Can we have at least 5 consonants?  There are enough people with names such as "Srbský" in eastern European....  In fact, the Czechs can make use of as many as 9 consonants in a row!  http://ld.johanesville.net/perlicky/03- jazykova-nej-a-jine-hricky On a side note, image based CAPACHA's can cause problems for blind people. ---------- Původní zpráva ---------- Od: Henk-Jan van Tuyl Datum: 30. 7. 2012 Předmět: Re: [Haskell-cafe] [Haskell] Spam on the Haskell wiki "On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 00:03:49 +0200, Henk-Jan van Tuyl wrote:

I am willing to do administrator tasks.

...

4. ReCAPTCHA enabled for 'edits adding new, unrecognized external links' - which is all of the spam.

This is already enabled.

The HaskellWiki is still flooded with spam; we should take some measure to reduce the stream severely. Most spam seems to be created (semi-)automated; the pages do not contain links, the usernames end with two digits, most of the time. Some cures I have thought up: - Verify new wiki accounts, before granting them rights, based on e-mails in the Haskell mailing lists (or subscription of a Haskell mailing list) - Let new users only change pages, not create new pages - Block creation of usernames o ending with two or more digits o with more than one x or q o starting with "buy" o longer than 20 characters o with more than 4 consonants in a row - Block creation of pages with words in a certain list (Coach, Vuitton, Chanel, handbags, purses, outlet, luggage, "Nike Air Jordan") Regards, Henk-Jan van Tuyl -- http://Van.Tuyl.eu/(http://Van.Tuyl.eu/) http://members.chello.nl/hjgtuyl/tourdemonad.html (http://members.chello.nl/hjgtuyl/tourdemonad.html) Haskell programming -- _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe (http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe)"

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 2:35 PM, Henk-Jan van Tuyl wrote:

- Verify new wiki accounts, before granting them rights, based on e-mails in the Haskell mailing lists (or subscription of a Haskell mailing list)

This is a nice idea, but I think it will end up moving spam onto the mailing lists. There is hardly any policy in place to keep people out of the mailing lists. Mailing list spam is attractive to spammers, since it all gets mirrored to archive sites all over the place. Not to volunteer others, but how feasible would it be to require credentials from Haskellers.org?

- Let new users only change pages, not create new pages

This is good for stopping the creation of walled gardens full of spam. But it won't stop "vandalism" spam, where somebody goes to a page that isn't accessed much and changes it. Does anybody have statistics about how often pages are edited/added? If the numbers aren't too big, I'd volunteer to "moderate" insofar as scanning new edits/adds for spam. Maybe this role should just forward articles with spam on them to a "real" moderator to roll-back. We could even have a "report spam" button on each page, and if enough users click on it (for a given revision), the revision gets forwarded to a moderator.

- Block creation of usernames o ending with two or more digits o with more than one x or q o starting with "buy" o longer than 20 characters o with more than 4 consonants in a row

I don't see this providing any security against spam, and I'm thinking it will take longer to implement than it will take for a spammer to fix his scripts in response.

- Block creation of pages with words in a certain list (Coach, Vuitton, Chanel, handbags, purses, outlet, luggage, "Nike Air Jordan")

Same.

On 07/30/2012 05:35 PM, Henk-Jan van Tuyl wrote:

On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 00:03:49 +0200, Henk-Jan van Tuyl wrote:

...

I am willing to do administrator tasks.

...

4. ReCAPTCHA enabled for 'edits adding new, unrecognized external links' - which is all of the spam.

This is already enabled.

The HaskellWiki is still flooded with spam; we should take some measure to reduce the stream severely. Most spam seems to be created (semi-)automated; the pages do not contain links, the usernames end with two digits, most of the time. Some cures I have thought up:

There are two (easy) things that will make a huge dent in the automated stuff. 1. Add a fake field, hidden through CSS, labeled something like "You must leave this field blank to submit the form" (for non-visual browsers). Put it on every page with a submit button. If it isn't empty, don't process the submission. You can give it a /name/ that sounds tempting, though. 2. Force previews. If the bots are targeted at your wiki software and you modify it to preview all submissions, the bots will stop working.

On 7/30/12 5:35 PM, Henk-Jan van Tuyl wrote:

- Block creation of usernames o ending with two or more digits o with more than one x or q o starting with "buy" o longer than 20 characters o with more than 4 consonants in a row

As other's've mentioned, many of these constraints impose undue burden on users with linguistic heritage outside of western Europe. Creating a decent filter for recognizing legitimate names across the majority of languages is quite difficult. Though there's no reason this has to be a strong blacklisting of usernames. If there's a willing volunteer (as seems to have been implied), then something like this could serve as a filter requiring manual override. All usernames are available... but some take longer to activate. Of course, there's always the power-to-weight issue for this kind of solution. -- Live well, ~wren