[Openstreetmap] making the wiki user-only

[ben at somethingmodern.com]

Tom Carden <tom at tom-carden.co.uk> wrote:

> ben at somethingmodern.com wrote:
> > SteveC <steve at fractalus.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>To avoid this, does anyone have an objection to making the wiki user
> >>only editable?
> > 
> > Yes. Down the road to the dark side, this is. I've had this debate many
> times,
> > so I'll spare the details: By definition Wiki's are publically editable.
> > 
> 
> Agreed, in principle.  But in practice, I don't think requiring (open, 
> public) log-in for edits would stop anyone contributing.  OSM is a 
> wiki-style map, and it requires log-in -- hadn't we better get our story 
> straight?

Although I've never specifically ranted about it, I am not a huge fan of
authenticating for our map edits either.

Registration *does* stop people from contributing. I've seen it time and time
again. Reference http://www.bugmenot.com/ for the foil, and
https://safe.britannica.com/subscribe/ , http://wiktion.didion.net/ and a
zillion other sites which are being killed by irritating registration
procedures. If we continue to require registration, it should be *freakishly*
simple, like the registration at del.icio.us and its resulting sticky cookie.

> I think that a by-definition-public wiki is only workable with 
> significant numbers of users.  Or a better interface.  If someone can 
> say "this has clearly been vandalised" and find the last good copy 
> quickly, then it will work.  If they can't, it won't.  Thank goodness 
> this was only 2 pages of vandalism and not the whole thing.

Expecting a big set of community eyeballs ala' Wikipedia would be a lovely
utopia, but CAPTCHA's are workable but arms-race-y, short-term solution.

> If it was done by a bot I'm not sure why it wasn't the whole thing... 
> have we banned the IP by the way?

Here's a good list: http://gimpert.com/wiki/database/banlist , but blacklists
are fragile.

> > A better solution -- which I'll happily implement -- is a sort of CAPTCHA.
> On
> > my personal Wiki, I've implemented a simple "math problem" CAPTCHA that
has
> > dropped our preveious-frequent spam postings to nil:
> > 
> >     http://gimpert.com/wiki/wiki.cgi?action=edit&id=Sandbox
> > 
> > Note the "Are you human?" question at the bottom.
> > 
> > Want me to do this for the OSM Wiki? Do I have access to the PHP?
> > 
> 
> That would be good.
> 
> Is this a good time to suggest that we generate a captcha image/applet 
> from the OSM database and ask people to annotate some gps trails before 
> they post? ;)

Good idea... ;)

> http://cheerleader.yoz.com/archives/001819.html

Frankly, its a dumb post. "CAPTCHAs are a pain to users, they trample all over
good accessibility practice and, most importantly, they're useless as a
defense against automation"?

CAPTCHAs are a far lesser evil, a lesser pain, than pages and pages of
unwanted pr0n links. "Good accessibility practice" is HCI-buzzword-ese for
extra steps, but this is a non-issue if the Wiki is being overrun with pr0n.
And umm no, they're not a useless defense. My personal website hosts a number
of blackjack gambling related pages, so I get my share of Google hits. My wiki
was inundated with pr0n spam day after day. So I read up on the latest, hip
CAPTCHA tricks, and viola -- no more penis enlargement links. When the
spammers write a little AI to parse for simple math problems, then I'll read
up on the next CAPTCHA trick. It's an arms race, but it's better than
registration.

    Cheers,
    Ben