[aur-general] Fighting spam on the AUR

[oliver]

On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 09:31:47PM -0400, Allen Li wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 11:55:26AM +0100, Markus Unterwaditzer wrote:
> > Other options:
> > 
> > * Deny the repeating of a specific action... e.g. you may not flag more than ten packages within ten minutes. Also block comments with same content.
> > 
> > * ability to report users (dunno if already possible), autoban if enough reports
> > 
> > * "Buffering actions" aka shadowban when a user gets reported, until a moderator reviews the report.
> > 
> > * Do whatever Reddit does, they seem to deal very well with spam.
> > 
> > -- Markus (from phone)
> 
> Absolutely not the autoban, then spammers could *REALLY* do some damage.
> 
> I am personally for a simple registration captcha.  I doubt any spammers
> targeting the AUR are really invested; it's not really a high-profile
> target, most likely some pranksters, so a simple captcha could really
> help weed them out.  How about implementing a registration captcha and
> seeing how it works before considering more complex options?
[...]

Captchas only for account creation, but not for other actions,
I think thats good.

> 
> Limiting repeated actions also sounds good (if someone really needs to,
> e.g., flag a lot of packages, they can just drop a request here and let
> a TU handle it),

I find it annoying, if it's necessary to have one web-account, one mailing list
account and some other accounts also, just to perform an action.

A lot of bugfixes of programs were not written, just because it's too annoying
to have two or three more accounts for e.g. just reporting one bug, which someone
may have found "by accident", looking at some code he/she never work with normally.

If it needs too jump above buerocratic roadblocks to do some positive actions,
it does not matter, if it also blocks negative actions.

People will be annoyed, and to block just 1 ppm of idiots will annoy maybe 10%
of interested/dedicated people, which then will not come back again.


The Arch way?  http://www.toonpool.com/user/43/files/buerokratie_182735.jpg


Ciao,
   Oliver