Help:Spam

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What is spam?

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia defines spam as "unsolicited or undesired bulk electronic messages". Spam is a common problem with websites that allow posts from the public, such as guestbooks and of course, wiki sites.

How can ShoutWiki combat spam?

ShoutWiki has different tools to help you combat against spam and the spammers. The ConfirmEdit tool adds simple captchas to your wiki. If you need to have the captcha settings changed for your wiki, please contact us.

Another powerful feature is the hidden input field on editing view and on other forms. Because spambots automatically fill out whatever fields they see, they will get blocked because the SimpleAntiSpam extension adds a field that users will not see and shouldn't fill out. And since your users will not be affected by this, it only stops automatic spambots.

ShoutWiki staff are able to block spammers globally and also add their spam words / phrases into a global blacklist with the Phalanx extension.

SpamBlacklist is also a standard feature that we offer to you. It stops adding URLs that are in the global spam blacklist or in the local spam blacklist (MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist). If you need to add a blacklisted URL to an article, you'll need to add it (or ask an admin to add it for you) to the local whitelist page, MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist.

The staff has also the ability to use CheckUser tool to find out if a spammer is spamming multiple wikis under different usernames. If you need a user checked, please contact us.

Help! This isn't spam but yet it gets blocked by a spam filter!

Oops! Something might've gone wrong on our end or then there's a regex that's too generous in blocking...please contact our Customer Support Team immediately to get this fixed!

Can I get a spam phrase blocked?

Yes, if it isn't a common one. We obviously cannot block common phrases like "Thank you!" or "Welcome". Chances are that the spammer who spammed your wiki didn't just spam your wiki, but a bunch of other ShoutWiki-hosted wikis too. The sooner you report a spambot to us, the sooner we can prevent it from spamming!

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