[LLVMdev] llvm wiki now a spamfarm

[Renato Golin]

On 13 April 2011 02:49, 陳韋任 <chenwj at iis.sinica.edu.tw> wrote:
>  I think the wiki is a pretty good place to let people contribute their
> knowledge about llvm. What things a maintainer need to do?

Hi Chen,

In theory, the bare minimum would be to clean it up once in a while,
delete the offending accounts and keep an eye on rogue changes.

Spam is only the most obvious problem in open wikis, but it's also the
most labour intensive to get rid of. Captchas, tokens, two-way
authentication, email validation are only to assure accounts are set
up by humans, but from there, anything is possible.

Another problem is trolling and rogue changes. Genuine people could
introduce wrong information, on purpose or unintentionally, and it's
up to each page maintainer to check that. Some people do it just for
fun (I know a few), and they should be treated just as bad as
spammers.

Finally, whenever genuine users complain about a rogue user, it's up
to the wiki maintainer to settle the dispute and take the appropriate
actions (like terminating the user's account).

A more advanced maintainer would also look up for improvements, like
adding infrastructure to the wiki to avoid all those problems in the
first place. Captchas for each commit, review process, moderation
management, etc.

It's up to you to decide which level you want to go, but at least
clean up the trash once in a while would be necessary. ;)

cheers,
--renato