Talk:Main Page

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Contents

Let no non-user post.

I'm pretty tired of restoring articles all the time. Why can't someone just disable the posting for unregistered users? I don't honestly believe there are many cases where someone would like to fix something or write a new article but doesn't bother to do so only because it requires registering. This has been suggested before too, if I remember correect. --Keymaker 09:27, 18 Mar 2006 (GMT)

I'd agree. Although it might put off people who just want to make a very minor change (like fixing a spelling mistake), this kind of edit is rare. --Safalra 12:05, 18 Mar 2006 (GMT)
A better solution would be to have a kind of CAPTCHA for anonymous edits. Like the security code required to submit languages to the 99 bottles of beer web site. Not sure how easy this is to implement though... --Rune 13:29, 18 Mar 2006 (GMT)
Hmmm, that would be pretty good indeed. Machine vision isn't good at all yet, so it's practically impossible for a non-human spammer to get through. If we don't get one here somehow, then it might be a good time to disable non-user posting for once and all. --Keymaker 17:45, 18 Mar 2006 (GMT)
It seems like all these spam edits either remove chunks of pages or make links with the text "...". From the #esoteric chatlogs: 
17:03:14 <ihope> So how do we stop the recent spam-wave?
17:03:33 <ihope> Temporarily block unregistered dudes from editing?
17:05:32 <ihope> Prevent external links from having the text "..."?
17:06:31 <ihope> And for the other type of spam, prevent page lengths from being cut in half?
No reason to block more than we need to. --Ihope127 18:26, 18 Mar 2006 (GMT)
Well, that'd work to the current spammer that keeps attacking this place, but I'm sure there are more efficient spam-bots that for example just change the link and not its caption. Or add links without "...". I'm still suggesting we either prevent non-users from editing OR use something system such as Rune mentioned. --Keymaker 19:27, 18 Mar 2006 (GMT)
I disagree. Allowing people to contribute without registering is important, and some spambots will actually register accounts -- just the other day I found a wiki full of spam and clicked Edit to fix it, but was told I had to register.
Whenever I see new spams, I block parts of the URLs, if I can do so without breaking legitimate edits. Also, I'd suggest replacing < with &lt; and " with &quot;, because there is a spambot that seems to choke if it finds those characters in an article (if it successfully added a spam link, then the edit could be rejected). --Graue 21:51, 20 Mar 2006 (GMT)

Well, I'm getting pretty tired of cleaning the spam all the time. I assume someone else can do it soon, in case it's not worth disabling the anonymous editing (which in my opinion should've been disabled ages ago). This is a great wiki and it's a pity to see it getting ruined. --Keymaker 09:01, 12 Apr 2006 (GMT)

I concur. I've just reverted another 12 articles (before remembering to log in...). As far as I can see we gain nothing by allowing anonymous users to post, but are constantly spammed as a result. I too am getting bored of spending so much time reverting spam, and I'll probably soon give up on this wiki. --Safalra 14:26, 15 Apr 2006 (GMT)

Maybe prevent non-registered users from editing. Also prevent external links with a caption of "..." and prevent pages from being cut in half in the middle of a line without changing anything else. And change the URLs for special thing like edit page, random page, etc. --Zzo38 21:38, 13 Apr 2006 (GMT)

Disabling non-registered posting is a *non-solution*. The spambots will register and spam and helpful unregistered people won't be able to fix it. I've seen this happening all over the web. Tell you what, if someone can code up a patch to MediaWiki 1.4.x to ask a math question (like "4x + 7 = 39, x = ?") or something like that, I'll apply it. Alternatively, help me figure out why the mod_security filters for the site are not working at all -- if they were, most spam would be blocked. The filters do block humans from using words like "casi" + "no", but the spammers are getting around these filters somehow. I don't understand Apache or mod_security well enough, and my web host is no help whatsoever. --Graue 00:45, 17 Apr 2006 (GMT)

A math question could do the trick, but I see no need to make it so "difficult". Simple questions like 2+2=? should be enough. I don't think this wiki is significant enough that anyone would bother to reprogram the bots just to spam it. And if they did, equations wouldn't be any harder for a bot than simple arithmetics.
I don't know anything about mod_security filters, so I have no idea if they can be made to work properly :( --Rune 17:27, 24 Apr 2006 (UTC)

