mahara-contributors team mailing list archive

[Aaron Wells <1252101@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I implemented the following additional features:

1. Probationary users can't create public pages or public profiles.
2. Probationary users can't post links in wall posts, feedback, or private messages.

Some of the existing spam pages and wall posts are just messages with
obfuscated links, or an email address or domain name, and the only way
to catch those is with a Bayesian filter. However, I'm hoping that by
restricting the ability to create public-facing spam content with direct
links in it, it will lower the site's value enough to prevent them from
spamming it. This was only deployed a couple of days ago, and our spam
tends to come and go in waves, so we'll have to wait and see whether it
works.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1252101

Title:
  Wishlist: Prevent new users from taking spammy actions

Status in Mahara ePortfolio:
  In Progress

Bug description:
  As mentioned in https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/1250641 , to
  combat spam on mahara.org, this is a feature request to add a new user
  probationary period, during which the user can't take actions that are
  potentially spammy.

  In the prototype implementation it's limited to the forums:

  1. New (self-registered) users start with a number of probationary points.
  2. When they take actions other non-probationary users approve of, their probationary points are reduced. When they hit 0, the user is no longer probationary.
  3. A probationary user can't post links or images in forum posts
  4. If a non-probationary user posts a direct reply to one of their forum posts or topics, their probationary points are reduced by 1.
  5. The number of probation points they start with is configured in config.php

  Additional features it would be good to add:

  1. Make the probation points configurable via the admin UI
  2. Make the actions that are prohibited, configurable via the admin UI?
  3. Additional actions to prevent -- links in direct messages & feedback, creation of public-accessible pages
  4. Admins can clear (or increase) a user's probation points via the account settings
  5. Report page to show probationary users.
  6. Notifications to admins when a probationary user attempts a forbidden action, with quick-link to suspend the user
  7. Report page to show which non-probationary users approved of the probationary user (so you can check for spammer-approvers)
  8. "Report objectionably content" link for forum posts
  9. Display of user's overall post count on forum posts
  10. Potentially some way of limiting all this to only certain forums (although I can't think of a good conceptual model for that)

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