[Foundation-l] spamming of the english wikipedia users detected

Wed Jul 4 15:14:18 UTC 2007

On 03/07/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> > I think perhaps this might be a rather sensible thing to try and do
> > from the outset, next time, on as many projects as practical. It
> > allows a much less ambiguous explanation than one line in sitenotice -
> > it's almost impossible to have a good succinct explanation there which
> > doesn't provide scope for misunderstanding or make it look like
> > *everyone* is eligible.
>
> Yes. Exactly. This is my thought, and it was one of my recommendations
> after last year. ... although at the time I didn't quite appreciate
> how much of a turnout problem we had.  Nor did I have any idea how
> much good it would do then, but I know now.
>
> For effectiveness, if we were to do this, we would probably want to do
> it mid election rather than at the beginning. We need to give people
> enough time to consider the options, but I fear that if you give
> people two weeks notice they might well forget.

Yeah, that's what I envisaged. "At the outset" meant have it ready to
go, not send it on day one :-)

Generate a list of eligibles at the outset, then run a script to
eliminate "voted" each day, and then send the reminders at the
half-way mark or 1/3 turnout, which ever comes first. I have no basis
for those figures, but they sound reasonable.

> We could possibly supplement an early delivered email which will reach
> people who do not log in every day, with a dynamic notice that appears
> on a non-cached page, such as watchlists, which says "You are eligible
> to vote in the board election, but you have not done so yet."  I think
> the biggest complication with that will be making it not show when
> someone has voted from another project... I guess this will just be
> something else we put off while waiting for SUL.

How much hackery would this need? A dynamic notice for specific users
does seem a bit tough, without some kind of weird whitelist display
trick.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk