From SFWiki
Spam Management
I think we need to disable anonymous edits until we improve the article/spam ratio. Seeing a whole page of spam on a page like "Wiki Guide" is pretty discouraging for a potential new user.
/dave User_talk:Dtbog
- Anonymous editing has been disabled. Hopefully, we can get to the point that we can re-enable it, but for now the spam is killing us. --WikiSysop 22:52, 23 August 2007 (PDT)
Moved from current_events by --Zach (talk) 14:49, 20 August 2007 (PDT):
Hello -
I'm moving into the area and I've been browsing the wiki a bit. Unfortunately, it's being used by spammers
as a Google bomb. If this is still an active project, I'd love to help find information and edit pages,
but I'd want to make sure the spam problem is under control.
I have some experience running my own wiki; let me know if you're interested in another member of the team.
Rather than posting my e-mail address for all to see, I'll ask you to send a private message to the user
account I created on the wiki.
Talk to you soon.
/dave User_talk:Dtbog
The spamming problem could probably helped out a lot by making the site editable by registered members only. That's not a huge requirement when you're letting anyone come to the site and directly edit it's home page.
I always like to put several different methods of spam prevention together, so even if a bot can pass one, it will get caught by the second or third. So along with requiring sign in another trick I use for sign-in/register forms is to add a fake form only bots will see. What you do is place a sign in form with a broke URL, just figure out something in the action property of the form which will prevent sign in (like change "login" to "signin" if that will break it) and you place this fake form before the real form in the HTML but use CSS to position somewhere like -500px to the left side of the page where it's not viewable.
Because some bots might catch that and try the second form (or just try both forms) you can use JavaScript to write in the real form's action.
- I'm thinking about implementing some of these ideas. Spam wasn't a very big problem when I was keeping up with reverting it and adding spam links to the blacklist. I just got pretty busy with school for the last few months, and I got behind. ;) I really like keeping the site editable without an account, but I may have to give in and require and account. --WikiSysop 04:43, 4 July 2007 (PDT)
Site Design/Features
- I added some color to the front page. Comments are welcome. I can revert or change if it isn't popular. --Zach (talk) 00:12, 27 October 2006 (PDT)
- In fact, I welcome comments on all aspects of the site's design and usability. I started with a stock version of mediawiki, but I've needed to make some modifications to support our circumstances. Hence, I am not too averse to making further modifications if the community feels that it is necessary. That said, I do feel that it helps people to have a familiar interface. So, we need to be careful about monkeying with things too much. --Zach (talk) 01:29, 27 October 2006 (PDT)
- I'm an interaction designer and could come up with lots of things, but the only real immediate thing which bugs me is the spacing between paragraphs. There are too close together and could use a little extra spacing. - Jamison (24 Oct 2006, 5:09pm)
- Any further ideas would be very welcome. As far as paragraph spacing, I've changed the bottom margin on paragraph elements from 0.5em to 0.9em (top margin remains 0.4em). Does this help? --Zach (talk) 03:27, 2 November 2006 (PST)
- I am also willing to look into what it would take to add further features to the gmap extension, or to add further features that the community thinks will be helpful for a metrowiki. About gmap, I already plan (someday when I get some free time ^_^) to add the ability to label the markers on the maps (eg. with addresses or names). I also have plans to add the ability to put more than one marker on a map. This way, if we have (for example) a business with multiple locations, we can have one map with a marker for each location. In any case, feature requests/ideas are welcome. --Zach (talk) 01:29, 27 October 2006 (PDT)
Community Service Category
- A category for community/non-profit groups? I've created a couple stubs for non-profit/community organization and I wanted to create a category for them, but I don't think "non-profits" is right. Thats not what they do, it's their tax status and there will certainly be for-profits, special events (beach cleanups) and community groups (neighborhood associations, task forces and neighborhood watches) which aren't "non-profits". Any suggestions? - Jamison (24 Oct 2006, 5:09pm)
- Maybe "Community Service"? --Zach (talk) 17:45, 24 October 2006 (PDT)
- What about Community Organization? Community Service reminds me of a criminal sentence and guys at the side of the road in orange jumpsuits - Jamison (27 Oct 2006, 1:50am)
- How about a compromise: "Service Organization" --Zach (talk) 03:27, 2 November 2006 (PST)
Name of ballpark and '&' in titles
- Question about what to name the ballpark page. I was thinking of creating it as AT&T_Park and creating redirects for SBC, PacBell and Pacific Bell, but you can't use an ampersand "&" in URLs and therefore titles. Should we just call it "Ballpark"? Maybe "Giants Ballpark"? - User: Jamison (24 Oct 2006, 5:04pm)
- I looked into this a little. It is possible to include ampersands and question marks in urls, but it requires a patch to apache. So, it won't be possible with my current hosting situation....For now, we could just call it "ATT_Park", and then whenever I need to upgrade the hosting in the future, we'll add the ability to put & and ? in titles. --Zach (talk) 17:45, 24 October 2006 (PDT)
- I've sussed it out, we can get AT&T Park, but only as a redirect from another page, If a user types in http://www.sfwiki.org/AT&T_Park]] the URL gets cut off at .../AT, so I have that redirect to the real page. All the redirects are in place. I don't actually have anything to write about it, but I just had to solve the technical challenge. -Jamison (26 Oct 2006, 12:01am)
Request for suggestions on main page
- Any suggestions for other content on this page would be welcome.
Request for further starting points
- Also, can anybody think of any other starting points that should be here? The goal is for people to be able to easily find whatever page they want without searching. Along these lines, I'll be creating Portal:Berkeley, Portal:San Francisco, Portal:University of California - Berkeley, etc. soon. If aren't familiar with what a portal is, you can check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Portal. There is a bit of a description there.
