[Foundation-l] spamming of the english wikipedia users detected

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 7/3/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...and, presumably, you'd be more than happy to run the process on any
> other project if someone provided you with a local translation of the
> necessary text? The checking process ought to be pretty much portable.

Yes, and in fact I've run it on commons.   I also, as mentioned, sent
a list of users over to a dewiki person I know.  Both were actions I
took before anyone complained.

I did not run queries against other communities because the toolserver
copies of them went down before I had a chance.  Someone with access
to the live databases could easily make the userlists... but I'm
willing to bet that no one else will want to touch this with a 10-ft
pole.  :)

> I think perhaps this might be a rather sensible thing to try and do
> from the outset, next time, on as many projects as practical. It
> allows a much less ambiguous explanation than one line in sitenotice -
> it's almost impossible to have a good succinct explanation there which
> doesn't provide scope for misunderstanding or make it look like
> *everyone* is eligible.

Yes. Exactly. This is my thought, and it was one of my recommendations
after last year. ... although at the time I didn't quite appreciate
how much of a turnout problem we had.  Nor did I have any idea how
much good it would do then, but I know now.

For effectiveness, if we were to do this, we would probably want to do
it mid election rather than at the beginning. We need to give people
enough time to consider the options, but I fear that if you give
people two weeks notice they might well forget.

We could possibly supplement an early delivered email which will reach
people who do not log in every day, with a dynamic notice that appears
on a non-cached page, such as watchlists, which says "You are eligible
to vote in the board election, but you have not done so yet."  I think
the biggest complication with that will be making it not show when
someone has voted from another project... I guess this will just be
something else we put off while waiting for SUL.