On 5/24/05, Colm Buckley <colm at tuatha.org> wrote:
> On 24 May 2005, at 00:22, Rory Browne wrote:
>> > I respect the fact that you're the server admin Colm, but could you
> > loosen up a bit?
>> No, I don't think so; I've run Wikis and similar user-contributed
> sites before, and the one lesson I've learned is that you can't
> underestimate the determination of spambots. Our experiences with
> the ILUG blogs site are pretty salutary also.
I appreciate what you're saying Colm, and I'm all for taking every
necessary measure to keep the spambots out. I'm just aftaid of
throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Especially when the baby is
at such an early stage of development.
>> > I don't think anyone else here wants to make it difficult or
> > frustrating for people acting in good faith to be able to
> > participate in the scoil.linux.ie community.
>> The bar has to be high enough that only a human can effectively pass
> it - a Turing test, basically. This could be implemented using
> Captchas (which have their own problems) or by the original and
> simplest Turing test; talk with a human.
> I don't think that "sending an email" counts as particularly difficult or frustrating, but I'm
> willing to try out various approaches. Let's start with what I
> suggest, and if we get complaints that the process is difficult or
> frustrating, then we'll change it.
I don't think we'll get complaints. I someone doesn't bother mailing
an admin asking for an account, then they're hardly going to bother
writing up a complaint.
If spambots do find a way to bypass any automatic spam detection
system we have in place, we can monitor the situation, know what has
happened, and how it happened, and harden our systems against it
happening again. On the other hand if people simply don't ask for
a/c's then all we know is that people aren't willing to contribute
content, under our terms.
Besides:
If Scott Pakin's program(www.pakin.org) can be used to auto-create
complaint letters, then what's to stop someone from writing a similar
program to auto-create account-request letters. At least if most
people were using the captcha, we could pay more attention to the ones
who did apply through email.
> > Personally taking all the presented opinions into account I think
> > the only fair way forward(or fair compromise if you prefer) is to
> > have a system where users need accounts, but those accounts can be
> > obtained relatively easily, and relatively automatically, for
> > humans acting in good faith.
>> Yes, however, this is harder than you might think. Personally, I
> think that sending an email is preferable to participating in a
> Captchatest.
And I would be all for giving them that option, if they shared your
views. Some however would perfer to simply prove that they're human,
and edit away.
>> Colm
>> --
> Colm Buckley / colm at tuatha.org / +353 87 2469146
>>>
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