Hi there...Sheldon Rampton here, at Disinfopedia. After some irritating and time-consuming encounters with trolls, we have decided that we want to be able to require contributors to register and to provide a confirmed email address when they do so. I realize that this is a more restrictive policy than the Wikipedia has been following, but I think the additional inconvenience to users will be offset by the reduced troll-aggravation. I'd like to know how we can get this capability added to the software. The organization for which I work, the Center for Media and Democracy, has some funding available with which we would be able to pay a programmer for the necessary work (provided the cost is within reason), and of course we would be happy to have the resulting code included in the standard open source distribution so that other MediaWiki sites can use it also if they so choose.
Currently the capacity we want is not built into the MediaWiki software. Although it is possible to flip a switch that makes preregistration necessary before posting, there's no way to require users to supply a verified email address as a condition of registration.
We'd like to be able to use a registration system like the one that comes with vBulletin:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/register.php
After a new user submits their email address, vBulletin displays a message that says something such as:
Thank you for registering, Sheldon Rampton. An email has been dispatched to sheldon.rampton@verizon.net with details on how to activate your account. Click here to return to where you were previously. You will receive an email in your inbox. You MUST follow the link in that email before you can post on these forums. Until you do that, you will be told that you do not have permission to post.
In addition, we would like to be able if necessary to turn on a higher level of security that says,
All membership requests must be approved by the moderator. You will receive a confirmation email when your membership has been approved.
If someone here is willing to work with on this, please get in touch with me at sheldon.rampton@verizon.net or sheldon@prwatch.org.
Sheldon Rampton wrote:
Hi there...Sheldon Rampton here, at Disinfopedia. After some irritating and time-consuming encounters with trolls, we have decided that we want to be able to require contributors to register and to provide a confirmed email address when they do so.
It would separately be nice to require that an e-mail address _if given_ be confirmed, even where having an address is not itself required. (The main concern here being the possibility of using wiki accounts to send interuser e-mail with false return addresses.)
Reconfirmation would need to be required when the user changes the address stored in their preferences; this leads to the possibility of storing 'confirmed' and 'new' e-mail addresses to tide over the time between changing and confirming.
(It *is* necessary to allow people to change their addresses. In the real world, people gain and lose e-mail access at various institutions over the course of their online lives.)
The address-required mode that Sheldon would like could then basically require that the confirmed address be set in order to allow login.
For upwards compatibility on upgrading existing wikis, I'd recommend using user_email for the 'unconfirmed' address and adding something like 'user_confirmed_email' for the confirmed one; thus users would be given the opportunity to confirm their e-mail address when they next visit. (But not doing so would not disable their accounts. Might show a message up top akin to the 'new messages' notification.)
I'm not going to get to this anytime soon, so volunteers please go for it.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
On Thu, 08 Jul 2004 13:29:24 -0700, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
For upwards compatibility on upgrading existing wikis, I'd recommend using user_email for the 'unconfirmed' address and adding something like 'user_confirmed_email' for the confirmed one; thus users would be given the opportunity to confirm their e-mail address when they next visit. (But not doing so would not disable their accounts. Might show a message up top akin to the 'new messages' notification.)
While on the subject, it would be nice to allow users to list a secondary email address, in case the first one dies, for password revivification &c -- that way even if you want to use a semi-temporary address for communication with other wiki users (and not a permanent address) you can have a private permanent address on file in case you go offline on a 6 month safari and return to find your 100MB of Yahoo! mail deleted and your account expunged... and then realize you've forgotten your Wikipedia password.
+sj+, feeling unfriendly towards the Yahooligans
Brion Vibber wrote:
For upwards compatibility on upgrading existing wikis, I'd recommend using user_email for the 'unconfirmed' address and adding something like 'user_confirmed_email' for the confirmed one; thus users would be given the opportunity to confirm their e-mail address when they next visit.
I'm not sure why you want two different e-mail fields? Why not just have a boolean "address confirmed yes/no" field?
Timwi
Timwi wrote:
I'm not sure why you want two different e-mail fields? Why not just have a boolean "address confirmed yes/no" field?
I wrote:
Reconfirmation would need to be required when the user changes the address stored in their preferences; this leads to the possibility of storing 'confirmed' and 'new' e-mail addresses to tide over the time between changing and confirming.
Not doing so means locking out the account between change and confirmation, which would be rather a trouble given a typo in the address.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion Vibber wrote:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:
Hi there...Sheldon Rampton here, at Disinfopedia. After some irritating and time-consuming encounters with trolls, we have decided that we want to be able to require contributors to register and to provide a confirmed email address when they do so.
It would separately be nice to require that an e-mail address _if given_ be confirmed, even where having an address is not itself required. (The main concern here being the possibility of using wiki accounts to send interuser e-mail with false return addresses.)
Reconfirmation would need to be required when the user changes the address stored in their preferences; this leads to the possibility of storing 'confirmed' and 'new' e-mail addresses to tide over the time between changing and confirming.
(It *is* necessary to allow people to change their addresses. In the real world, people gain and lose e-mail access at various institutions over the course of their online lives.)
The address-required mode that Sheldon would like could then basically require that the confirmed address be set in order to allow login.
For upwards compatibility on upgrading existing wikis, I'd recommend using user_email for the 'unconfirmed' address and adding something like 'user_confirmed_email' for the confirmed one; thus users would be given the opportunity to confirm their e-mail address when they next visit. (But not doing so would not disable their accounts. Might show a message up top akin to the 'new messages' notification.)
I started writing a feature which did exactly that. An extra email field in the user table, Special:Userlogin modifications to allow email confirmation, even IIRC a modification to Article.php and User.php to inform users that they can't post because they haven't confirmed. My intention was to use this feature to allow Halifax residents to contribute to Wikipedia if they have a confirmed email address, hence I also made some changes to ipblocks to allow email confirmation to be switched on and off depending on IP address. I got maybe 60% of the way through it before deciding that it wasn't such an important feature for Wikipedia, and I shelved it. I'll see if I can dig up and post what I've done.
-- Tim Starling
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