompting the user to answer some simple question (like, "What state is the Statue of Liberty located in?").

[Mandrew]

That completely reminds me that I have to update the year question answer to 2012 With that version I had to supply the questions and answers myself.

Martin: if you need some help, just send me a PM. I didn't know anything about wiki's until I started mine but there is lots of great documentation out there. It helped a lot that I'm already familiar with PHP and whatnot though. I'd be glad to help you if you need it.

[Moogie]

Hmm, I wonder if something like this would be useful?
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension ... ntegration" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Solo Wing Dragon]

It would be great to see the Shining Wiki up and running again.

Might I suggest that make it an admin-only encyclopaedia? In order to prevent spam you could have contributors send edits to a specified admin (or group of admins). The admin could then check over the content before manually adding it to the wiki. Although this would be more time consuming, it would ensure quality control and completely stop spam. I've done a similar thing for the Panzer Dragoon community's encyclopaedia. It uses a custom backend, but I'm sure you could set up something similar using MediaWiki if you didn't want to create your own backend.