[Open-bio-l] OpenID working again

[Fields, Christopher J]

On Apr 19, 2013, at 4:57 AM, Peter Cock <p.j.a.cock at googlemail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 10:48 AM, Andy Jenkinson
> <andy.jenkinson at ebi.ac.uk> wrote:
>>>>> Over on root-l we're looking at updating MediaWiki for all the
>>>>> OBF hosted wikis as part of getting OpenID working properly.
>>>> 
>>>> Yes I know, but I'm not sure if that will actually fix the spam problem?
>>>> And are there any captcha settings we can tweak in the meantime?
>>> 
>>> The idea is that account creation requires OpenID, which is more
>>> hassle for spammers to go though, and should throttle them.
>> 
>> What was it that was fixed yesterday, manual account creation or
>> OpenID?
> 
> OpenID work certainly, but I'll defer to Chris F or Chris M (both in the
> USA so not awake yet) regarding exactly where things stand now.
> 
>>>> Every now and again I spend an awful lot of time deleting pages
>>>> and blocking accounts, which is sadly all rather pointless if they
>>>> can create new ones.
>>> 
>>> I've had days wasted on wikis like that too - although not recently.
>> 
>> Yes there has been no spam on BioDAS since August, which I had
>> associated with the login not working properly.
> 
> Indeed. It had its up sides.
> 
>>> Maybe we should go for moderation to create new accounts on
>>> the BioDAS wiki and any others being hit hard by spammers?
>> 
>> Yes that could work if done manageably, but with there being 31
>> accounts created within 7 hours this morning, I'm not particularly
>> keen on getting all those emails!
> 
> Personally I'd rather have 31 easily filed emails and do a mass
> new user reject, than have to clean up after the fact.
> 
> From the spammer's point of view, once they see new accounts
> are moderated then that wiki would cease to be an easy target -
> or I'd hope so anyway.
> 
>>> The OBF are also interested in moving the wikis to a hosted
>>> solution - even paying someone else has some appeal. One
>>> option is to use GitHub's wiki - since most of the Bio* projects
>>> now use GitHub for their repositories.
>> 
>> Hopefully the porting can be automated...
> 
> For most of the wikis that would be essential. If anyone on the
> list is interested in trying this, please speak up and we'll sort
> you out with access to the OBF server to take a database
> dump from MediaWiki or whatever.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Peter

I don't know if you can implement a secondary captcha for OpenID, but we (the other Bio*) haven't found it to be necessary as long as the only way in is to use an OpenID.  I think we had maybe one instance on bioperl.org with someone trying this, and they were very easily blocked.  Haven't seen ugg boot spam in a while (fingers crossed).

chris