[Mediawiki-l] Re: Vandalism, but then they corrected it?

Fri Sep 2 23:32:36 UTC 2005

I have a simple, 100% effective way of dealing with spambots: change  
the login page. (Oh yes -- this only works if you restrict edits to  
logged in users.)

On http://www.IslandSeeds.org/wiki, I wanted to get first and last  
names, so I hacked that page to include the extra field, and added it  
to the database schema, and changed the username function so that it  
concatenated those two fields.

This wiki is fairly well known and linked, and yet, NEVER gets hit by  
spambots. I think they get confused about the login requirements.

This suggests that doing something as trivial as changing the NAME  
attribute of either the username or password field may frustrate  
spambots.

But what I REALLY want is an email or Turing authentication scheme.  
Is that in 1.5, or coming down the road?

:::: Any sufficiently advanced political correctness is  
indistinguishable from irony. -- Erik Naggum
:::: Jan Steinman <http://www.Bytesmiths.com/Item/85AE31>