I looked a bit at mediawiki extensions, and found a way to do our own spam-filtering. If the following code is added to the end of LocalSettings.php, all attempts to save an article containing the word spam will result in an error: 

$wgHooks['ArticleSave'][] = 'fnSpamCheck';

function fnSpamCheck(&$article, &$user, &$text, &$summary, &$minoredit, &$watchthis, &$sectionanchor) {
  if (stripos($text, "spam")) return "Please don't spam our wiki!";
  else return true;
}

This is of course just a proof of concept as an alternative to asking questions of the poster. --Rune 18:00, 24 Apr 2006 (UTC)


Here's a working solution which should block the current type of spam from the wiki: 

 $wgHooks['ArticleSave'][] = 'fnSpamCheck';
 function fnSpamCheck(&$article, &$user, &$text, &$summary, &$minoredit, &$watchthis, &$sectionanchor) {
     if ($user->getID() <= 0) { //only anonymous users 
         if (stripos($text, "<REMOVED>")) return "<p><b>Please do not spam our wiki!</b></p>The text you submitted was caught by the spam filter. If it didn't contain any spam please let us know by posting a message <a href='/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:Main_Page'>here</a> so we can improve the filter.";
         else return true;
     }
     else return true;
 }

It will block all anonymous edits which contain the substring "<REMOVED>" (which is supposed to be: dot h t m space dot dot dot right-square-bracket), which as far as I can see, applies to all of the current spam. I have implemented this on this wiki if anyone wants to test it (note: terribly slow server!). --Rune 22:35, 27 Apr 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I've installed that code. --Graue 22:12, 29 Apr 2006 (UTC)
Great. Lets hope it will be enough. I had to remove the actual string from my code above, as otherwise it would be caught by the filter, and thus disallow anonymous edits of this page. --Rune 13:13, 30 Apr 2006 (UTC)
As there is a new spammer here I tried to submit a fix to my anti-spam script that will reject articles with div tags. However, I wasn't able to submit it because it contained a div tag, and was therefore stopped by apache. So apparently div tags are already disallowed, and still the spammers manage to post them... --Rune 21:19, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Of course, in order to stop the current spam, all you need to do is block the string "I do not have money to buy meal to my children" --Rune 21:23, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I got a error: I can't type "e c h o (space) d i e" for some reason, but it works if I put a comma (see INCAL) --Zzo38 21:35, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Ah, the precondition bug again. It also appears on the Esolang:Wiki preservation page (see talk). Some quick googling seems to indicate that this could be caused by the apache spam filters --Rune 21:44, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps add rules to block span and div tags? I can't see a valid reason for those to be allowed. A better idea was brought up on IRC: it can be a simple checkbox with text such as "Check this box to post". That isn't a big deal to do for each post (much easier than math problems, etc), and it is doubtful that the spammers will go to the trouble to work around it (I say this from experience when doing this for another frequently spammed wiki). If I provide a patch that implements this captcha, will you consider it? If not, what are your objections? --Calamari 17:18, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I think that sounds like a good idea, as long as there is a helpful error message displayed if you don't check it so users easily understand why their submission was rejected. --Rune 21:09, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
You need rules to block style="dis[-- avoid filter --]play: none" and similar things. Because the style attribute can be added to any HTML tag. This will stop it from being invisible text. --Zzo38 23:40, 3 Jun 2006 (UTC)
I do block that; the rule was just too specific before. I check the recent changes every day and if I see spam I improve the filters so it won't get through. So you don't need to worry about it. --Graue 20:15, 4 Jun 2006 (UTC)

Just one thing to tell you which has been recently used: style="position:absolute;left:-400000px;height:1px;" --Zzo38 05:33, 22 Oct 2006 (UTC)

Here's another way that we might be able to cut down on spam: what about insisting that the summary box contains information when posting? None of the current spammers do this, and it would help when reading the change log. -- ais523 14:54, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

That's a very good idea IMHO. I second! --Rune 16:53, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

There's a new wave. It seems that its pattern is to create "Talk:[ARTICLE]/w/index.php" (probably because of a misunderstanding, but I digress). If there is any way to block these, it would be useful. --IslandHopper973 11:56, 3 Mar 2007 (UTC)

Scratch that: "Talk:[ARTICLE]/[foo]" it seems. --IslandHopper973 12:28, 4 Mar 2007 (UTC)


