- For old comments see the Archive.
RE: Suggestions[edit source]
I do not think we should ban page creation by new accounts. On wikipedia that makes sense, but on appropedia, I am sure that we will have some readers who never sign up until they are ready to create a page based on their project. Unlike an encyclopedia, many of our community will have specific interest and expertise that may not have a corresponding page (even more true since we are still only a few thousand pages big). I think the main next step for spam abatement are:
- Install and customize a simple Reverse Turing test.
- Non-logged in users must solve a simple addition problem to comit an edit.
- To create a username a user must solve a simple addition problem.
- We can also set it up so that only when entering a URL is a Reverse Turing test administered.
- Consider installing a blacklist extension that prevents edits that contain certain spam URLs, or spam patterns in a URL, as listed in a blacklist.
- Much later consider http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Bad_Behavior_extension
- This extension seems to have many counterindications
See http://web.archive.org/web/20160806051151/http://wiki.evernex.com/index.php?title=Blocking_Spam_in_Mediawiki for a much more detailed and clear approach to spam abatement. The plan laid out there is very sound and would work for Appropedia, with the following exceptions:
- I think we should avoid implementing Bad_Behavior as it may interfere with submission, especially from more spam-ridden computers (often the case in older internet cafes).
- We may consider adapting the ConfirmEdit Reverse Turing test to the specifications I listed above.
--Lonny 09:53, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Email check for new registrations[edit source]
I found this suggestion that catches and stops some spam registrations.
Require a valid email address of at least 7 characters long, and block some spam-generating domains:
vi /html/wiki/includes/SpecialUserlogin.php
In function addNewAccountInternal just add the additional "or" statements:
if ( ( strlen(trim($this->mEmail)) < 7 )
or preg_match ("/@mail.ru$/", $this->mEmail)
or preg_match ("/@list.ru$/", $this->mEmail)
or ! preg_match ("/^[a-z0-9._-]+@[a-z0-9.-]+$/i", $this->mEmail)) ) {
$this->mainLoginForm( wfMsg( 'noemail', $this->mEmail ) );
return;
}
The other option is for registrations to be done through filling out a form, and then approved manually. This is possible (and is done on Greenlivingpedia) but this could be good in the meantime, or as one of the measures to use if we want to keep registrations more open. --Chriswaterguy 23:11, 22 January 2012 (UTC)