Ideas Maybe using: 1. open library. 2. include portable documentation with betas of freedos 3. wiki info can sometimes be exported to pdf, maybe someone has? 4. privately elect a friend to copy your data to. 5. use a video recorder or obs studio...
On Thu, Jul 4, 2024 at 11:23 PM Jim Hall via Freedos-devel < freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > Hi everyone. I am following up on my email from a week ago, about the wiki. > > To summarize: I discovered that our wiki had been spammed, but > fortunately I found it only a day after it was spammed. > > I discovered the spamming on June 27, and immediately shut down the > wiki and emailed the freedos-user email list about it: > > On Thu, Jun 27, 2024 at 10:37 AM Jim Hall <jh...@freedos.org> wrote: > > > > I just realized that someone started spamming our wiki yesterday. So > > I've taken that down until I can clean it out and apply a patch. > > > > Great. Just when a bunch of people would be likely to visit the wiki > > to learn more about us. > > Unfortunately, the only backup was right before I started copying over > most of the content, and they spammed the site before the next backup > - and I had already made a ton of updates to the wiki in the weeks > leading up to the 30th anniversary on June 29. So rolling back to a > previous backup basically wipes out the wiki. > > I can't attach screenshots on the email list, so I've created a > temporary page at https://wiki.freedos.org/spammed/ that has > screenshots and a version of this email. > > Whoever spammed the wiki, I don't think they mangled any existing wiki > pages, probably to stay under the radar. That means our content is > still there, so we can copy/paste it out of the wiki. > > I found out about the spammed wiki because I was searching for the > answer to a question someone asked me about the history of FreeDOS, > and I thought we had a "history" page. I deleted these first 3 pages > before I realized the extent of the spamming. > > But they created hundreds and hundreds of new pages, most (all?) of > them not linked to from any other pages on the wiki (orphaned). They > also created many hundreds of dummy users. > > The web page I linked to has a screenshot from the Orphaned pages > report, showing 500 pages at a time, sorted alphabetically, and over > half of page 1 is "pages that start with a number." Page 1 ends with > "BBB," page 2 goes to "Fiber," and page 3 goes to "Ideal." So you can > see that this is a really long list of pages. > > Doing a spot check on these pages and looking at the creation date for > each, I'm pretty sure the hack happened a day or two before I found it > on June 27. > > > So, where do we go from here? > > I could rebuild the wiki. However, that would require basically > rebuilding from scratch. > > Maintaining a Mediawiki requires a lot of work. You basically have to > jump onto a new version as soon as they release a new one, because > they often fix security issues (probably like the one that caused our > problem). We were on the 1.41.x version, and the Mediawiki website* > says "The 1.42.0 stable release came out on 27 June 2024." That was > shortly after our wiki was spammed. I'm not excited about a future > where I need to drop all my other work immediately, just to apply a > new Mediawiki version to the wiki website. > *see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.42 > > Even before this issue, I was thinking about how to integrate some of > our "non-wiki" content into the wiki website. For example, we have > some ebooks at https://www.freedos.org/books/ and content from the > press kit that I wanted to migrate into the wiki in some way - but > these aren't really "wiki" topics, they are longer form. And I wanted > to copy the articles I've written about FreeDOS into the wiki - but > again, these don't fit as "wiki" topics. > > Years ago, we created a "FreeDOS Documentation Project" website that > hosted all of our "how-to" articles, "technotes," and other long form > topics. We retired that when SourceForge set up a shared wiki for all > projects hosted at SourceForge, and we thought it would be easier to > maintain a wiki. And for a time, that worked well, until most folks > stopped contributing to the wiki. We had a few who updated the wiki, > but like two or three people, including me. And of course: later, > SourceForge stopped managing a shared wiki, and that's when we set up > our own wiki (which lived on freedos.sourceforge.net for a long time > before SF did an update that broke the wiki and I had to move the wiki > to the new server). > > Looking at how people look for "help" today, I don't think a wiki is > the right answer in 2024. We've seen people email freedos-user and > freedos-devel to ask for help, and I've seen similar requests on > Facebook and on YouTube sometimes. What people are looking for is a > "walkthrough" or a "tutorial" - long form "how-to" content that shows > people how to do something, like how to install FreeDOS, or how to use > the FreeDOS command line. Instead of building a new wiki, I think this > is the right opportunity to set up a FreeDOS "documentation" website, > filled with these kinds of "how-to" and "what-is" content. > > Writing about FreeDOS is also my strength, so I can build up some core > documentation quickly by adapting (or just copying/pasting) content > from articles I've already written, such as the articles I wrote for > Opensource.com and Both.org and elsewhere. The website would be an > excellent place for anyone who wants to write a "how-to" or "what-is" > document, and share it. It doesn't have to be "evergreen" content like > "what is FreeDOS" or "how to install FreeDOS" - it can be more timely > items like "what's new in the latest test release." It's similar to > article websites, but just about documentation. And it can be > non-traditional documentation, too - for example, topics on this > website might include a link to a video walkthrough to show things in > action, for people who just want to follow along with a video. > > I've created a mockup of what this documentation website might look like: > https://test.freedos.org/ > > This is meant to be a mockup, so it doesn't use real text. Instead, it > shows "squiggles" to represent text. (Behind the scenes, this is just > placeholder text with a special font that renders text as > "squiggles.") The website concept would have some articles "pinned" at > the top as "recommended reading" - these are articles that we want new > users to read, such as "what is FreeDOS" or "a quick-start guide to > using FreeDOS" or "how to install FreeDOS." Below that, the website > would show other topics .. as the list gets too long, we can hide the > rest of the list behind a "show more" button. There's also a "call to > action" to invite people to write their own how-to for the website. > > A few topics can be "aliased" to always be accessible, such as /about > might be an alias to the "what is FreeDOS" topic, and /install might > be an alias to the "how to install FreeDOS" item. But otherwise, > topics are listed in the hierarchy. > > This is basically how I manage the Technically We Write website and > Coaching Buttons websites. They are very fast and very secure, because > there's no web interface to add content (there's a separate process > for that) and the website is essentially a viewer with no ability to > modify the contents of the website. So the security profile is > extremely small. But it's also easy to backup because it's files - I > do a backup of the TWW and CB websites every day. > > This "test" website is just a place to test things before they go > live. My plan would be to rename the wiki.freedos.org server to > something like docs.freedos.org and set up the permanent website > there. > > > I think this is the best plan, and I think it will also address new > users and experienced developers very well. And now we'll have a place > that we can point new people to when they ask "newbie" questions, to > say "go read this URL on the FreeDOS Documentation website, and it > will answer your questions." Thoughts? If there are no alternatives, I > can start working on this next week, and likely migrate a set of > "what-is" topics from the wiki (and some "how-to" content from my > other articles) to the new site that same week, to get things moving > on the new documentation website. > > Jim > > > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-devel mailing list > Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel >
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