[okfn-discuss] Open Knowledge Foundation wiki

[Eric Mill]

One can imagine a situation where you face a captcha once per-session. As
in, you fill out a captcha the first time you edit, and it then assumes
you're human for future edits until you close your browser.


On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 11:44 AM, Heather Leson <heather.leson at okfn.org>wrote:

> Thanks, Nick.
>
> I have to say that captchas are a common practice. We had one on the
> Ushahidi wiki and a few other OS communities.
>
> This morning a few staffers had a chat about the next steps. I am working
> on a plan with them which will definitely require community input and
> collaboration. We need a few cycles on this, but we do think the wiki is
> core. Certainly, the beautiful community entries on the
> wiki.opendataday.org highlights this need.
>
> You have been infinitely patient with us as we reorganize the online
> spaces. Here's to making it better for all of us.
>
>
> Heather
>
>
> On 11 March 2014 11:11, Nick Stenning <nick.stenning at okfn.org> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Mar 7, 2014, at 11:16, Michael Bauer wrote:
>> > Tom,
>> >
>> > Agree with you there. Found editing very annoying.
>> >
>> > Do you know who maintains the Wiki right now?
>>
>> Hi Tom, Michael, and the rest of the list,
>>
>> Here's the deal: this time last year, our wiki was absolutely flooded
>> with spam, to an extent that might seem hard to believe. At its peak, we
>> received hundreds of user registrations every day, and spam pages
>> outnumbered real content on the wiki by a factor of 10 to 1.
>>
>> The Foundation has extremely limited system administrator resource, so
>> we haven't been able to dedicate as much time or effort as we'd like to
>> keeping the wiki clean and easy to contribute to. Luckily for us, we
>> have a fantastic community, including such people as Harry Wood[1] and
>> Chris Sakkas[2], both of whom have spent countless hours of their own
>> time battling spam on the wiki and advising the system administrators on
>> how best to configure the wiki to prevent spam.
>>
>> The current configuration of the wiki is primarily the result of Joel's
>> implementation of Harry's advice. While we still get some spam user
>> registrations[3] things have in general calmed down and the wiki is once
>> again a reasonably useful space for the community.
>>
>> Obviously, there's substantial room for improvement. One problem is that
>> the spam controls are somewhat draconian and get in the way of people
>> trying to make simple edits to the wiki. If anyone has experience
>> administering a mediawiki installation and wants to volunteer to help
>> sort this out, while being aware that we *do not* want to naively roll
>> back the spam protections currently in place, then please let me know
>> and we can make sure you have the appropriate access.
>>
>> Best,
>> Nick
>>
>> [1]: http://wiki.okfn.org/User:Harry_Wood
>> [2]: http://wiki.okfn.org/User:Sanglorian
>> [3]:
>>
>> http://wiki.okfn.org/wiki/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&limit=500&days=30
>>
>> --
>> Nick Stenning
>> Technical Director, Open Knowledge Foundation
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>
>
>
> --
>
>
>
>
> Heather Leson, Community Engagement Director
>
> Open Knowledge Foundation <http://okfn.org/>*, Empowering through Open
> Knowledge*
>
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-- 
Developer | sunlightfoundation.com
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