On Tue 06 Dec 2016, Dominic Hargreaves dom@earth.li wrote:

As I'm in the process of moving the config for the server in question, I'm looking at whether to migrate the following sites:

http://copenhagen.openguides.org/ http://isle-of-wight.openguides.org/ http://north-devon.openguides.org/wiki/ http://portsmouth.openguides.org/ http://swindon.openguides.org/

These are all sites which seem to have very little genuine content, and (where edits are enabled) are sadly swamped by spam.

Thanks for bringing this up. I wasn't aware some of those sites even still existed! As a local historian, I would argue that keeping some of these online but with the spam removed, edits disabled, and a clear banner saying that they're no longer being updated might be the best way to deal with the issue. For example, this page: http://north-devon.openguides.org/wiki/?Terrace_Tapas_Bar might seem useless, but actually I've made use of similar comments in my own local history articles.

Conversely, the Isle of Wight guide does seem not to have any real content, so I see no reason to keep it.

It's up to you, though, since you're the one who would have to do the work of migration. Another option could be to clean up the spam and then make sure everything's in the Internet Archive before deleting the sites, though this makes it harder for a websearch to reveal the info.

This site:

http://cambridge.openguides.org/

has quite a lot of spam but also a reasonable amount of genuine content, even if not very up-to-date.

I pretty much gave up on spamtrapping on the Cambridge guide because it was non-trivial to update the spamcatcher module. Oxford seems to be doing OK, though - is that all manual or is someone keeping the spamcatcher module up to date? If the latter, could the two guides share a spamcatcher module?

Kake

On Tue, Dec 06, 2016 at 10:41:38AM +0000, Kake wrote:

On Tue 06 Dec 2016, Dominic Hargreaves dom@earth.li wrote:

...

As I'm in the process of moving the config for the server in question, I'm looking at whether to migrate the following sites:

http://copenhagen.openguides.org/ http://isle-of-wight.openguides.org/ http://north-devon.openguides.org/wiki/ http://portsmouth.openguides.org/ http://swindon.openguides.org/

These are all sites which seem to have very little genuine content, and (where edits are enabled) are sadly swamped by spam.

Thanks for bringing this up. I wasn't aware some of those sites even still existed! As a local historian, I would argue that keeping some of these online but with the spam removed, edits disabled, and a clear banner saying that they're no longer being updated might be the best way to deal with the issue. For example, this page: http://north-devon.openguides.org/wiki/?Terrace_Tapas_Bar might seem useless, but actually I've made use of similar comments in my own local history articles.

Conversely, the Isle of Wight guide does seem not to have any real content, so I see no reason to keep it.

It's up to you, though, since you're the one who would have to do the work of migration. Another option could be to clean up the spam and then make sure everything's in the Internet Archive before deleting the sites, though this makes it harder for a websearch to reveal the info.

If there was any significant volume of content, or someone interested in keeping it running, I can put the effort in, but otherwise, I'm not sure I have the spare energy. (The owner of North Devon for example emailed me privately to say it should go).

...

This site:

http://cambridge.openguides.org/

has quite a lot of spam but also a reasonable amount of genuine content, even if not very up-to-date.

I pretty much gave up on spamtrapping on the Cambridge guide because it was non-trivial to update the spamcatcher module. Oxford seems to be doing OK, though - is that all manual or is someone keeping the spamcatcher module up to date? If the latter, could the two guides share a spamcatcher module?

Oxford uses an Akismet plugin:

http://www.larted.org.uk/~dom/tmp/Akismet.pm.txt

I've just set Cambridge up to use that too.

Dominic.

On Sun, Dec 11, 2016 at 11:08:13AM +0000, Kake wrote:

On Thu 08 Dec 2016, Dominic Hargreaves dom@earth.li wrote:

...

If there was any significant volume of content, or someone interested in keeping it running, I can put the effort in, but otherwise, I'm not sure I have the spare energy. (The owner of North Devon for example emailed me privately to say it should go).

I have a new idea! How about just making a final database dump for each deleted guide available on the "gone away" page? That would seem to offer the best ratio of benefit to effort. The data will all still be there, albeit a bit hard to discover.

Not a bad idea, thanks.

...

http://www.larted.org.uk/~dom/tmp/Akismet.pm.txt

I've just set Cambridge up to use that too.

Ah-ha, yes, I remember that now. I'm guessing the issue with too many false positives has been resolved?

I don't think the Oxford Guide has been heavily enough used recently for such a problem to be detectable, but I only have a very dim memory of the problem.

Cheers, Dominic.