[GRASS-dev] Re: impending wiki spam bombing

[Hamish]

Markus:
> > > Would it help to enable a captcha?
Hamish:
> > Yes. It would help solve our current problem of creation of fake accounts.
M:
> > > What about  http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ConfirmEdit  ?
H: 
> > Looks good!
M:
> We tried it yesterday, but it enabled only the Chinese version.
> We didn't manage to enforce English or even what the browser
> says (mine definitely doesn't send "zh"). So we had to remove it.

?! hmph.
An idea- my Debian/sarge box once installed a bunch of Chinese versions
automatically. It turned out the problem was that the package relied on a
meta-package which could be fulfilled by a number of language specific
packages. So it installed the first language package on the list, which was
Chinese, and hilarity ensued.

IIRC we had a similar problem with the Debian GRASS package which depends on
"xterm | x-terminal-emulator". In the past we just depended on
"x-terminal-emulator" which could pull in something other than xterm that
provided x-terminal-emulator, and hilarity ensued.  (?)

also for ConfirmEdit "The current version(s) require PHP5; for PHP4-compatible
versions, use an older version available in the SVN."  ?

taken from SVN? I see that ConfirmEdit.i18n.php has had many edits in the last
3 weeks.

too late for me tonight, but they have an IRC channel for support-
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:FAQ#I_have_a_question_not_answered_here._Where_do_I_go_next.3F


I would like to keep working on this problem.

 
H:
> > Here is another MediaWiki captcha plugin to look at:
> >   http://recaptcha.net/plugins/mediawiki/
M:
> "(note that this plugin only works with MediaWiki 1.8 or newer)."
> -> we have 1.6.x. 

ah.

> > The official MediaWiki page uses a couple of plugins:  ("Other" section)
..
> Not sure how much Newuserlog helps if it isn't automated.
> but it would be easier to trac the subscriptions. OK, added:

nice.
 

> I am rather surprised not to be able to simply block certain email
> addresses from ever subscribing. Mailman does have this feature ("ban").
> Strange. Banning by IP isn't really helpful here.

I guess a request upstream is in order. It must happen to others sites too.

> Anyway, I can wipe out this subscribe bot easily now (and regularly do).

Yea, but it is still an unneeded waste of time & energy so finding an automated
solution would be better in the long run.
 

cheers,
Hamish



       
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