Wiki Captcha required - 99% new user creation is spam

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

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

[thebaron]

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

[ripper234]

This is now 99%

[kokojie]

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.

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.

[ripper234]

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.

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.

[niko]

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?

[foo]

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?

[ripper234]

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

I just did.

[Kris]

WalletBit is pleased to give the Bitcoin community BitcoinCAPTCHA.

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

[ripper234]

Yeah.

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

[nanotube]

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

[ripper234]

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.