User talk:Alxndr

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Contents 1 Linkspamming 2 Skin 3 Blanking 4 The Updates Feed 5 Recaptcha 6 Course Catalog?

Linkspamming

Xander, What's the deal with all this link spamming? Bots or obnoxious individuals? Anything outsiders can do to help clean it up or just let you ban all them? --Nathanleamy 20:07, 29 November 2006 (EST)

They're bots; I don't like to think there are actually people that obnoxious. The problem with wikis are that spammers like to post links (even though it doesn't actually help their Google rank)... And I know that banning them all isn't actually doing much, since they just use a different IP address next time. There are a variety of things I can do as far as configuring the site, like blocking edits from unregistered users, or making people pass some are-you-a-human test, or what have you, but I'd prefer having to revert and block them all by hand than discourage someone from posting because they haven't registered or can't read the image or something. (Then again, if everyone who cares about the site would rather take some measure like that than see the linkspamming continue every couple days, I'll do it.)

—alxndr (talk) 01:20, 30 November 2006 (EST)

Update: I've added a new filter that should catch a big list of links like the ones that are always posted here. I've also set up the server to automatically update the list of catch words that large wikis have been spammed with recently, which we also use as a filter. Hopefully between the two, there shouldn't be much of a problem any more. —alxndr (talk) 17:15, 30 November 2006 (EST)

Skin

I recently started my own wiki, but I have to say, none of the default skins are as good as the default OberWiki skin... is there any way I could perhaps use the same one? Also, being an admin n00b, if yes, how would that work, technically speaking?

--Jwisser 13:29, 17 February 2007 (EST)

Blanking

Can something be implemented where removal of large amounts of text from a page would have to be approved by a mod / couldn't be done by an unregistered/recently-registered user? Tevi 02:21, 17 June 2007 (EDT)

Yeah, that'd be nice. I'm in the process of trying to get either/both a captcha extension for anonymous user edits or/and a behavior-watching extension for all edits up and running. As of late last night when I was working on it all, the captcha extension was printing instructions in Chinese and the behavior extension was producing database errors, and I was too tired to figure out why. Unfortunately blanking in MediaWiki is not a common enough problem to have a readily-accessible fix, and MediaWiki is convoluted enough that it would take me a while to develop a fix, especially one that would survive software upgrades. Nevertheless, I will be working on this more in the next couple days, as I more than anyone am sick of dealing with this shit. —alxndr (talk) 20:21, 17 June 2007 (EDT)

The Updates Feed

For the past 12 hours or so (since you installed the new updates), the feed seems kind of out of whack with itself, apparently posting a new entry for every page that's been recently updated each time someone makes an entry. Any ideas / anyone else noticing this? Tevi 03:07, 15 July 2007 (EDT)

Yeah hey, that was screwy, I just noticed it now. It's possible that it was an update hiccup (most of the feed items were dated ~3:45 am right?) and won't be a problem from now on, but I'm gonna keep a close eye on it (we'll see what it does with this edit) and if it persists I'll get on it. —alxndr (talk) 16:21, 15 July 2007 (EDT)

Recaptcha

Seems good so far, but I don't like the fact that it's at the top of the page when "submit" is at the bottom. :\ I realized it was that way with the old system too, but with this one it bothers me for some reason. —Tevi 22:21, 16 July 2007 (EDT)

I'll fiddle with it. —alxndr (talk) 18:25, 17 July 2007 (EDT)

Done fiddling. I took out everything but the captcha thing and the save buttons. —alxndr (talk) 23:16, 18 July 2007 (EDT)
Note to self: fiddlee is includes/EditPage.php's showEditForm(), line 1175

Course Catalog?

Hey, alum here looking for something a little mindless but a little meaningful. I was wondering if I could help fix the course boxes so that they don't link to weird, non-existent places. Like "Course credits:=3" I tried to look at the template, but I don't know enough about Mediawiki. I definitely didn't want to go tinkering with that and mess up a whole slew of pages.

Anyway, I wasn't sure if this was the best way to get in touch with you, but if you get this let me know if there's anything I can do around here. Thanks! --Snagamat

Hey Sean. Those were there as part of an extension for Mediawiki which gave us the ability to do semantic searches (e.g. "show me all natural sciences classes worth less than three credits and taught by these professors"). I disabled the extension ages ago when they announced it had some security flaws, tried firing up a new version just now but there's apparently a bug in the setup. I'll keep my ears open for developments on this.

So...long answer to a short question. I guess leave 'em alone for the short term, and hopefully I can get the semantic thing working again soonish?

In the meantime, welcome to Oberwiki, go ahead and do pretty much whatever else you want. —alxndr 18:02, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Fixed it for now with a hack. —alxndr 01:49, 8 July 2011 (EDT)