On 31 July 2012 22:25, MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com> wrote:
Risker wrote:
Putting on my checkuser hat for a moment - yes,
please please look at
finding a different CAPTCHA process - the cross-wiki spamming by bots
that
are able to "break" the CAPTCHA is
becoming overwhelming. This issue has
been reported separately, and there may be a different fix, but this is a
pretty big deal as a few hundred volunteer hours a month are going into
the
despamming effort.
Reported separately where?
Bugzilla, I understand, by one or more of the checkusers
CAPTCHAs were designed for "test if you're human," not "test if
you're
spam." It's a wonder they've worked this long. I imagine better anti-spam
tools are needed (which may be a new extension, new AbuseFilter filters,
better user scripts, etc.).
They're spambots and thus both non-human and spammy.
If the situation is as dire as it sounds, it shouldn't be difficult to find
a few resources to throw at the problem. In a discussion like this,
examples
of particular problematic behavior (links!) are always most helpful to
developers, I've found. "This is the bad behavior we're seeing and want to
stop. How should we do that?" :-)
I've been advised some of WMF's best are already working on it; however,
if
you want to see examples you could look at steward Billinghurst's block
logs, mostly on non=English wikis.
Risker/Anne