Developer discussion for Creative Commons technology and tools

[Dan Mills <dan AT creativecommons.org>]

Hey guys,

Yeah, the spam situation is unfortunate. If a few of us can monitor &
approve new accounts I think we could make the confirmation extension
approach work. What do you all think?

I'm in the middle of figuring out a big migration over to AWS, I will
see about sneaking this change in sooner rather than later.

Dan


On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 10:43 AM, Mike Linksvayer <ml AT gondwanaland.com> wrote:
> Hi, I've no idea about HQ chores, but to be clear...
>
> The ConfirmAccounts extension requires someone with access to the host
> the wiki is running on to install it. I've only installed on one wiki,
> but don't recall it being difficult.
>
> The extension places an onerous "confirmation" step prior to getting
> an account. I like this better than ones forcing eg a captcha for each
> edit, which is annoying, and still leaves RecentChanges filled up with
> spam account creations.
>
> An email notification is sent (configurable, probably to whoever gets
> webmaster@cc these days) when an account is requested.
>
> Any admin can review and approve pending new accounts at
> Special:ConfirmAccounts. Even if nobody reads the email notifications,
> trusted people not working directly for CC can monitor ... there are
> some inactive people in
> http://wiki.creativecommons.org/index.php?title=Special%3AListUsers&username=&group=sysop&limit=50
> but historically anyone trusted (eg an affiliate or with a long
> history in other wikis) and wanting to help was made an admin.
>
> Mike
>
> On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 5:14 AM, BjornW <burobjorn AT gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> If I understand correctly there is no one at the moment from HQ who has
>> time to pick these chores up? That's a shame, cause these spamlinks
>> can't be good for CC.org pagerank. What can we do to install the tool
>> mentioned by Mike? Btw in my own experience asking for confirmation will
>> drastically reduce the amount of spam...
>>
>> grtz
>> BjornW
>>
>> On 11-11-13 19:18, Maarten Zeinstra wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> That can only work when HQ wants to/can allocate resources to check
>>> this, but otherwise I would agree that that would be the best option.
>>>
>>> Or do away with the Wiki altogether and use a different platform
>>> communicate to our audiences. I only see 20 useful edits per
>>> day: 
>>> http://wiki.creativecommons.org/index.php?namespace=0&title=Special%3ARecentChanges
>>> en about 50 accounts created on that same day.
>>>
>>> It really depends on what the underlying idea is of using a wiki.
>>> That's the true issue that HQ needs to discuss, either internally of
>>> with the community.
>>>
>>>
>>> 2013/11/11 Mike Linksvayer <ml AT gondwanaland.com
>>> <mailto:ml AT gondwanaland.com>>
>>>
>>>     I somewhat sadly recommend installing
>>>     https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ConfirmAccount
>>>
>>>     Mike
>>>
>>>     On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 3:50 AM, Maarten Zeinstra <mz AT kl.nl
>>>     <mailto:mz AT kl.nl>> wrote:
>>>     > I had a long discussion about the spam on the wiki about with
>>>     Nathan Kinkade about a year ago. There are several methods in
>>>     place to try and stop spammers. The ones that get through are
>>>     either placed by humans or using accounts that are created by
>>>     humans. It takes human effort to block them as it is, something
>>>     that CC-HQ had no personnel for at the time.
>>>     >
>>>     > I tried to help a bit, but it was tedious and not very useful. I
>>>     did remove all the nudity I could find in the mediastore of wiki
>>>     last year though. That is a task with things that cannot be unseen..
>>>     >
>>>     > Best,
>>>     >
>>>     > Maarten
>>>     >
>>>     > --
>>>     > Kennisland | www.kennisland.nl <http://www.kennisland.nl> | t
>>>     +31205756720 <tel:%2B31205756720> | m +31643053919
>>>     <tel:%2B31643053919> | @mzeinstra
>>>     >
>>>     >
>>>     >
>>>     >
>>>     > On 11 Nov 2013, at 12:36 , BjornW <burobjorn AT gmail.com
>>>     <mailto:burobjorn AT gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>     >
>>>     >> Hi,
>>>     >>
>>>     >> I just noticed some spam links on the CC wiki. See
>>>     >> http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Web_Services in the paragraph
>>>     >> 'Documentation' there are words like 'sepatu' linking to an url
>>>     I won't
>>>     >> repeat here.
>>>     >>
>>>     >> Not sure if this is the only page, but perhaps someone of CC HQ
>>>     could
>>>     >> run some sort of spam link checker over the wiki?
>>>     >>
>>>     >> grtz
>>>     >> BjornW
>>>     >> --
>>>     >>
>>>     >> met vriendelijke groet,
>>>     >> Bjorn Wijers
>>>     >>
>>>     >> * b u r o b j o r n .nl *
>>>     >> digitaal vakmanschap | digital craftsmanship
>>>     >>
>>>     >> Werkdagen:
>>>     >> Van maandag t/m donderdag vanaf 10:00
>>>     >> Vrijdag is voor experimenteren en eigen projecten.
>>>     >>
>>>     >> Postbus 14145
>>>     >> 3508 SE Utrecht
>>>     >> The Netherlands
>>>     >>
>>>     >> tel: +31 6 49 74 78 70 <tel:%2B31%206%2049%2074%2078%2070>
>>>     >> http://www.burobjorn.nl
>>>     >> _______________________________________________
>>>     >> cc-devel mailing list
>>>     >> cc-devel AT lists.ibiblio.org <mailto:cc-devel AT lists.ibiblio.org>
>>>     >> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-devel
>>>     >
>>>     > _______________________________________________
>>>     > cc-devel mailing list
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>>>     > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-devel
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> met vriendelijke groet,
>> Bjorn Wijers
>>
>> * b u r o b j o r n .nl *
>> digitaal vakmanschap | digital craftsmanship
>>
>> Werkdagen:
>> Van maandag t/m donderdag vanaf 10:00
>> Vrijdag is voor experimenteren en eigen projecten.
>>
>> Postbus 14145
>> 3508 SE Utrecht
>> The Netherlands
>>
>> tel: +31 6 49 74 78 70
>> http://www.burobjorn.nl
>>
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