Re: Re: Re: Relocation of mailing list to Google Groups + rant

At 12:32 30/05/2007, Noel O'Boyle wrote:

> The other point you raised was regarding the wiki. This will soon be
> moving to SF, and I think that we will be implementing better spam
> filtering (thanks go to Martin Walker for continually reverting all
> that spam). I don't think we should allow anonymous edits on a wiki
> that acts as a website for the blue obelisk; others may disagree. I
> recently rearranged information on the wiki, and I'd appreciate any
> more specific feedback you could give me regarding the layout.

I tend to agree about anonymity - agreed this works in many cases for 
WP - but WP has many more people who help to create models of 
democracy and are vigilant against spam. We currently have fewer 
resources. SPAM has destroyed many wikis - including the CML one - 
and the only answers are constant reverting or some barrier to 
publishing - or maybe both (since spam seems to occur even on "protected" wikis

I know it isn't the same metric but my blog has received 50,000 
spams. Without the AKISMET filter I would have to have closed it 
down. I don't think the same exists for wikis.

So I am fairly hardline on this. If someone changes the atomic weight 
of something on the wiki it is valuable to know who they are.
Peter Murray-Rust
Unilever Centre for Molecular Sciences Informatics
University of Cambridge,
Lensfield Road,  Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069