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Bug 3102 - Spam protection: option for non-text usernames in history


Summary:	Spam protection: option for non-text usernames in history

Status:	RESOLVED WONTFIX

Product:	MediaWiki
Classification:	Unclassified
Component:	History/Diffs (Other open bugs)
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	All All

Importance:	Lowest enhancement (vote)
Target Milestone:	---
Assigned To:	Nobody - You can work on this!

URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:

Depends on:
Blocks:
	Show dependency tree / graph

Reported:	2005-08-10 17:03 UTC by George Chriss
Modified:	2011-03-13 18:06 UTC (History)
CC List:	0 users

See Also:
Web browser:	---
Mobile Platform:	---
Assignee Huggle Beta Tester:	---

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Description George Chriss 2005-08-10 17:03:07 UTC

Usernames are displayed as plaintext in the page history.  While not normally a
problem, some projects require pre-existing authentication accounts that are
directly tied to an email address.  (e.g. username GSC127 is tied to
GSC127@psu.edu.  Penn State has 100,000+ existing access accounts)

I propose an option to display usernames as small pictures, to hinder attempts
to harvest mass emails for spam.  www.thefacebook.com already has this type of
protection scheme.

Comment 1 Rowan Collins [IMSoP] 2005-08-10 18:46:54 UTC

The big problem with this is that the username still has to appear as text at
some level anyway, in order to link to the User: page, contributions, etc (you
can have a picture as the link, but you've still got to have the link target as
text in the source).

The better solution would therefore seem to be for the organisers of a project
not to use usernames linked to e-mail addresses in this way. For instance, a
sign-up system could be created that verifies existing credentials during
account creation, while allowing the user to choose their own username for the
new system - I think some of the uses of AuthPlugin.php do something along these
lines.

As for your PSU example, however, I feel the ability to spider history entries
on a wiki is somewhat outwheighed by the ability to access a nicely uniform list
of every single user account, including their account name/e-mail address:
http://www.personal.psu.edu/web_pages/users.html

Marking this as "WONTFIX", because it doesn't seem feasible to me.

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