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Our FAQ Has Been Destroyed

 
  

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Matthew Fluxington
18:11 / 12.02.04
Look at our FAQ.

Fantabulous. Obviously, we should redo the FAQ section, but this time it shouldn't be a Wiki. I hate to say it, but I saw this coming a mile away.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
18:28 / 12.02.04
Oh for fuck's sake.

It's weird that it took so long, I hope whoever did this has pop ups. Lots of pop ups that they can't get rid of.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
19:06 / 12.02.04
Oh look. It's better now. I'm sure this is Tom's work - I sent him a PM about it as soon as I found it.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
19:06 / 12.02.04
Fixed.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
19:08 / 12.02.04
No, it was me. It's a really easy thing to sort out and anyone can do it. It takes all of three seconds, too, so it's not really worth them bothering trying to change it again.

I've also made sure I've got a back up of every page stored. I can pass them on to other people if they want them.

Although I'm sure they wiil, Swansea apparently not having much nightlife and daddy paying for the Internet connection.
 
 
Lurid Archive
20:19 / 12.02.04
OK, that was a big drama that was over before I noticed. How did you fix it so easily, E. Randy?
 
 
Spatula Clarke
21:03 / 12.02.04
[edit - 09/12/04]

Okay, so the solution I originally posted here was a bit of a balls-up and, while it fixed things after a fashion, wasn't setting the wiki back perfectly. So here are the proper instructions.

Here's what to do for a proper fix (it's really easy, just a few clicks of your mouse and nothing else):

On any page of the wiki (other than the main page), down at the bottom of the screen there are five links. One is "View other revisions". If you click this, you get a list of the most recent versions of that page. All you have to do to fix a broken one is find the latest correct, non-spammy version in that list. Open it up. Now, go down to the links at the bottom again and this time click "Edit text of this page". You get a screen a little like the Send Message or Reply page here on the Underground, with the contents of the page inside an edit-friendly text box. All you do now is just click on the "Save" button at the end of the screen (there's a "Preview" button there, too, if you want to check that this is going to do what you want it to). This overwrites the current version of that page with the earlier, non-spammy one.

Hope that makes sense. Even if anything does go wrong - and if you follow this to the letter, I don't *think* it will - it's easily fixed again.
 
 
Bed Head
23:08 / 12.02.04
You’re so cool, ERandy. Nice work. However, you should know that while the FAQ works fine from the link in this thread, it’s still the stupid version when you’re clicking on the link on the Barbelith main page.

And I guess when Tom gets back he’ll be able to identify/ban/IP block the child who did this, right? Again.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
23:15 / 12.02.04
Sorry if I sound like a dullard, but do you mean the barbelith.com page or barbelith.com/underground? Because I can't seem to find a FAQ link on the first, and the second works fine for me.
 
 
Olulabelle
23:23 / 12.02.04
Oh this makes me really sad and cross.

Even though it's fixed it does. Why can't people let people just get on with it? Why are people so fucking horrible?

I hate people.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
23:29 / 12.02.04
Nah, it's person, not people. People aren't that bad. This particular person? Who knows. I'm guessing 50% of the problem is down to sexual frustration, with the other half being down to sexual frustration.

Just to amend something I said earlier in the thread: you can't change the contents of the revisions themselves, just make a new one by editing them. If anyone's interested in what exactly happened, follow the steps above for changing the contents of the pages - our friend's porn links are revision #61.
 
 
Jack Fear
23:45 / 12.02.04
Do you all see now why I love this man?

I call it out loud and proud: I LOVE YOU E. RANDY DUPRE!!
 
 
Bed Head
00:04 / 13.02.04
Ah, yeah, well, obviously it’s working okay now. But it wasn’t. Honest.

But yeah, second the love for Dupre! Although I’m not shouting it quite as loudly as Jack. The people in the flat below me are trying to get some sleep.
 
 
Mazarine
00:33 / 13.02.04
Hugs for Randy for good thinking. Thank you for fixing things.
 
 
Baz Auckland
03:22 / 13.02.04
E. Randy Dupre, you're my hero...

