On 31 July 2012 22:25, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Risker wrote:
Putting on my checkuser hat for a moment - yes, please please look at finding a different CAPTCHA process - the cross-wiki spamming by bots
that
are able to "break" the CAPTCHA is becoming overwhelming. This issue has been reported separately, and there may be a different fix, but this is a pretty big deal as a few hundred volunteer hours a month are going into
the
despamming effort.
Reported separately where?
Bugzilla, I understand, by one or more of the checkusers
CAPTCHAs were designed for "test if you're human," not "test if you're spam." It's a wonder they've worked this long. I imagine better anti-spam tools are needed (which may be a new extension, new AbuseFilter filters, better user scripts, etc.).
They're spambots and thus both non-human and spammy.
If the situation is as dire as it sounds, it shouldn't be difficult to find a few resources to throw at the problem. In a discussion like this, examples of particular problematic behavior (links!) are always most helpful to developers, I've found. "This is the bad behavior we're seeing and want to stop. How should we do that?" :-)
I've been advised some of WMF's best are already working on it; however, if you want to see examples you could look at steward Billinghurst's block logs, mostly on non=English wikis.
Risker/Anne