Bitcoin Forum

The Bitcoin wiki is in dire need of administrators to flush all the spam/bad stuff/etc and for themselves to nominate stewards who help new wiki users.

As the process is usually driven by the community (on wikipedia), we'll do something similar here too. This will be in two steps. First one is this post, where people willing to spend time fighting spam and improving the Wiki can post and explain why they are the best choice for this.

Depending on the number of candidates we will have more or less openings, but we need more than one new administrator anyway. This thread will be closed 24 hours after creation, at which point a new thread for voting will be open.

So remember, to apply you need to post:

• Your login on the wiki
• Your motivations, and why you think you are the best for this job

Current administrators (https://en.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Special%3AListUsers&username=&group=sysop&limit=50)

This thread was started as the result of a conversation between me and MagicalTux on IRC. The wiki currently only has me, MagicalTux, nanotube and Kiba as admins, and we're busy that we don't get time to do the necessary cleanup always. As a long term administrator of the wiki since it's inception, I'm going to nominate sgornick on his behalf.

He has been active in the community and is well trusted as the owner of bitcoinnews.com and bitcoinminer.com among his other sites (his projects are listed at https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/User:Sgornick).

He's been proactive with fighting spam and adding new info to the wiki, and enabling him with the tools he needs is not a bad decision.

I'm "Edd (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/User:Edd)" on the wiki.

While I haven't done much besides add my own sites, I sincerely care about the success of Bitcoin and believe my personality and contributions to this forum will back me up. I'm well acquainted with the written word, having almost no difficulties making myself understood (even on the internet!). This is definitely something I am willing to commit time and effort to.

In addition, I have plenty of experience managing people and projects IRL.

As an Administrator, would we get email notifications on modifications to the Wiki?
If so, I'd be more then happy to help out.

If you want notifications on modifications, just subscribe to the recent changes RSS feed

I had forgotten about RSS. I figured there would be a more instant way.
I'm currently using https://www.feedmyinbox.com for free RSS->E-Mail, but I only get them once a day.

I started the Chinese version of the bitcoin wiki which at this stage has really developed.

On the English version I've only really added the page for GLBSE, I wasn't aware that there was a spamming problem, that's something I'd like to help sort.

I think the wiki has been a great resource for the bitcoin project, it's often where users(newbs) go for more information and is in a sense an informal center of bitcoin documentation. The wiki must be preserved.

Wiki username: nefario

I don't think I can be much help for writing in the wiki because my english is too bad for that, but I can help fighting spam if there are not enough volunteers

nefario is also a great choice.

My votes: nefario and sgornick

Here's your mission, future wiki administrator ... should you choose to accept:

Is this content acceptable?
 http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Special:Contributions/Iscalar

[Update:
It is a thankless job, by the way.  See:
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/User_talk:Sgornick#22:58.2C_11_August_2011.E2.80.8E_.28GMT.29
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/User_talk:Gavinandresen
]

I would be interested in administrating the Polish version of it - as soon as MagicalTux or some other admin finally adds Polish language to it as per my request.

I could help out with the dutch part.
I would be happy to expand the dutch info about bitcoin so more dutch people are able to understand bitcoin and the technology behind it.

Ughh ... the Wiki is getting crapped on again.   I don't know if it is a natural language spambot or just some vandal but new users are getting created and then garbage articles being created.

The http://bitcoin.it  wiki uses MediaWiki.

What can be done?

I thought Mediawiki has capcha protection for account creation?

Want to help.

Everyone probably knows this but, http://www.thebitcoinreview.com/ Is a neat & easy to navigate version of this bitcoin wiki page https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade

thebitcoinreview.com is not here to replace the wiki, but an improvement on one page from the wiki, the https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade page.

Would it be respectable to post a link at the very top of this page pointing people to thebitcoinreview.com?

If you haven't heard of thebitcoinreview.com here is a short description:

Bitcoin Wiki Administrator Application:
   Wiki user: adamstgbit
Motivations: PR for thebitcoinreview.com. I would help build trust by replacing the https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade wiki page. with a long description of various bitcoin businesses, short descriptions of the best bitcoin sites, and a link to  thebitcoinreview.com for the complete list of bitcoin businesses.

my view of the https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade wiki page
sites like  the new Cheaper In Bitcoins (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=73894.msg820936) should be mentioned in the wiki trade page, but sites like Bit Scalper should not appear on the wiki, but  be red flagged (http://thebitcoinreview.com/site.php?site_id=824) by thebitcoinreview.com (We red flagged this site at the first sign of trouble, before it was proven to be a scam). Only 100% trusted sites should be mentioned on the wiki, and allowing any scammer to post up their scam on the wiki should be denied. i can do that for you  ;)

I have a little experience editing wikis, and a lot of experience fighting spammers (for a now-defunct social bookmarking website).

I'd be happy to volunteer my time, if you'd find it helpful.

Chris Koss
Business Development
Coinlab

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=v-Voo1UJzdc

That's who you have to fight against :P

Cleanup on aisle 7, stat!
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Special:RecentChanges

I guess the first question to ask is ... who's in charge of this thing?  (which was the OP's purpose for the post)
 - https://en.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Special%3AListUsers&username=&group=sysop&limit=50

The Securing Your Wallet article is in some dire need of attention.

The article probably needs categories, like "typical use", "enterprise-grade", and something along the lines of "tinfoil hat / paranoid"

It currently is not suitable for a typical user, has not been updated for the current client and reads like it was written by half a dozen different people each with their own ideas on security (well, that's because it was.)

