[ckan-discuss] Despamming datahub

[Rufus Pollock]

On 18 March 2013 14:38, Sara Farmer <sara.farmer at btinternet.com> wrote:
> Phew...  Does that mean that spammers using fake groups won't be an issue in
> 2.0?
>
> I'm asking because I just set up my own CKAN node and am clunking my way
> through getting it working for me... I locked it down because I saw all the
> spam on the datahub, and wasn't quite sure what the best way to avoid the
> same fate was (and as the receipient of more than one "we've closed your
> site because of spammers" message from providers in the past, this scares me
> a little more than most).

Worth adding here:

a) there is a fair amount of anti-spam features in the datahub
including recaptcha on signup etc
b) there are mechanisms built into the UI for deleting and purging
revisions and datasets (and you can supplement this with scripting)
c) You can fairly easily lock down a CKAN instance so that it's harder
to edit (datahub intentionally is quite liberal)

Nevertheless, as anyone who operates a wiki nowadays knows, it's tough
to keep spammers completely out of an "open" site with a reasonably
high google rank.

So the short answer is that you will likely *not* have issues with
your ckan instance unless you run it in wiki-style mode and get quite
popular ;-)

Rufus