Add "trusted" group to wiki?

This is an archive of a topic from NESdev BBS, taken in mid-October 2019 before a server upgrade.
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Add "trusted" group to wiki?
by on (#62767)
I'm getting a little bit fed up with the re-captcha plug-in since it only make our life miserable while the human spammers can still post their link...

For now, the usefulness of this thing is 0% since it didn't block anything. So instead of making everyone suffer, I'm thinking about adding a new security level: creating a trusted group.

What this mean is anybody can create an account but as long as you are in the normal user group: you cannot do anything. Basically I want to add an approval system. We don't approve the user right away and once we know who it is, we add the user in the trusted group.

Names that sound fishy will never be approved unless that person comes on nesdev to explain his/her case.

Our community is so small that I see no problem with it. Anybody have any objection? I know Tepples will have some but I just want to shutdown the door to spammers, that's it. I don't mind to do the extra management since the number of users added to the wiki is low so it's quite a simple task to do.

by on (#62768)
Heh, I was just thinking of this very same thing. I've been posting a lot of test ROM links lately and am getting a little tired of the CAPTCHA as well. But I figured it's there in case my account gets compromised or something, though I guess that's a pretty remote possibility. One thing that's annoyed me is that the "This is a minor edit" checkbox reverts to its default value when the CAPTCHA comes up.

I have no objection. As you say, this is a small group. Looking at the change log, it seems you admis spend significant time cleaning out spam that this would eliminate completely.

by on (#62771)
I thought I warned you guys about this back when the Wiki was being idealised? "Told ya!" :P This is basically the only way the Whirlpool/Donut forum was able to deal with spammers as well -- their board was read-only for everyone, and only people with registered accounts could post. (To get an account you had to Email the board maintainers, who would give you your own unique login/password)

I have absolutely no objection to your proposal. Thumbs up.

by on (#62774)
A lot of wikis on Wikia appear to have a few steps between an ordinary registered user and what user:Ndwiki (root access) has:
  1. autoconfirmed (add external links without CAPTCHA, edit semiprotected pages)
  2. rollbacker (undo vandal edits without previewing, use various other tools provided by extensions)
  3. sysop (edit protected pages, protect and unprotect pages, hide revisions, delete pages, block users), promote users to rollback
  4. bureaucrat (promote users to sysop)

by on (#62803)
koitsu wrote:
I thought I warned you guys about this back when the Wiki was being idealised? "Told ya!" :P


The main goal of the captcha was to stop automated spam. The problem is all the spammers were human so there is no value in that plug-in.

Then I will go with the trusted group since it's the easiest to manage (no plugin, etc).

You must now welcome your new Wiki spam "tyrant". ;)