In 2006, a spam bot created several new accounts a day, in the beginning
their email was [email protected]. BTW, new user creation still seems easy
for a bot - no captcha or mail activation needed as far as I can see.
So, although the bot created user has no edit rights without email
verification, they might still be continuing to create useless
accounts.
A few things in the works (or already implemented) to try and help a
little with the spam and bot problems.
A new account must be email verified - still possible to script around
this, but it does stop anonymous page edits and limits the effectiveness
random/quickly created dummy accounts.
There is a new-ish spam regex that I've added that blocks page saves
based on a keyword list (looks for common spam word combinations). I
can and do add to this word list when spam slips though.
We have had several requests for https login. I hope this will be
implemented with the MediaWiki 1.15 upgrade that will be planned in soon.
We haven't looked into detail on CAPCHAs. They are used on the
OOoForum, and periodically cause problems where people cannot see the
images, and thus cannot login/create a new account. If we add another
layer to the login process, then we will need to set things up with a
few volunteers who can/will monitor an admin email address and who be
able to sort out user login issues when they happen (and they will).
Currently there is no one really doing anything like this (at least not
officially).
Another idea, maybe you can also place a note on the account creation
form stating that accounts not used for a given time will be deleted
automatically. So at least new users should not be offended.
That can be done. I want to look into detail on the new user welcome
scripts that can now be executed (now that the php bug that we had for
so long has been fixed and the php scripts can be executed correctly).
There is some possibility to
C.
--
Clayton Cornell [email protected]
OpenOffice.org Documentation Project co-lead
StarOffice - Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Hamburg, Germany
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