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What is wikispam?

I just attended a "barcamp" event in Denver [see BarCamp Denver] and was a bit baffled by one thing that they started talking about: what the heck is 'wikispam'?

Dave's Answer:

Well, a Wiki is a user-editable Web site and spam is basically any sort of undesireable or irrelevant edit or change to the content of the site. Most likely the attendees of the Barcamp event would suggest that spam is more likely to be unsolicited commercial messages, typically attempts to get more inbound links or traffic to porn or gambling sites, etc. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about if you have an email box!

As Wikipedia says: "A wiki is a type of website that allows users to easily add, remove, or otherwise edit and change some available content, sometimes without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative authoring."

Anyway, what's interesting about this topic isn't the wikispam itself, but rather the many ways that wiki authors have tried to get around this problem. First off, there are wiki applications written in just about every different programming language known to mankind, except, perhaps, BASIC.

One of the limitations of most wikis is that there's an arcane language required to add new content, too, and so it's no surprise that there are now some wiki systems coming out that include more intuitive editing solutions, even WYSIWYG solutions.

Here's a small sampling of some of the most interesting wiki systems:

CLiki is a LISP-based wiki.
Perspective is a dot-net / Windows based wiki solution.
AtisWiki is a Perl-based wiki system.
MediaWiki is a popular PHP-based wiki.
Zwiki is built on Python.
TiddlyWiki is Javascript based.
Riki is a Ruby on Rails solution

Wikipedia has a comprehensive discussion of wiki technologies and list of wikis well worth reading through, and don't miss WikiMatrix.org which offers a huge amount of information to help you pick the best wiki software.

Oh, if you are configuring a wiki of your own, you'll definitely want to ensure that it has the rel=nofollow enabled and, if you're really drowning in wikispam, you might also consider simply blocking the word "http" in the edit filter.

Hope that helps clarify what's what.

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Categorized: Computer and Internet Basics (Article 6793)
Tagged: javascript, python, ruby, spam, wiki, wikipedia, wikispam
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Comments

Dave, I've been a reader of your blog for a while now. For the most part, I read your posts in my feed reader and click through when the question interests me. I was surprised to find you are using IntelliTXT. It was amusing that it was on a post about wiki-spam. According to me, the anchor tag/element has been spammed by IntelliTXT.

Just my 2 cents.

Posted by: Manisha at August 26, 2006 10:38 PM

Manisha, the inclusion of IntelliTXT is a bit of an experiment for me, to be honest. What I like about it, however, is that it is contextually relevant and subtle: if you don't roll over the words in green, you don't even realize that they're additional advertising.

However, I appreciate and am very conscious of your point and if I get a significant number of complaints, I'll drop the IntelliTXT system off the site without a second thought.

But I think it's a bit much to say that it's spam...

Posted by: Dave Taylor at August 26, 2006 11:41 PM

Dave, it affects editorial integrity in more ways than one. When I visit a web site or a blog, I am usually willing to be led to resources linked to by the author. With IntelliTXT, links that are not necessarily relevant to the article are placed within the content, underlined in double green. A user action is required (hover) before the reader is informed that it's an ad. It's very close to being scumware except that in this case the publisher has decided to allow the program to alter the contents of their articles. That is why I say the anchor tag has been spammed by IntelliTXT.

Don't get me wrong, I am not against contextual advertising. Clearly labeled contextual advertising is fine. It does not alter the original content of the article. IntelliTXT made money for Forbes.com but they still took it off.

Amy Gahran refers to it as "phony, automatically inserted links" in her article on Poynter Online dated June 2006. I'd link to it but your comments don't allow links :-D

Posted by: Manisha at August 28, 2006 8:53 AM

It was great meeting you at BarCamp, you had some very insightful comments! Keep up the great work.

Posted by: Andrew Hyde at August 28, 2006 4:17 PM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!