We need a solution that prevents all spammers from posting, not just ones that use div tags or href or screw up title names. The verification-code, math problem, and checkbox solutions all sound good to me, and should prevent most of the spam. For now we can just give more people janitor privs: I'd be happy to delete spam pages myself. Together we shall squash the invaders!!! :) -Seven Inch Bread 18:57, 4 Mar 2007 (UTC)

There are CAPCHAs available in MediaWiki 1.9, and it's possible to turn them on only for edits that introduce external links (a nice balance between blocking spambots and annoying casual editors). I think it might also be possible to turn on the option that means that you have to click 'save' twice if you don't have an edit summary by default, which would help stop spambots (especially the non-MediaWiki spambots that are hitting this wiki by mistake, thinking it's a forum, and nevertheless managing to save the page). ais523 09:56, 5 Mar 2007 (UTC)
That sounds great. I'm all for it. -Seven Inch Bread

I updated the software to 1.9 and added text captchas for posts from non-logged-in users that add external links. If you notice any problems resulting from either change, let me know. (I will probably respond to emails faster than posts here.) I hope this helps the spam problem. --Graue 17:19, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

What should I do if I just created a new language?

So... what should I do if I just created a new language? --Ihope127 18:30, 26 Aug 2005 (GMT)

Go to http://esoteric.voxelperfect.net/wiki/name_of_your_language (not that exact address of course - change 'name_of_your_language' to the name of your language), click 'Edit this page' and tell us about your new language. Have a look at some the existing entires to see the general format. Don't forget to add the appropriate categories: http://esoteric.voxelperfect.net/wiki/Esolang:Categorization. And you should probably look at http://esoteric.voxelperfect.net/wiki/Esolang:Community_Portal first. --Safalra 19:33, 26 Aug 2005 (GMT)
Or you can first go to the Language list and insert a link to your language there using [[name of language]]. Then you can click on this new link to start writing the page. --Rune 22:56, 26 Aug 2005 (GMT)
However, if it is Easy you're talking about, you should put the link in the Joke language list instead. --Rune 22:58, 26 Aug 2005 (GMT)
It's funny how fast info travels: yes, it was Easy. Anyway, I think I'll drop the joke and actually make Easy a "real language" rather than describe how amazingly easy it is to write stuff. --Ihope127 15:36, 27 Aug 2005 (GMT)
Well, your post on alt.lang.intercal was the first in months, so it got my attention :) --Rune 16:19, 27 Aug 2005 (GMT)


Year categories

How about making year categories like in the Wikipedia? This would enable us to browse languages chronologically, which I think would be very interesting. Example from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1999 --Rune 23:32, 28 Aug 2005 (GMT)

Done. At least I started a Years Category and in it all the years from 1990-2005 + 1972 (INTERCAL). I added a couple of languages to the categories -- mainly those I knew about and could find the year for. --Stux 14:30, 31 Oct 2005 (GMT)

Site down?

Is it just me, or did something happen? --Ihope127 00:30, 5 Oct 2005 (GMT)

To what? --BodyTag 17:17, 5 Oct 2005 (GMT)
The website was down for a little while if that's what you mean. You could read it at the mirror when that happens. (Edit: your post preceded the downtime, so I really have no clue what you are talking about.) --Graue 17:36, 5 Oct 2005 (GMT)
I think the site was down when I posted that. It was from esolangs.org. --Ihope127 12:41, 6 Oct 2005 (GMT)
I'm confused. How could you post if the site was down? --Rune 13:06, 6 Oct 2005 (GMT)
I posted via the esolangs.org mirror. --Ihope127 14:46, 8 Oct 2005 (GMT)
Huh? That isn't a mirror. It's the same site (with a different address). Or have I misunderstood completely? --Rune 01:21, 9 Oct 2005 (GMT)
The voxelperfect one has a banana-yellow background, and the others have white backgrounds. --Ihope127 22:33, 16 Oct 2005 (GMT)
That's because you're logged in on the voxelperfect one (and have your theme set to Classic, which is no longer the default) but not the others. Cookies are domain-specific. --Graue 22:49, 16 Oct 2005 (GMT)
Aha. So that would mean the domain name itself was down somehow, I suppose? --Ihope127 20:38, 17 Oct 2005 (GMT)

Esoteric OS

Anybody remember the ESO project? Wonder what it would take to get it up and running again.

