Pedro Fayolle wrote:
I think it's probably a good idea to assume that someone, at some point, will -- even if the culprits here do not. It really seems to me that it's only a matter of time.
I agree.
I believe more focus should be put on the security side of the software, there should be ways of preventing bot attacks (such as with per-edit human recognition, a la Hotmail or Yahoo user registration), even if this isn't needed right now. Wikipedia is becoming too noticeable not to be a victim of some sort of large scale attack at some point, and we should all know by now that not every vandalism is easily reversible, so we should at least prevent them.
-Pedro
By adding per-edit human regognition stuff in, you make bots impossible. This would have a dramatic impact on the projects. Both Wiktionary and Wikipedia have many people operate bots that benefit the quality and quantity of the projects. With the latest security fix, it is not possible to do anonymous edits using bots anymore. A big improvement from a security point of view however, we are still smarting from the resulting downtime for the bots.
Thanks, GerardM