Tim Starling <tstarling <at> wikimedia.org> writes: > On 10/11/13 03:57, Nathan Larson wrote: > > Also, we have other antispam tools that are way more effective than > > nofollow at deterring spam. > > Like what? AbuseFilter is unusable for small wikis, SpamBlacklist is > poorly maintained, and FancyCaptcha is comprehensively broken -- we > have had reports of sites with FancyCaptcha being spammed to death. > Pretty much any captcha can be broken for $1.39 per 1000. You wouldn't > need very many impressions per edit for that to be economical.
Except that's a bit of a strawman. Sure all of those spam tools are relatively broken. You can use them on a wiki and still get a pile of spam. Except that most of those wikis being filled with spam haven't turned off $wgNoFollowLinks. So even though the spam tools are broken, the same goes for nofollow. What really matters for these comparisons is "how much" spam each of these tools are capable of deflecting. And what the overlap between them is. For example (percentages are arbitrary): If nofollow carries negative effects with it. And it deflects 5% of spam. But one of these other anti-spam tools deflects 25% of spam, including the same 5% group that are stopped by nofollow. Then nofollow is irrelevant since it doesn't deflect any spam that would already be deflected leading to a net negative for it being enabled. Or another example: Even if we "know" that one spam tool has the option to take nofollow into account. If nofollow only stops <1% of spam from showing up in practice. Then it's pretty irrelevant. Another point is if you can put a MediaWiki installation up under default settings right now and have it flooded with spam. Then $wgNoFollowLinks being on by default is pretty irrelevant if the difference is that a tiny bit more spam shows up. As whether it's on or off the wiki is still being flooded with an unbearable amount of spam. Unfortunately I don't know of any actual statistical test anyone's done comparing the amout of spam made on a wiki with and without nofollow. Or other anti-spam tools. _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
