Hi there...Sheldon Rampton here, at Disinfopedia. After some
irritating and time-consuming encounters with trolls, we have decided
that we want to be able to require contributors to register and to
provide a confirmed email address when they do so. I realize that
this is a more restrictive policy than the Wikipedia has been
following, but I think the additional inconvenience to users will be
offset by the reduced troll-aggravation. I'd like to know how we can
get this capability added to the software. The organization for which
I work, the Center for Media and Democracy, has some funding
available with which we would be able to pay a programmer for the
necessary work (provided the cost is within reason), and of course we
would be happy to have the resulting code included in the standard
open source distribution so that other MediaWiki sites can use it
also if they so choose.
Currently the capacity we want is not built into the MediaWiki
software. Although it is possible to flip a switch that makes
preregistration necessary before posting, there's no way to require
users to supply a verified email address as a condition of
registration.
We'd like to be able to use a registration system like the one that
comes with vBulletin:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/register.php
After a new user submits their email address, vBulletin displays a
message that says something such as:
Thank you for registering, Sheldon Rampton. An email
has been
dispatched to sheldon.rampton(a)verizon.net with details on how to
activate your account. Click here to return to where you were
previously. You will receive an email in your inbox. You MUST follow
the link in that email before you can post on these forums. Until
you do that, you will be told that you do not have permission to
post.
In addition, we would like to be able if necessary to turn on a
higher level of security that says,
All membership requests must be approved by the
moderator. You will
receive a confirmation email when your membership has been approved.
If someone here is willing to work with on this, please get in touch
with me at <sheldon.rampton(a)verizon.net> or <sheldon(a)prwatch.org>rg>.