Two connected suggestions:
- Login verification via SMS to a mobile phone.
As used by Google and recently announced by Twitter: https://blog.twitter.com/2013/getting-started-login-verification
Though I am not sure what the financial implications of this would be.
Sorry. But besides the financial implication most people who come to your wiki will NOT want to hand over their personal phone number to you. And many may not even have one. You will chase away a large percentage of the people you are trying to attract by having an open wiki.
If Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo and Gmail are all using SMS verification I think that it must have some merit in the battle against spammers and fake accounts.
The problem of managing an open wiki means is that without almost constant management it gets filled with spam which stops people reading it, this also discourages people from editing it, which means that founders give up. What we are looking for is a balance.
Clearly people who come simply to read a wiki won't want to hand over their mobile phone numbers, but maybe the few that feel inspired to edit the wiki would.
How many of us would object to giving Wikipedia our mobile phone numbers in order to help prevent spam? or WIkia? It is all about interest and passion. I am sure that even the furries who edit Wikifur would be happy to give up their a mobile phone number inorder to edit pages.
The challenge is for new and smaller wikis. Maybe the MediaWiki Foundation could help with the cost of sending SMS messages to potential editors?
- Social login - encouraging users to login with their Facebook,
Twitter, Gmail accounts which have already had some sort of Login Verification or are connected to a "social graph" that can be checked.
Spambots can get social accounts too. They also regularly get "friends" too.
But far fewer than with open access.
How easily can spammers make multiple usernames/accounts from Google where an SMS PIN code is required to activate an account?