Anyone actually interested in continuing it, or maybe even starting a new "ESO" project with a new foundation. (Think about an ESO based on the Linux kernel. Insanity on multiple hardware platforms!) --ORBAT 18:07, 29 Oct 2005 (GMT)

Ah yes. It'd be fun to re-do that with Lazy K. --Ihope127 19:35, 29 Oct 2005 (GMT)
Sounds like much fun! Now if I had time... I shouldn't even be typing this, I should be getting ready for class! LOL --Stux 14:41, 31 Oct 2005 (GMT)
I definitely would like to see something like ESO but I wouldn't actually be able to help with making it.
Poiuyqwert 01:03, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately that would be hard to do with some of the languages here (esoteric is the point, I know). I would suggest using a fairly powerful function or object based language. I have recently made up a fairly powerful functional language called BRZRK. I would like to make object oriented eventually, but I don't know when I will get around to it. --Revcompgeek 05:14, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Why the lime?

Just wondering, why is the logo three lime slices? --BodyTag 19:23, 31 Oct 2005 (GMT)

Good question. There was some discussion on #esoteric about having a logo contest, and some suggestions were made, but nothing came of it. The lime slices are kind of nice though :) --Rune 01:06, 1 Nov 2005 (GMT)
If the world gives you lemons, make a program out of them! ;) --User:Keymaker
Hmm an esolang based on the idea of lemons/limes... Maybe not. It makes a good logo though. Even if I wouldn't ever guess it was for an esoteric programming language wiki. ;P --BodyTag 10:38, 1 Nov 2005 (GMT)

Too strict spam filter

I get a "precondition failed" error when trying to use the word F T P (without the spaces) on the wiki. I assume this is the apache filter who's acting up. There seems to be several issues with this, and I'm not sure it is necessary at all anymore, with the new spam block tricks recently implemented. --Rune 12:57, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Bug in navigation panel

The alternate messages when I put the mouse over the Community portal and Language list links seem a bit out of place, especially the latter. --Ørjan 00:50, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

The message for the Community Portal is the correct one. The Language List message is of course wrong. This is because we changed the Current Events link to a Language List link (see Talk:Language_list#Redirect_from_Main_Page). I've never noticed those mouse-over messages before, and I don't know how to change them, but I assume it can be done much in the same way as the links itself. --Rune 09:28, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
Presumably it has something to do with the id=n-currentevents that I see in the page code. (Some day I may get around to learning CSS and/or Javascript myself.) As for the Community Portal, it was the "About the project" phrase I felt was out of place, although it may be as simple as changing the following comma into a colon. --Ørjan 14:30, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Blocking

Isn't blocking someone 24 years just for writing a meaningless number on a page a tad harsh? Or is this a known spammer tactic that it would be dangerous to simply delete? I am new to wikis so I wouldn't know. --Ørjan 17:16, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps. We have had a lot of problems with spam recently, so I guess I have gotten used to striking down hard on any occurences. The reason for the 24 years is that the default value is 24 hours, which is way too short in the case of spambots. As for that weird number, that is something I haven't seen before. I have no idea what the purpose (if any) of inserting random numbers into a wiki would be... --Rune 17:58, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
It's probably a spammer experiment of some kind. The IP resolves to D3055.servadmin.com, not a residential address. --Graue 18:46, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Diffs and sections

In the page histories, the links to diffs sometimes include the section of a change. This causes my browser to jump to the formatted section instead of showing the diff at the top of the page. Would it be hard to change this? --Ørjan 15:29, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Login timeout

Would it be possible to make the timeout before automatically logging out a bit longer? Everytime I do a moderately long edit, even if I login just as I start editing, I have to remember to login again before saving it, or else show up just as an IP address. --Ørjan 16:08, 3 Jun 2006 (UTC)

That's strange. I usually stay logged on for days, if not weeks. --Rune 16:34, 3 Jun 2006 (UTC)
It happens to me too; I often find myself logged out unexpectedly for no apparent reason. It's only started happening recently. --ais523 07:27, 5 Jun 2006 (UTC)
Apparently, the Wikipedia itself sometimes has the same problem. Their solution is to check the 'Remember password' box on the login screen, unless using a public computer (where there isn't much of a choice). --ais523 10:17, 20 Jun 2006 (UTC)

