[okfn-discuss] Open Knowledge Foundation wiki

Tue Mar 11 15:44:58 UTC 2014

Thanks, Nick.

I have to say that captchas are a common practice. We had one on the
Ushahidi wiki and a few other OS communities.

This morning a few staffers had a chat about the next steps. I am working
on a plan with them which will definitely require community input and
collaboration. We need a few cycles on this, but we do think the wiki is
core. Certainly, the beautiful community entries on the
wiki.opendataday.orghighlights this need.

You have been infinitely patient with us as we reorganize the online
spaces. Here's to making it better for all of us.

Heather

On 11 March 2014 11:11, Nick Stenning <nick.stenning at okfn.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 7, 2014, at 11:16, Michael Bauer wrote:
> > Tom,
> >
> > Agree with you there. Found editing very annoying.
> >
> > Do you know who maintains the Wiki right now?
>
> Hi Tom, Michael, and the rest of the list,
>
> Here's the deal: this time last year, our wiki was absolutely flooded
> with spam, to an extent that might seem hard to believe. At its peak, we
> received hundreds of user registrations every day, and spam pages
> outnumbered real content on the wiki by a factor of 10 to 1.
>
> The Foundation has extremely limited system administrator resource, so
> we haven't been able to dedicate as much time or effort as we'd like to
> keeping the wiki clean and easy to contribute to. Luckily for us, we
> have a fantastic community, including such people as Harry Wood[1] and
> Chris Sakkas[2], both of whom have spent countless hours of their own
> time battling spam on the wiki and advising the system administrators on
> how best to configure the wiki to prevent spam.
>
> The current configuration of the wiki is primarily the result of Joel's
> implementation of Harry's advice. While we still get some spam user
> registrations[3] things have in general calmed down and the wiki is once
> again a reasonably useful space for the community.
>
> Obviously, there's substantial room for improvement. One problem is that
> the spam controls are somewhat draconian and get in the way of people
> trying to make simple edits to the wiki. If anyone has experience
> administering a mediawiki installation and wants to volunteer to help
> sort this out, while being aware that we *do not* want to naively roll
> back the spam protections currently in place, then please let me know
> and we can make sure you have the appropriate access.
>
> Best,
> Nick
>
> [1]: http://wiki.okfn.org/User:Harry_Wood
> [2]: http://wiki.okfn.org/User:Sanglorian
> [3]:
>
> http://wiki.okfn.org/wiki/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&limit=500&days=30
>
> --
> Nick Stenning
> Technical Director, Open Knowledge Foundation
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-- 

Heather Leson, Community Engagement Director

Open Knowledge Foundation <http://okfn.org/>*, Empowering through Open
Knowledge*

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