Bitcoin Forum

I took a look at the Recent Changes (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Special:RecentChanges) page, and it seems 30 out of 50 "changes" are actually new user creations.

No CAPTCHA is currently required to create an account. I suspect most of these are bots.

You can also be innovative and require payment of 0.001 BTC to register an account, with a link to the Bitcoin Faucet (that currently gives 0.005, and already handles the bot problem).

I'm not actually saying this is a good idea (might give the wrong impression to newbies) ... but some sort of filter is required.

Yes, please!  Also, what to do with spam accounts already created?

It' a good idea, but it's better if the 0.001 BTC will be sent to the Bitcoin Faucet :)

this would be a great addition to any wiki software. a bitcoin-based captcha.

with the difference that we would provide only this and other wikis would put it along with audio and visual captchas.

yes, such a plugin would be cool. It could require a very specific donation to the bitcoin faucet and monitor for this via blockchaininfo api. this way you don't need a bitcoind.

Any offers for me to make it for mediawiki? it would be installable like all the other mediawiki plugins and javascript would poll blockchaininfo every 10s for a payment of exactly a server side random amount of 0.000?????BTC, provide a QR-Code and a bitcoin link to pay. The 0s not being 0s would still validate, so the users can mix a donation  with their captcha payment.
Of course if blockchaininfo allows long polling, i would do that.

I agree with the payments.

This spamming is still going strong.
Emailing contact@bitcoin.it about it.

In my experience with Wiki's most captcha based additional verification before account creation doesn't slow it down much.
They guess those rather two well.
What slows it down the most is simple but random question of your own choice.
Having something non standard, means the bot just won't be able to guess it, but a human will know the answer.

The donation method is also great, just take a bit more to implement. It would once done before more likely to beat the bots and spammers.

A clever spammer could create a website that relays any sort of captcha challenge to users who are willing to solve them for .01BTC each. It has been done before, but using porn for a reward instead of bitcoins. Same principal.

Not that clever since he'd be paying .01 instead of the direct access payment of .001

A more substantial deposit that is returned after the account doesn't spam is probably better, that way it is only a cost to spammers. It only really works in communities where most people will have coins and even then could be annoying, but so is spam.

so a person coming to bitcointalk.org to learn about bitcoin and how to use it, will have to first ask his question somewhere else? so he can pay .001 btc to the forum

doesn't that end up spamming the blockchain?

Only for now, in the future, spamming the blockchain would be an encouraged behavior, since mining reward will be nearly zero, and miners will have to rely on massive amounts of transaction fee to keep mining.

Correct captcha relay is about $1.60 for a thousand solutions. Doesnt slow down spammers. What will stop spammer dead in its tracks is subject-matter related question on signup. Like "How many bitcoins will there ever be?" ... answer 21000000 ... or fill in the blank "Satoshi ______" answer Nakamoto ... etc.


typers in kazakhstan or indonesia are happy to do it for USD$0.80 per 1000 solutions = 0.061 Bitcoins for 1000 solutions = thats like 0.00061 bitcoins per solution. Thats the supply side for the typing workers. The demand side of companies that sell the bulk solutions  (imagetypers, deathbycaptcha, decaptcher, etc. etc.) can charge $1.6 per 1000 .. i tihnk there is also a middleman in there somewhere. anyway captcha solving is a perfect business to disintermediate with bitcoins if workers would accept them and buyers would pay with them lol.

The idea is that users signing up on the *bitcoin wiki* pay/solve captchas etc. Not users signing up here, on bitcointalk.

I like that idea. Why should someone edit the bitcoin wiki if he doesn't even have a wallet?
I too approve in sending the bitcents to the faucet.

Ente

in that case it is perfect

If you like the idea, please email contact@bitcoin.it about it - I haven't gotten any replies yet, and I don't know if they've seen the thread.

I think the spammers are bots that look for mediawiki installations anywhere, and just asking them 2+2=4 might be enough to stop them...they'll just move on and find another wiki.

Something needs to be done.
Does anyone know of another way to contact the wiki developers / maintainers?

It looks like someone may have already boxed up a solution for this in the form of an installable plugin: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Combating_spam

I think a captcha is better than sending money. Remember, 0.001 BTC could equal a million in fiat some day.

Someone better get a handle on that quick. Once they find out, they seem to completely take over Wiki sites.

This is now 99%

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/464119/Bitcoin/wiki/wiki_spam.PNG

Nope, captcha is nowadays pretty useless against determined spammers. There are captcha solving services that will solve 1000 captcha for you for $1. These services all integrate easily with spam bot.

Captchas increase the cost of attack. Right now that cost is pretty much zero - even raising it to $0.01 or $0.001 is a start.
I agree that requiring bitcoins payment to start editing is a better long term solution.
Let's start with something, see whether it works, and optimize.
Implementing a catpcha should be about 15 minutes of work.

Requiring a btc payment would
1. Make this Wiki an unattractive target for spammers,
2. Increase the probability that editor has at least basic understanding of how Bitcoin works, and
3. Provide small but important income stream that can be diverted to raising awareness, for example by donating to btc-accepting nonprofits.

I don't see any problem with this. 4chan implemented an option to bypass captcha by paying an anual fee (bitcoins accepted). It seems to be working fine for them.

Also, who pays the bills for hosting the Wiki?

AFAIK, it's hosted by MagicalTux. Has anyone tried to contact him?

I just did.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=133056.0

Yeah.

We still need someone with the keys to the wiki to respond to this thread / take action.

The current bitcoinpayment system is pretty lightly engineered - just adding people to a group when they send a payment. (It was made by MagicalTux, for the record).

Requiring payment even before creating a user would take some thinking and coding, and as you can guess, Mtux is pretty swamped with mtgox stuff right now, so don't hold your breath. :)

We've also talked about setting up an automatic sweeper bot to wipe new accounts that never verified, but again - time constraint. Mtux runs the wiki, so he's the one who'd have to do it.

In the meantime, the spam user creation problem can be taken care of by just filtering out the User namespace from the recent changes list. It's not perfect, since it also kills edits of user pages, but it really does go a long way. Try it:
https://en.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?namespace=2&invert=1&title=Special%3ARecentChanges

Cool, I didn't know about the "invert" option in the search.
I guess that's the best we can hope for in the near future / until there is a technical admin.