The Esoteric Programming Languages Ring

I think that we should add the wiki to the The Esoteric Programming Languages Ring, but to do that we have to add a webring navigation bar to this page, so I thought it would be best to ask first if anyone has a problem with that. --Rune 20:02, 4 Jun 2006 (UTC)

You could add a webring page to the wiki that includes the webring navigation bar (maybe link to it from Community portal). You should get other people's opinions as well, though. --Zzo38 02:26, 16 Sep 2006 (UTC)

Main Page design

Using specific colors is not a good idea IMHO, as the color schemes for the rest of the pages are different depending on what skin the user uses. Ørjan's color changes was an improvement, but I still think the layout is a bit odd, and not in style with the rest of the wiki. --Rune 11:27, 9 Aug 2006 (UTC)

I experimented a bit, and I could get the color from the skin by using id="toc" as a row attribute instead of background="#EEF", but then the font looked weird. I don't know much about CSS so hopefully someone else can do it better. The main page is the first impression people get of the wiki so having a special design makes some sense. Maybe a MAINTOC template? --Ørjan 13:19, 9 Aug 2006 (UTC)
Some HTML is disabled when editing, so it's hard to edit style without having access to that. It may be possible to change the ID to 'toc' and change the font as well, but I can't think of how to do it without the HTML stuff that doesn't work. --Dreamisle 19:52, 9 Aug 2006 (UTC)
Admins can edit the skins separately: MediaWiki:monobook.css, etc. If a 'mainpage' class or ID was added to each skin, the colour could be varied by skin. -- ais523 12:10, 1 Sep 2006 (UTC)

2006 Esolang Contest

Does anyone know when the results will be announced? It's been a couple months already. Stebbins 04:07, 3 Dec 2006 (UTC)

Special characters

Unless the subpage feature is turned off for a namespace, names containing slashes are interpreted as subpages. I suspect two slashes might designate the root page. Perhaps turning it off in the main namespace might get /// to work. But then again, it is probably more convenient to allow subpages than to make the name of a single page exactly right.

According to Wikipedia, plusses are still not allowed in the default setup, although Ais523's moves seem to have managed to bypass that enough to make HQ9+ work as a redirection target. You need to put 

$wgLegalTitleChars .='+';

in LocalSettings.php to make them work. --Ørjan 18:22, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

It's nothing to do with MediaWiki at this point; the '+' in a name is legal, as is the '/', but the server (probably; it might be something else on route) is silently discarding %2B at the end of a URL (presumably thinking it's trailing whitespace, which it could be if ' ' is encoded to '+' and then to '%2B'), and is interpreting '////' at the end of a URL as '/', presumably trying to use directory markup rules. Still, the current state is a definite improvement over what was available before. ais523 09:03, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
OK. Curiously I just tested, and it actually requires exactly three slashes to get to the main page. --Ørjan 13:31, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Precondition for User-Agent string

Do you have a precondition for user-agent string? Why? I set the user-agent string to "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5 -- Hay you! Look at the good website that I made is http://zzo38computer.cjb.net/" and it didn't work so I changed it back. --Zzo38 22:03, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Fate of Esowiki

I'm getting a bit worried due to the inactivity of this site. It seems not may people go here anymore :( I hope this wonderful site doesn't close down or anything! I wonder if we could find a way to bring a bit more traffic to this site.

If anyone is out there and reading this, please reply!

--71.10.239.150 05:32, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I visit daily, more than once. However, I don't think it's going to close anytime soon, especially as it's such low-traffic and its owner hopefully/likely doesn't need to pay much for it. I'm fine with more traffic if it doesn't bring the kind of people who think C is the best language in the world and tell us to "learn to program in a real language". --Keymaker 07:10, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Most of the edits here are to add new langs, which doesn't happen all that often simply because esolangs aren't created at the rate that, say Wikipedia articles are created. There are several users (including me) who RC patrol every single edit, so the site is certainly capable of activity if something interesting happens. According to Alexa, 0.000085% of Internet users visit pages on http://esoteric.voxelperfect.net, and 0.000015% of Internet users visit pages on http://esolangs.org, every day; that means that there may be as many as 1 millionth of the world's Internet users visiting this wiki every day. (Of course, Alexa statistics tend to be inaccurate for lower-traffic websites.) --ais523 11:52, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
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