Patrick, for two of our sites (i2geo.net and curriki.org), we do see regular registration with "water army like" objectives here's how we deal with them In particular these profiles come with a URL in the profile information with the goal of boosting the Google-rank of such URLs. We delete these when they are recognizable. Editing the profile with the object editor is best practice to check the values. Besides the deactivation then deletion of these, we have made a tool that list the contributions… it is a bit xclam-specialized. To evaluate the impact of this, reading the stream of all changes on a regular basis is a must, I feel. I mix this with my regular RSS reading, as a special category where an unread is something I need to react quick upon. hope it helps. paul Le 19 mars 2014 à 23:53, Patrick Masson <[email protected]> a écrit :

I'm seeing many many folks registering for our wiki, which is great I guess, but I am a bit concerned.

Our wiki is set up as a public wiki where registrants need to fill out the captcha and have a valid email. However I am seeing quite a few registrations each day (profiles being created) and then no activity. These folks are not vandalizing the site or adding spam/adds/etc. Indeed they do not seem to be doing anything.

Maybe our site is just boring and lame, and does not inspire any participation, but it just seems weird.

Should I be concerned? Is there anyway I can send a bulk message to all users to test the emails or ask folks why they joined?

Thanks, Patrick

-- || | | |||| || || | |||| ||| | ||| Patrick Masson General Manager, Director & Secretary to the Board Open Source Initiative 855 El Camino Real, Ste 13A, #270 Palo Alto, CA 94301 United States Skype: massonpj sip: [email protected] <https://www.getonsip.com/[email protected]> Ph: (970) 4MASSON Em: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Ws: www.opensource.org <http://www.opensource.org> _______________________________________________ users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/users

I check this forum almost every day. I am guilty of not participating very often but I do find it useful when I am trying to figure things out or have an issue. I do a search for whatever I am working on and read the past posts. Usually I can either find what I am needing or obtain enough information to figure it out. This forum has been very helpful to me. -- View this message in context: http://xwiki.475771.n2.nabble.com/Too-many-profiles-tp7589710p7589727.html Sent from the XWiki- Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Hello all,

We also see this on xwiki.org. Since we’re on IRC we’re using the XWiki IRC integration to monitor any change in real time and revert/remove users when they vandalize the wiki.

Right, that's a nice way to check and make things visible. I'd love to convince colleagues to go IRC, I must say. I've been using #curriki and #i2geo from time to time… but not a lot. #intergeo is… for others.

In addition we’re using this script from time to time to remove potential spam users: http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Delete+Spam+Users

Interesting. Deleting users has been quite a pain often for Curriki… we had to make long wait loops.

...

In particular these profiles come with a URL in the profile information with the goal of boosting the Google-rank of such URLs. We delete these when they are recognizable. Editing the profile with the object editor is best practice to check the values.

Good idea, we could improve our delete spam user snippet by checking for this too.

Erm… I don't trust an auto-removal...

...

Besides the deactivation then deletion of these, we have made a tool that list the contributions… How do you use it? You remove users who have never contributed after a period of time? (that could be interesting).

Oh no! Only identified users, one by one, or users we can search for with a pattern. For the one-by-one removal, on i2geo, I made a simple script called "Eradicate spammer" which accepts the user-name as parameter and outputs the following. The admin then needs to evaluate if the blog entries (or resources) are indeed spam, by drag and dropping the URL to an external web page, then clicking the links in sequence which, up to a confirmation, performs all needed sanitization. I can make this available soon. To the scale of i2geo, there's never been a performance problem there. To the scale of curriki (about 100-500 times bigger), the "Members management tool" has been needed (https://github.com/xwiki-contrib/currikiorg/blob/master/wiki/src/main/pages/...) which uses our solr server to search for users then offers the deletion as a batch process. paul Spam Eradicate edit This page makes tools available to eradicate spammers. Enter a username (without XWiki. in front) and press return to see tools appear: Warning: if requested to use another browser, please do so using a browser where you are not logged in since spammers are also virus-carriers and their contributions may contain code that reads your cookie (that enables you to be admin) and sends it to their own servers. mark user as inactive no resource contributions 2 blog entries (see list in another browser) delete Blog_billiehill73.yachtcharterfriesland delete Blog_billiehill73.yachtcharterniederlande there was one, delete web-preferences and empty trash, same with delete WebHome. delete user then empty trash