Introduction
For a very long time, already since the inception of your favorite Wiki, we have been facing quite some attention from spammers, posting the most ludicrous content.
In 2016-2017... while we even had a semi-professional spam hunter team (we still do), who ended up killing a few 100+ spam articles a day, which was more than we used to do in normal maintenance, causing a major stress on the TNWiki including performance and quality-dips ...
In November 2017, the technical platform team at Microsoft worked very hard to put a spam blocker solution in place, cutting down the spam stream to 0, from one day to another.
And since then we're virtually free of spam (with a few exceptions and a ton of spam history to kill...)… but the story does not end there.
See also
The post below is an extract/compilation of the forum threads and the FB discussions. So you might see some content being quoted, with permission of the most important contributor(s).
TN Forum post "Enough privileges to post an article on the Wiki"
And check the Wiki Ninja's Facebook group posts on the topic.
(This is a cross post from the TN Wiki, to increase searchability and to allow for updates in case of updates to Wiki policies and governance. )
Credits
Ronen Ariely (aka pituach), Richard Mueller
Collateral damage issue
Although the solution is built based on the typical behavior of spammers and works great overall, there is a small side effect to be noticed: in a very small number of cases legitimate Wiki publishers might not be able to create new articles.
When you hit this issue, you'll see a warning like "Sorry you don’t have enough privileges to post an article on the Wiki".
How it works
In essence, you must build sufficient reputation before you can post new articles on TNWiki.
The actual algorithm and requirements are more complicated, but are not disclosed for obvious reasons. As Richard already mentioned in one the forum threads "They were put in place recently to prevent spam Wiki articles. As such, we should not know the exact requirements. We don't want the spammers to have any clues to overcome the requirements."
Solution
There are a few methods to overcome the issue:
- Building a reputation on the MSDN/TN community
- Work together with an other community member on your first publications
Building reputation first
Reference: MSDN, TechNet and Expression Profile – FAQ: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/ff395928.aspx?#How_do_I_earn_points_
As explained by Ronen on the forum post: The first option is "you can help people here in MSDN and TechNet forums by answer questions and take part in discussions. Once you answer someone question you gain some points, once you write a useful message you can gain some points, and so on... You can join us at the Facebook group
and become part of the community in different activities, in a short time you should gain the points to be able to post articles directly :-)"
As explained in the FAQ, there are a few options to build reputation:
- MSDN/TechNet Forums
- TN/MSDN Gallery
- TNWiki Edits
Forums (from FAQ)
| Your forum post is confirmed as an answer by the original question asker. |
+15 |
|
Your forum post that was marked as an answer is removed by the original question asker. |
-15 |
|
Your forum post is confirmed as an answer by the original question asker in less than 8 hours. |
+20 |
|
Your forum post that was marked as an answer when contributed in less than 8 hours was removed by the original question asker. |
-20 |
|
Your forum post is confirmed as an answer by the community. |
+10 |
|
Your forum post that was marked as an answer is removed as an answer by the community. |
-10 |
|
Your forum post is confirmed as an answer by the community in less than 8 hours. |
+15 |
|
Your forum post that was marked as an answer when contributed in less than 8 hours was removed by the community. |
-15 |
|
|
|
|
You identified a helpful topic. |
+5 |
|
Your forum question thread has more than 5 votes in it. |
+5 |
|
Your forum question thread has more than 10 votes in it. |
+10 |
|
Your forum post receives a vote by the community. |
+5 |
|
|
|
|
Your forum question has a confirmed answer and has been viewed 20,000 times. |
+10 |
|
Your forum question has a confirmed answer and has been viewed 40,000 times. |
+15 |
Gallery (From FAQ)
| Your gallery contribution was downloaded 20 times. |
+20 |
|
Your gallery contribution was downloaded 50 times. |
+50 |
|
Your gallery contribution was downloaded 100 times. |
+100 |
|
Your gallery contribution was downloaded 1,000 times. |
+500 |
|
Your gallery contribution was downloaded 10,000 times. |
+2000 |
|
Your gallery contribution was downloaded 100,000 times. |
+5000 |
|
|
|
|
Your gallery contribution receives a 5 star rating. |
+10 |
|
Your gallery contribution receives a 4 star rating. |
+5 |
|
Your gallery contribution receives a 3 star rating. |
+2 |
Wiki
Even when you're not able to post new articles on TNWiki, you can still edit them. And for significant and useful edits, you DO get points.
[A small warning should be set here: if you think to bypass the spam detection, you're wrong. A single spam edit, or destroying valid content is a major reason to be banned immediately. Plus the Wiki system offers a quick function to revert to the last valid version, so it's not worth even trying it. ;)]
As explained in the FAQ : "You are eligible to receive a portion of an available set of points, depending upon your edit quantity and the milestone reached."
| The article you authored reached one out of 10 possible page view milestones. The various milestones range between 500 and 1 million page views. |
+5 to +2500 |
|
The article you edited reached one out of 10 possible page view milestones. The various milestones range between 500 and 1 million page views. You are eligible to receive a portion of an available set of points, depending upon your edit quantity and the milestone reached. |
+1 to +2500 |
Conclusion: you FIRST invest some time in the forums, the gallery, and then post the best of yourself on the TNWIKI.
Via Article sponsor
As editing an Wiki article (actually, combined with view count), is a way to build your reputation, that is exactly one of the methods to get started, except that you ask some help to create the initial entry.
Just to be clear, 'creating' an article does not count for points, and the fact of 'editing' itself neither.
As explained in the FAQ:
| Wiki |
Create a New Wiki Article. |
0 |
|
Edit a Wiki Article. |
0 |
|
You contributed a comment on the Wiki. |
0 |
|
You contributed a comment while editing an article on the Wiki. |
0 |
So, it's not about the count of edits, it's not about the count for comments, it's not about the count of changing tags. That will bring 0 points.
What you DO get points for is: the significant AMOUNT of content you edit, in relation to the page views that the page gets.
So it's a pretty fair system to earn points.
In practice:
- Prepare your post (title, content, tags, … needed)
- Check if you can create a new article (to see if you have sufficient reputation yet to unlock the TNWiki)
- If not, ask a question to help you creating your wiki page, in the TNWiki forum of the TNWiki Facebook page
- TNWiki forum: http://aka.ms/WikiForum
- TNWiki FB page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TechNetWikiNinjas
- Let the sponsor create an article with minimum content
- Fill the initial article with your content.
Please realise this is a temporary situation and once you unlocked the publication access, you're launched to create your own articles.
And last but not least, it's very important that you understand and comply to the TNWiki standards and guidelines when updating and publishing TNWiki articles. That's an essential task as TN Wiki Ninja.
What is expected from an author, I've explained it before in these posts:
In any case, if you need help, feel free to get in touch via the forum, the Facebook page or directly via other channels!
Kind regards,
Peter
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