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.