...it's sort of handy that whenever you make a change to a page, it logs your IP address... eh? mister '213.234.225.182'
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
04:27 / 13.02.04
God, missed that completely. Nice work, E Randy.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
12:39 / 13.02.04
Shucks.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
14:03 / 13.02.04
Jesus Dupre, you're such a nerd.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
15:02 / 13.02.04
I'm still amazed by the ease with which Randy fixed this mess. Thanks, Randy!
 
 
Baz Auckland
15:06 / 13.02.04
I'm afriad this wasn't a case of our Welsh friend. A google for the IP address '213.234.225.182' gives a list of a lot of other WIKI sites that have all been hit by shemale mania....
 
 
aus
15:57 / 13.02.04
It seems to me that 213.234.225.182 might be Russian, not Welsh.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
19:12 / 13.02.04
If it's a dynamic IP address, it doesn't necessarily mean it is and it doesn't necessarily mean it isn't. Mind you, I don't necessarily understand dynamic IP addresses as well as I think I do.

It doesn't really matter who it was did it. It was done, it's fixed, sorting it out should it happen in future is easier than pooping in your own pants.

Mention of Swansea is now obligatory when talking about dickheads.
 
 
w1rebaby
19:49 / 13.02.04
Hmm. A wikipedia-specific spambot?
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
13:53 / 14.02.04
A wikipedia-specific spambot?

Jesus, I really fucking hope so. Having googled the IP address above, I'd hate to think that any living person would be that obsessive.

A spambot seems far more likely. I'd say this is the next logical step on from the nasty little bots that busily spam blog comments. How might a wiki site prevent such abuses in future?
 
 
grant
15:47 / 16.02.04
Well, the whole idea behind wikis is that as soon as you notice something's wrong, you just go back to a prior revision.

It's so easy to change, that it's really kind of pointless to try changing it, since it's so easy to change back. Actually, I think the wiki software that pantywad.com uses (slightly different from the barbelith wiki) actually has a "restore this revision" button next to the revision list.

I'll have to tell pantywad's owner about this spambot....
 
 
Tom Coates
18:48 / 16.02.04
Well done everyone! It was only really a question of time before someone started to try and do this stuff. Just remember that the reason wikis work is that it's as easy to restore something as it is to break something. Do as Randy did here - just look back to find the version before they tried to fuck it up, open it up and then click on save to overwrite all the changes since then. Nice and easy. Still, very impressed about how cool everyone was about it!
 
 
Smoothly
23:36 / 25.06.04
The wiki seems to be bollocksed again. Unless Barbelith now comes in association with on-line gambling. I can't immediately work out how to fix it, and fear fucking it further if I try anything.
 
 
Smoothly
00:04 / 26.06.04
Hm.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
00:08 / 26.06.04
Cheers for pointing that out - I've got shot of the spam and set it back to how it should be.

With the exception of font formatting, which gave me trouble last time. Can somebody else cover that?
 
 
Spatula Clarke
00:13 / 26.06.04
Actually, don't worry about it. I'm a tit and it's all fine now.
 
 
Smoothly
00:15 / 26.06.04
Cheers, Randy.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
07:44 / 26.06.04
Thanks again, Randy. You big geek, you!
 
 
Grey Area
15:18 / 27.06.04
Purely to satisfy my personal curiosity: How does this happen? I mean, I know the Wiki is editable by all of us, but I would have thought that most people are responsible enough not to do this. And even if they play a prank, it'd be more something like the porn links or replacing everything with self-promoting crap. Who does this? Is someone/something hacking the Wiki from outside?
 
 
Spatula Clarke
00:16 / 28.06.04
That's the most likely explanation. The wiki can be edited by anybody, not just anybody who's a member of the board.

The initial problem affected many, many wikis, not just ours - Googling the IP address responsible for the spam brought up a massive list of other wikis that had been attacked in exactly the same way. The more recent attacks have bee relatively minor in comparison - rather than wiping the main page and replacing it, they've seen spam attached to the existing page contents (apart from the one the other day, which managed to overwrite the Recent Changes page as well as get itself added to the top of the main page).

And, considering that it's such an easy thing to fix and the spam is so random, you'd really have to worry about the sanity of anybody doing this because of a grievance with the board.
 
 
grant
14:03 / 29.06.04
Oddly, the last few weird links I've noticed have been Chinese. I never really thought of China (or even Taiwan) as a big player in the world of spam.
 
  

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