Guild Wars Wiki:Requests for technical administration/ConfirmEdit

Request for ConfirmEdit

Home-page

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ConfirmEdit

Type

MediaWiki extension

Additional software requirements

None

Additional server-side maintenance requirements

Besides the installation (http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ConfirmEdit#Installation), the following lines need to be modified in ConfirmEdit.php to these values:

 $wgGroupPermissions['*'            ]['skipcaptcha'] = false;
 $wgGroupPermissions['user'         ]['skipcaptcha'] = true; 
 $wgGroupPermissions['autoconfirmed']['skipcaptcha'] = true; 
 $wgGroupPermissions['bot'          ]['skipcaptcha'] = true; 
 $wgGroupPermissions['sysop'        ]['skipcaptcha'] = true;

 $wgCaptchaTriggers['edit']          = false; 
 $wgCaptchaTriggers['create']        = false; 
 $wgCaptchaTriggers['addurl']        = true; 
 $wgCaptchaTriggers['createaccount'] = false; 

Reason for request

Wiki spam is increasing daily, it's starting to become a major maintenance task in itself. The SpamBlacklist extension was considered, but it seems that it would be ineffective in controlling the kind of spam we've been getting (example), since these spammers are linking to legitimate hosts which are then redirecting to the spam sites. ConfirmEdit with the ConfirmEdit.php settings above requires all non-registered users adding an URL to an article to answer a simple text CAPTCHA before being able to save their changes.

What else uses it

All Wikimedia projects—Wikipedia, for example—have it enabled, as does GuildWiki.

Possible pitfalls

CAPTCHAs can be an inconvenience for bona fide contributors.