Apr 102007
This afternoon we’ve had a flurry of edits in the “vandalism” category on MDC. It appears that a bot of some kind is periodically signing up for new accounts and then damaging pages. Unfortunately, most of these appear to be coming from different IP addresses.
After trying for a while to be patient and just keep up with it, we finally had to ask IT to find a solution. As a result, at least for the time being, IT is going to adjust our MediaWiki configuration to require email confirmation for new user signups.
With the MozillaZine Knowledge Base, new accounts can only be created by existing members. Sorta like getting a voucher for CVS access, or emailing Gerv for editbug permissions on BMO. How about a similar approach for MDC and Wiki.m.o?
The problem with that is that we really want to encourage people to edit on a whim.