[sword-devel] Wiki and spam

[Chris Little]

A quick query to Wolfram Alpha answers questions about primes, much faster than I could go through the sequence:

http://m.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what+is+the+twenty+first+prime+number

I think the original idea of simple Bible-oriented encyclopedic-knowledge questions is likely to be our best bet. Spammers also have the ability to create accounts manually, or to get others to answer captchas. We can't expect perfection.

I can't see localization as a valid need. The wiki is in English; our code, docs, & support all require some knowledge of English; and anyone should be able to google for the correct answers within one or two attempts, knowing the answer for a different language. Anyone who finds this too onerous a challenge probably ought not to be editing the wiki.

--Chris

On Jun 5, 2012, at 11:02 AM, David Haslam <dfhmch at googlemail.com> wrote:

> And still they keep coming. Five more since your last delete.
> 
> Even Biblical questions with fixed answers must be easily defeated by bots.
> 
> If simple arithmetic was insufficient as a captcha, make it more
> complicated.
> 
> Even the question must be unpredictable, or at least have an unpredictable
> parameter.
> 
> e.g. What is the nth prime number?
> 
> Where "n" is chosen at random within the range [say] 15 to 25, and not
> displayed numerically, but displayed as words, (making adjustments for how
> ordinals are written) i.e.
> 
> What is the *twenty-first* prime number?
> 
> Moreover, the list of possible questions must not be inspectable by means of
> "view source".
> 
> David
> 
> 
> 
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