On 3/22/06, Gregory Price <gprice(a)hcs.harvard.edu> wrote:
Here's one proposal. Please comment.
In any case, we leave in place the option to block an IP entirely.
Whatever other, softer notion of blocking we introduce is
just another option, to be used as a first choice but with
hard blocking available as always if necessary.
Makes sense.
or with a bot. So we can say that to edit from a
soft-blocked IP, you must have two "real user" bits set:
- you've confirmed an email address
- you've passed a captcha[1]
The captcha makes it very difficult for a bot
to make accounts that can edit from behind a soft-block.
The email confirmation makes it take a couple of minutes
to make each account by hand.
If necessary we can add a couple more provisos:
You may want to add a throttle here on the rate of account creations
from a single IP -- again, only for this class of soft-blocked IPs,
perhaps at most two every five minutes.
None of this need affect people who just want to make
an account,
to read logged in, or set their preferences; the only thing
an account that hasn't met the conditions need be barred
from doing through a soft-block is editing.
I like this part.
SJ