Well, the "bullshit random text" edits could be brought up on Ask The Tropers, and mods could have access to a button on the edit history to flag an edit as not being a "real edit."
edited 26th Jun '11 6:25:46 PM by INUH
Infinite Tree: an experimental storyHmm...What if we limited it to number of edits and set it to ten or something like that. There's normally someone watching recent edits and they'd be able to snatch it up if someone was making an edit of just a space or something.
edited 26th Jun '11 6:33:18 PM by thatguythere47
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?^^Fair point.
Perhaps an edit ban, even a temporary one, would reset the count to zero?
Infinite Tree: an experimental storySo ... a big increase in article length (from a new account) should be something we report so mods can find it.
That works.
@Mark, in case that wasn't a joke: Yeah, we are trying to define either 'real' or 'constructive' in such a way that a program that speaks no English will understand what we are going on about.
Goal: Clear, Concise and WittyThere's a filter to only see new account edits.
Okay, so they have to make a number of edits on the MAIN page of something for it to be considered a constructive edit. Can the tech handle that?
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?On account aging... I don't really like that. People have been known to go on vacation and be away from a computer for a few weeks (or with major vacations, maybe a few months), and if we increase the wait period/inactivity deletion any further then it'd be useless.
"The fact that your food can be made into makeshift bombs alarms the Hell out of me, Scrye." - CharlatanThat I like. It does move us away from the openness we had before, but we had that with the Google Incident and we survived just fine.
Hmm. I know spam anywhere is bad, but how bad would it be for links to be allowed on discussion pages? If new people have legitimate links, could have them post it in the discussion and have link privileged troper put it in the page, and if someone catches it they can edit it out of the discussion item and report it to the mods. If the concern is primarily spam on the "white pages" then this would work well, but if we want to stop spam overall everywhere no exceptions then it wouldn't work.
"The fact that your food can be made into makeshift bombs alarms the Hell out of me, Scrye." - CharlatanA new troper with a legitimate interest in posting links could apply in the fora to have their restrictions removed early.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
If they are a prolific fanfic writer or such yeah I see that working.
All the spammers I've seen so far has had two features: new account + external link(s) in posts/edit reasons.
Is there a way to mark edits as containing an external link the same way "new account" is marked on the "New Edits" page? It would make monitoring edits for spam much easier.
On requiring email: It only takes about five minutes to create an e-mail account with Gmail or Yahoo, so requiring an email address doesn't do much to stop spam. (Unfortunately, I know this from experience.)
However, the e-mail thing also allows us to send an e-mail for our passwords. So it's not actually a bad idea at all. Not that you don't have a good point there.
Of course, a change that adds bullshit random text to the article would pass this test.
The problem with that is that there are tons of wiki editors currently who never, ever come to the forums. Unless it's a one-stop thing as you sign up where it says "Go to the forums, new guy", I can see a ton of people not knowing how to link.
"The fact that your food can be made into makeshift bombs alarms the Hell out of me, Scrye." - Charlatan

The idea of earning the privilege of posting external links by making some number of real edits is interesting.
The definition of "real edit" as it pertains to a young account becomes important. Right now, I'm thinking you could state it as:
A 'real' edit causes a change to the text other than a 'whitespace' change. The change contains no external links. The change does not decrease the length of the text significantly.
Of course, a change that adds bullshit random text to the article would pass this test.
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty