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RecentLinks
MeatballWiki | RecentChanges | Random Page | Indices | CategoriesTo combat LinkSpam, a site can increase the focus of its PeerReview on external links by creating a digest (a la RecentChanges) of recently posted external links. By simply showing what new links have been added, when, and by whom, it makes it much easier to locate and revert spam.
In its most basic incarnation, RecentLinks simply summarizes the differences in external links for all changes to the site. However, there can be a few basic improvements to improve the usability.
- Show only new, unseen domains. Frequent links to popular and trusted sites like SlashDot or CNN do not need to be vetted. Rather, the challenge is in fighting the scourge of new domains that spammers want to raise in the Google rankings. If you keep a whitelist of previously vetted domains, you can eliminate them from the listings, thus increasing the SignalToNoiseRatio of spam to ham. After some expiry period, like the KeptPages expiry, you can consider a new domain to be 'vetted' and add it to the white list.
- Sort by host, UserName, link domain, and LinkText. PeerReviewers should also be able to resort the data to collate entries by the host (domain or IP address) of the editor, any UserName they choose (collate all anonymous editors), the domains of the links, and the LinkText for named links. Doing so will maximize the likelihood you will be able to group all of a spammer's edits together in the listings.
- One-click GlobalRevert / CitizenArrest. Once a set of edits are grouped together, provide a clean interface to revert all those changes or CitizenArrest that group. For instance, if you group by link domain, you can GlobalRevert all the 'coolhost.com' domains in one click (cf. CoolHostCase) rather than the 192 individual manual reverts it took (nearly 1000 clicks!). Global reversion is of course dangerous, but consider that the full set of reverts will then also appear on RecentLinks to be reverted again if necessary.
A toy RecentDomains? listing can be found at [my temporary UseMod site]. It is similar to RecentChanges, except the listing is at domain-granularity rather than page-granularity. However, the interface does not yet appear conducive to successfully battling spam. Comments and suggestions would be most appreciated. -- ChrisPurcell
CategorySpam