Two connected
suggestions:
1) Login verification via SMS to a mobile phone.
As used by Google and recently announced by Twitter:
https://blog.twitter.com/2013/getting-started-login-verification
Though I am not sure what the financial implications of this would be.
Sorry. But besides the financial implication most people who come to your
wiki will NOT want to hand over their personal phone number to you. And many
may not even have one. You will chase away a large percentage of the people
you are trying to attract by having an open wiki.
If Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo and Gmail are all using SMS verification I
think that it must have some merit in the battle against spammers and
fake accounts.
The problem of managing an open wiki means is that without almost
constant management it gets filled with spam which stops people
reading it, this also discourages people from editing it, which means
that founders give up. What we are looking for is a balance.
Clearly people who come simply to read a wiki won't want to hand over
their mobile phone numbers, but maybe the few that feel inspired to
edit the wiki would.
How many of us would object to giving Wikipedia our mobile phone
numbers in order to help prevent spam? or WIkia? It is all about
interest and passion. I am sure that even the furries who edit Wikifur
would be happy to give up their a mobile phone number inorder to edit
pages.
The challenge is for new and smaller wikis. Maybe the MediaWiki
Foundation could help with the cost of sending SMS messages to
potential editors?
2) Social
login - encouraging users to login with their Facebook,
Twitter, Gmail accounts which have already had some sort of Login
Verification or are connected to a "social graph" that can be
checked.
Spambots can get social accounts too. They also regularly get "friends" too.
But far fewer than with open access.
How easily can spammers make multiple usernames/accounts from Google
where an SMS PIN code is required to activate an account?