Current wiki access status

[Chris Perry]

Hi Alan

It sounds like you have experience of moderation and the spammers. That's good.

You don't want to publicly state the requirements. I'm not sure I
agree with that (but my main concern is to get the access up and
running in some workable form). Publicly stating the requirements has
advantages: 1. Genuine people who can't at present satisfy the
requirements won't waste their time by applying now. 2. If there's
more than one moderator the moderators will (hopefully) act
consistently. 3. Genuine people who are turned away can (in theory)
appeal. My intention was to set the (publicly stated) requirements
high so that even the most tenacious spammer will give up (eg if they
read that they can only get access if they have to hang around for
months and do some useful work for the Ubuntu community).

I vote we give the people on this list a day or two to read these
emails, and respond if they want to, and then (hopefully) we get the
access up and running (in some workable form) by the end of the week?

Regards,

Chris.



On 14 June 2016 at 10:06, Alan Pope <alan.pope at canonical.com> wrote:
> On 14 June 2016 at 09:50, Chris Perry <clissold345 at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> Morning all (UK time),
>>
>> What Alan has written sounds sensible to me.
>>
>> If someone wants to edit the community help wiki what are the
>> moderators going to ask for?
>
> Not sure it's a good idea to write a "how to get access to edit the
> wiki for spammers" on a public list or doc :)
>
> The bad people tend to be humans, not bots, and are clearly reading
> some of this stuff, as they're getting better at saying *almost* the
> right thing to get in. But things give them away, and I'm not about to
> list what those things are :)
>
> So far we've been pretty good at spotting good vs bad actors.
>
>> Also, if the person wants to
>> edit the community help wiki to make a small change (eg correct one
>> line) presumably the moderators aren't going to add the person to
>> ~ubuntu-wiki-editors just for that small change, they're going to
>> offer to make the change themselves?
>>
>
> Drive-by edits like these are the hardest to deal with, yes.
>
>> Can we be honest and say briefly why access is no longer unrestricted?
>> (Because of recent attacks by spammers.)
>>
>
> I think we've been pretty clear on that, yes.
>
>> Once we've decided how it's going to work, someone needs to update:
>>
>> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WikiGuide
>>
>
> Yes, at the minimum the group name needs changing there.
>
>> Do any other pages need to be updated? Once the pages are updated the
>> info will be (semi) public and anyone can read about it. From what
>> Pasi and Lyz have said about spammers we should assume that some
>> spammers will ask for access (hopefully a small number!).
>>
>
> They will indeed.
>
> --
> Alan Pope
> Community Manager
>
> Canonical - Ubuntu Engineering and Services
> +44 (0) 7973 620 164
> alan.pope at canonical.com
> http://ubuntu.com/