Closed Bug 856228 Opened 11 years ago Closed 11 years ago

Spam users still making their way into the system

Categories

(Websites :: wiki.mozilla.org, defect)

defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: kbrosnan, Assigned: AlisonW)

Details

More or less any new user with a User contributions link is a new spammer account. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Special:Log/newusers

Examples:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Maxwell61
https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:JanisPose
Hi Kevin,

I've come on board to sort this and other wiki.m.o issues out. Thanks for raising the issue.
Assignee: nobody → tech
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 11 years ago
Resolution: --- → INVALID
This is still an issue.
Status: RESOLVED → REOPENED
Resolution: INVALID → ---
As of yesterday afternoon it is less of an issue as we're not preventing newly-registered users from creating new pages, The 'Recent Changes' page [1] is already looking a lot better (once you remove my admin work all the edits are Mozilla-related).

But, as you say, we do have an issue about the user registration process, and for that we need input.

There is an issue over the level of any 'barrier to entry' we might impose on somebody registering for access to MozillaWiki, and because 'real' users are world-wide and will have a range of primary languages we cannot make the hurdle over-complex.

Users with unacceptable (ie advertising-led) names can be deleted, but otherwise there is no way to ascertain whether someone has registered in bad faith until they make the first edits: it would be bad faith on our part to just block all registrations when there are many Mozillla supporters and devs out there wanting to use this resource.

A CAPTCHA was recently added to the sign-up process, but it is pretty clear that it isn't having a sufficient effect to stop such 'bad' registrations. 

Any suggestions you might have for improving the position (ie. reducing bad-faith registrations while never preventing good-faith ones) will be of great interest.



[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Special:RecentChanges
I'm closing this as 'wontfix' _not_ because we don't want to stop or slow down fake registrations, but because we 'cantfix'. There will always be fakes on wiki.m.o as there are on _every_ other wiki with open registration, and we can't _stop_ that, only try to slow it down. Which we are. And deleting spam pages quickly. Which we are. 

The only way to stop them entirely would be to change the status of wiki.m.o from open registration to some formal application process. This is not likely, sfaict.
Status: REOPENED → RESOLVED
Closed: 11 years ago11 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
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