At 05:13 AM 9/3/2003, you wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Sure, but the great irony is that if someone did
attack us in some
more sophisticated way, the net result would not be to shut us down,
but to force us to abandon one of our ideals of anonymous edits and
instant-signup-edits.
Yes, but then the terrorists would have won.
-- Toby
I can envision a protection against vandalbots that would not endanger our
ability to accept instant anonymous edits. We could require that anyone
trying to make an edit from an IP (not logged-in) have to pass a little
test on every 5th edit or so. I'm sure you've all seen those images with
distorted words where you are asked to read and type in the word so that
bots can't sign up for various mailing lists, etc. We could use something
like that. Every 5th edit wouldn't be TERRIBLY inconvenient for the user,
but would sure stop a vandalbot. Plus, the minor inconvenience might even
nudge people towards generating and using a login... which is A Good Thing.
I suppose this could be problematic for anonymous contributors who are
vision impaired, but we could have an audio version as well.
In any event, even if the above example isn't terribly feasible, I doubt we
would truly have to give up in defeat (by disallowing anonymous edits) if
we were subject to a concerted attack. We're resourceful, we'll come up
with something when the time comes.
-----
Dante Alighieri
dalighieri(a)digitalgrapefruit.com
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
-Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321