Would anyone care to volunteer to fix this article?

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet

Ha, we are being blackmailed.  The latest spams read:


"To encourage less bulk wiki article creation, please send bitcoins to [...]"

Of course, when you reward something you get more of it, so please nobody honor this blackmail request.

But this is a problem that does not seem to be going away on its own.

And certainly this wasn't created just for the Bitcoin.it wiki.  I wonder how many other wiki admins are pulling their hair out (and blaming Bitcoin instead of realizing that wikis are a collaboration system vulnerable to this type of automated attack).

Those fuckers.

I am willing to administer the wiki on an ad-hoc basis, similar to how I do now.  In other words, I am unlikely to schedule time to do things on it, but will fix things on sight as I already do.  A brief review of my edit history will show that I regularly blank spam pages... if I had admin privileges, I'd be deleting them instead.

If that qualifies me to be an admin, the privilege would certainly not be abused.  I suppose there are numerous other activities that go into running a wiki such as contributing and maintaining articles, but these don't require being an admin and are things I would continue to do at the same pace as always.

Is there any other method that can help to stop this wiki spam bot menace?

I know blogging commenting systems have a scoring tool to automatically quarantine spam-like or otherwise suspicious posts,

Looking at MediaWiki, they suggest:

 - http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Combating_spam

It would be nice if the wiki contents could be kept to facts and away from opinion.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Litecoin is a prime example one "respected" Bitcoin developer continuously put his opinion in and expects it to be taken as fact. Led to many stupid unnecesary for Bitcoin or Litecoin arguments in the forums and IRC.
https://en.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Litecoin&action=history

For a few months now I have been keeping an eye on https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools . People start a pool and post there but when it fails forget to remove. So after verifying pools don't exist anymore I have been marking them as inactive, someone else has then been deleting them.
be handy if people that post check back and keep their posts up to date from time to time :)

Perhaps to become a user and post on the wiki you could send a bitcent and provide a return address for it to come back ?

Its not the best solution but its something.

I would like to volunteer to help moderate the wiki and clean up the spam.

My login is "barbarousrelic"

My motivation is to have a central place people can go to get all their Bitcoin questions answered, for the betterment of the Bitcoin community.

I'm having a case of deja vu, .. right now I'm adding to an article something I swear I added several months ago.  I checked the article's history and it doesn't show the edit I believe I made previously. This has happened now for at least several articles.

When adding details for an exchange, those details sometimes get replicated to other pages like the Buying bitcoins, Selling bitcoins, and Trade page.  For this specific entry (Bit-Pay), I remember doing a search on the Selling bitcoins page after the update to see if it was the only entry to list Mexico (MXN).  Today the entry for them did not already show this edit, so I'm completely baffled.

I know the site had technical errors (mysql errors) a couple months ago. It almost seems like the DB was restored from a point-in-time backup and thus some updates since that backup became lost.  That's just speculation though.

This wiki could really use some better administration though.

Some pending issues:  There still are many links that still go to the old forum structure (bitcoin.org/smf or forum.bitcoin.org), which could be identified and manually edited even.  There are a ton of spam bot articles.  Most have been renamed, but because delete requires admin, they remain eyesores.

There is a growing amount of editing / updating needed as well.  The "securing your wallet" article, for instance, is horrible, and hasn't been tweaked now that wallet encryption allows for it to be vastly improved.  And some articles have incorrect information.

The wiki needs someone to champion it.

I would like to be help on wiki.
Not the best writer, but I'm very determined to keep to the facts and clarify opinions are only opinions.
Can help with the Spanish version too.

These could be my words.

Ok so I still see dire need for work in the wiki as expressed in my new thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=103851.msg1138037) on the subject and see only 4 (the old) admins. Did this thread here not result in new admins?

If you want me on board, I would be honored and try my best to use the power sensitively. "Sensitively" would most likely mean that I would not take away LukeJr's toy (https://en.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Talk:Tonal_Bitcoin&diff=prev&oldid=30172) (although I would secretly applaud if anybody else did) and I would not delete articles in a rush but initialize deletion-discussions if there is any doubt about deleting something.

Please see my edits (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Special:Contributions/Giszmo) for reference.

For some reason in Chrome the CSS is hozed, displaying a blue background.

I didn't notice it at first and it seemed like it all of a sudden started occurring after I had done some spam article deletions, but I can't see anything that I would have done that would have touched the CSS so it must have been a coincidence.

But there's a problem yet so I'm not sure how to proceed.

Interesting ... it is a bug in Chrome, apparently, fixed in Chrome v19.

 - http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=113711


I'm on 18 but didn't just do any update.  Bizarre.

Man that looks horrible though.  Can anyone else confirm this issue?

I wonder if simply removing the blue background from the CSS for now would be better than trying to limp through.  It really looks like the site was hacked or something, it just looks bad.

I see where the problem occurs.  I had accidentally set my zoom at 90%.  With that setting the articles are nearly unreadable due to the CSS artifact.  At 100%, the problem goes away.

Hello,

I would like to apply for adminship on the Bitcoin wiki. Although my involvement in it has been minimal so far, I am beginning to get irritated at the spam present there, and would volunteer some of my time to help clean it up. Unlike certain people, I have no motivation to use any administrator powers for harm. Due to some wikipedia editing experience, the actions I have done are in general extremely neutral. I also have prior experience with administrating a mediawiki wiki.

My username is "Dree12". Thank you for considering my request.

I'd like to apply for wiki admin rights.
Who should I talk to?