Well, the issue with the URL lengths should be fixed by the parser people. To my knowledge, and after visiting some ASP sites and cummulative logs/archives, I'm almost certain there is no technical limit to how long an URL has to be, and the "practical" limit (2k-something characters) is way beyond posting a link that encompasses two lines of text anyway.
Another way would be to have our own URL shortener, with links approved by a mod or otherwise responsible troper and a way of tagging links to avoid repetition and allow more reuse., but that's kinda overkill. Although me being a proponent of "don't depend on teh internets" I particularly don't mind...
Heck... perhaps I should move those suggestions to Tech Wishlist...
One question to the higher powers though... How much relative participation do the "creating new accounts to post and try to recover old one['s password]" accounts or puppets have in comparison to spam accounts per-IP? (or per-block?)
Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?So... does this mean I can't get on Tv Tropes on my own account if I'm at the place of residence of another troper?
edited 26th Jun '11 10:02:45 AM by melloncollie
If I understand it, it's one account per IP address, not one IP address per account.
For shared IP addresses or proxies or such...I guess it would work on a first come, first served basis, with existing accounts taking priority. If someone already "tagged" an IP you're trying to make an account on, you're out of luck.
Eddie can correct me if I'm wrong, of course.
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)^^No; it means you can't create an account while on an already-used IP.
Infinite Tree: an experimental storyIf it's strictly for sign-up there is still the possibility of people who can only use libraries getting blocked off (which is a severe problem) and rotating I Ps still occasionally might get hit, not as bad as I thought it was though.
"The fact that your food can be made into makeshift bombs alarms the Hell out of me, Scrye." - CharlatanI like the idea of flagging edits containing external UR Ls. Especially if we combine those with what we already have (like new accounts who are already flagged) to make a series of "potential spam" edit flags
edited 26th Jun '11 11:17:32 AM by Ghilz
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If you can flag UR Ls in the http://www.whatever.com
format, can't you refuse to let edits with URL strings from new accounts go through?
Generally, spammers want to hit and run (with the occasional exception like that Mohammad Wu character). Forcing them to make a number of constructive edits (to be defined in a hypothetical future discussion) would interfere with the imperative and chase most of them away.
One thought on the one new account per IP address issue: how would that affect couples or families who use multiple computers from one home address? Or is that rather rare here?
I am not a mod, and I don't play one on TV.In that case they would all have to find separate places to make accounts from before they could all log in from home.
I have people who live with me who go on TV Tropes as well (they'd be grandfathered in) but that is a very good point.
"The fact that your food can be made into makeshift bombs alarms the Hell out of me, Scrye." - Charlatan![]()
This is true. If accounts only age if they make edits and not just sitting there, then they'd be stuck either making regular constructive edits to the wiki, or they'd get caught and banned. If it's too much effort, they'll probably give up.
Well there are ways around it, but I can see that being a hassle.
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?...out of curiosity, (and off-topic), could an optional e-mail linking be added for the purpose of recovering passwords? Would help a lot if we can't think of any other solutions.
On-topic, solutions-wise...
If you can make a page that shows a list of URLS (or even just the main part, like the tvtropes.org in https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/TheInferno)
, an "outbound links" page, we could look over them and see which ones are appropriate, and add those all to a prototype whitelist (even if there's only one external link, as long as the site is appropriate no reason not to add it to the whitelist). Once that's done and all the links are accounted for, implement the list and create a thread/page specifically for requesting a URL be cleared for external linking (once again, the whitelist would only apply to the wiki, so people could post the appropriate link on the forums).
There are a number of potential problems, for one it would be a heck of a lot of work in the beginning, and it would add in some trouble for editors. Also, any time someone made a page for a website or MMO they would have to go to the thread to get it cleared. Probably some more I haven't thought of. Still like it more than one account created per IP, though.
"The fact that your food can be made into makeshift bombs alarms the Hell out of me, Scrye." - CharlatanIt'd still be possible to get around that, but I think they'd be less likely to.
Infinite Tree: an experimental story

In that case, you can always do http://www.asitethatalmostcertainlydoesntexist.com/reallyabsurdlylongfakepagenamefordemonstrationpurposes and just say copy & paste the URL. Or link the main site and tell people to search for something in the in-site search. Something like that. It's just that URL shortening services are a really easy way to tell someone "hey, check out this cool picture on *so and so site* when really linking to another which could contain spyware. Though that's not really related to the problem at hand.
Though I wish sites wouldn't use nearly so large UR Ls. Or maybe the parser could have a bigger buffer for that kind of thing but I'm not sure that's even possible, so *shrug*
EDIT: Wait, what? that should've been plain text! Does it not accept words over a certain length either? Still, could just put a space after the first / and that'd solve the problem just tell people to remove the space first.
edited 25th Jun '11 10:50:56 PM by TheInferno
"The fact that your food can be made into makeshift bombs alarms the Hell out of me, Scrye." - Charlatan