There's a way around bots. - there are "authentication" devices which
present a string of numbers from an image that one has to correctly
type in if he or she wants to register.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Nicholas Knight <nknight(a)runawaynet.com>
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2004 22:59:18 -0800
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Registration system and blocks
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org>
Abe Sokolov wrote:
To evade a block, all a vandal has to do is log off
and log back on with
a new account. However, going through all the steps required by email
confirmation (consisting of signing up for a new email account, signing
up to Wikipedia, checking the new email account for confirmation, and
then logging on to Wikipedia) will take more time than the time required
for admins to ban the sockpuppet.
Perhaps you didn't get the point from my previous email. I can create a
new email address in the time it takes me to type it out. I can also
easily whip up a script that would let me automatically catch
confirmation emails and respond appropriately without me ever seeing
them. The entire process of creating an account on Wikipedia can be
automated so that a new user could be created in a few seconds, email
confirmation or not.
To summarize:
EMAIL
CONFIRMATION
DOES
NOT
HELP.
(If your next suggestion is "CAPTCHA", I have a two-word response:
"blind people".)
Are we done now?
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