Topic on User talk:Kghbln

Leucosticte (talkcontribs)

Have you ever dealt with people whose interest was not just to spam but to vandalize? I've decided, maybe the best thing is to just put in place a really annoying CAPTCHA like Asirra that everyone has to deal with for every edit, till I manually put them in the Editor group. I used to only require the CAPTCHA for edits that add external links, but the vandals don't care about that; they're fine with just deleting or adding a bunch of text. Plus of course it's important to deprive all but trusted users of the reupload right, I found out the hard way. I'm working on blocking the open proxies too, although I have mixed feelings about that because I think some good users, especially of controversial wikis whose content borders on illegal, use proxies to avoid government surveillance.

I might create some sort of automated mass revert tool; I started work on it but it's hard to stay motivated. If you have other ideas, you can put them at countervandalism development. Thanks.

Kghbln (talkcontribs)

Yes, vandalism is quite common and it is very time consuming to clean up the mess vandals made. So tools to speed up and improve this process should be very welcome by site and wiki administrators.

I also think that requireing CAPTCHAs all the time until a user has been put into a trusworthy group is the best approach. This is what I ususally recommend doing. It is not as dismissive as the ConfirmAccount and surely the reason why this extension is not spreading.

You are right about proxy blocking, so in cases of valid proxies a whitelist may be the better approach.

I have commented and brainstormed on the countervandalism talk page.