mozillaZine Forums

np wrote:If no one takes over within a week, I'm going to set the login page to whatever it was before it had my e-mail.

I suppose you've already PM'ed or e-mailed kerz (or another SysOp) about it.

I wouldn't want that job, even if I were a SysOp. Instead of getting someone else to to take over, the process itself needs to be fixed and maybe this will force that to happen.

If you do remove your e-mail address from the log-in page, at lease leave the forum link.

I've made repeated requests to kerz to fix the problem over the past year.

I'm not sure what good a forum link will do. Someone still has to create the accounts.

People posting requests for a KB account to the forums might force the issue. You'd have to edit your first post, though, if you don't want to continue receiving PMs requesting an account.

Or I could just put up kerz's e-mail address.

You'll also have to edit the e-mail address from the MozillaZine Knowledge Base:About page.

The last time we argued about automating adding new accounts (mainly in the knowledge base changes page) you (Np) proposed asking Kerz to add the MediaWiki captcha plugin "ConfirmEdit extension" . My main objection was it didn't seem very effective (which you agreed).

You didn't propose supplementing it with any other anti-spam features such as proxy blocking , a content banning blacklist (SpamBlacklist extension), editing .htaccess to check for blank user agents, or using the BadBehavior extension to analyse requests for suspicious behaviour, poorly faked agent strings, or connections originating from known spam addresses.

The ConfirmEdit extension enables a very simple text Captcha. An alternative to it is the FancyCaptcha extension which creates more complex image captchas. According to this you can add '$wgEmailConfirmToEdit = true;' to the end of your LocalSettings.php file to require email authentication from new users before editing. There is also a MediaWiki AntiSpam Patch that requires a well-formed email address, restricts account creation to one per IP address, and records the IP number in the account to help you ban offending domains.

MoinMoin has surge protection (checks if you try to change pages too frequently), I don't know if there is a way to do that with MediaWiki.

I suggest you create a proposal that includes the FancyCaptcha extension plus at least one other anti-spam measure.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Anti-spam_Features
http://wiki.evernex.com/index.php?title ... _Mediawiki
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SpamBlacklist
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ConfirmEdit
http://www.mwusers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1271
http://www.mwusers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1292
http://chongqed.org/prevent_spam.html
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Email_re ... to_sign_up
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Email_au ... re_editing

This problem has been with us for over a year and if the administrators of this site haven't cared enough to fix it yet, I don't see what creating another proposal for them to ignore will do.

I doubt its a question of whether he cared, I'd assume its a question of priorities. Its always been hard to get him to do anything. Proposing something weak behind every bodies back, with no indication that you've researched the issue or thought about any potential objections, didn't get a consensus , and didn't offer a reason why it needs to be taken care of now doesn't sound like a good way to convince a admin to do something IMHO.

I suggest you think in terms of proposing something that gets implemented when the grand forums restart occurs. From a post I made in the moderators forum:

"Posted: 27 Sep 2007 12:10 pm
Please consider adding a Eudora forum when switching to the new web site. What is the status of the grand forums restart? Its been about three months since you made the beta available.

"Posted: 05 Oct 2007 10:44 pm
I'm still waiting for the final release basically. I'm also just swamped at work right now, but I'm hoping to have some news about improvements soon."

(I think he's waiting for phpBB3 to be formally released. It seems they're still on RC5).

tanstaafl wrote:I doubt its a question of whether he cared, I'd assume its a question of priorities. Its always been hard to get him to do anything.

It's been almost a year and a half. I understand that kerz may be busy, but if you can't get to something this big in that time, you need to delegate.

You're free to propose something else and go about it any way you want. You're also free to take over the user account creation, if you want. I'm not interested in doing either.

While we haven't really made it public, additional forums changes will happen on the new setup. The wiki is in need of an upgrade, which is also on the list of things we'll be doing when the backend is ready. I'm in the process of buying new machines right now to help alleviate the load, and also get us up to the latest versions of code, so load becomes less of an issues. I know it's been painful and I apologize. I'm doing my best with limited time.

As far as setting folks up with wiki accounts, I'm more than willing to hand that off to others, I didn't really know you were so unhappy. If people are interested, feel free to speak up, and I'll also propose the moderators can get involved with adding accounts as well, until we get to a version of php that supports all the fun new anti-spam bits, and can stop having humans approve accounts.

jason

I understand you're fine with other people creating the accounts. It's just a ridiculous thing to have broken for so long. If you don't have time or the ability to fix it, fine, but why not give someone trustworthy who does the ability to? You don't need updated versions of anything to put in a half-assed anti-bot feature. Something like



Is this is a puppy or a kitty?
[ textbox ]


would be sufficient to stop bots, and it would be incredibly easy to implement. If bots start getting around it, well then we're no worse off than before.

Since it looks like its going to be a while until we both move to the new web site and KB account creation is automated again, and most of the moderators have been granted KB SysOp privileges I've created a mozillaZineKB account at gmail.com to handle KB account requests. Please mention what username you want if you use it.

I'll share the password with all of the KB SysOps and update the KB login page later today. We'll work out some conventions so that multiple people can field requests from that Gmail account without accidentally creating duplicate accounts.

I see that the KB login/Create Account page has been updated to include instructions for manually requesting a KB account, until such time as automated account creation is enabled.

More here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Knowledge_Bas ... t_creation

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Create_a_know ... se_account has instructions for moderators on how to create a knowledge base account.

I made this thread a sticky.

I hope this is the right place to post this, if not, moderators, please feel free to move.
I probably don't need an account just for this, someone who has an account could fix this.


There is possibly a typo in the following page. If its not a typo, ignore this.
URL : http://kb.mozillazine.org/Dictionaries#Sources

Location :
Under Sources, first line of text, second sentence.

Original/Current Text :
Dictionaries area available from these locations:

Modified Text :
Dictionaries are available from these locations: