[TOS] Wiki cleanup status report

[MJ Ray]

Karsten Wade wrote:
> Do Twitter, Facebook, and the like provide OpenID authentication
> forward?  I don't want to get in to a flavor-of-the-year social media
> auth chase, but if these big houses implement the standards, it makes
> my following argument weaker ...

Not Twitter or Facebook, but I think OpenID is provided by
Google/Blogger, Yahoo/flickr, AOL, Livejournal, WordPress and that's
just off the top of my head.  http://openid.net/get-an-openid/ also
lists Myspace, Orange and some I've not heard of.

The disappointing things are:

 1. some of these are fiddly to use (Blogger, AOL, Livejournal and
Wordpress seem pretty easy, others less so) so probably want
explaining on the page, maybe with links that launch the OpenID
process with the right URL generated from the screen name;

 2. many OpenID implementations have user interface bugs, so you
need to add links and explanations to make it easy to use.  The
OpenID add-on

But it is still definitely better than ability-based captchas (the
"read the blurred image" or "hear the distorted speech" stuff that
locks out some humans) which should almost never be used in a
civilised society, and less irritating than maths questions.

Installing anti-spam modules too is a good idea.  Captchas and
authentication are not content analysis or moderation and should
not be mistaken for them.  I don't know if there are realistic
anti-spam modules for MediaWiki because I've not tried them.
Some Wikimedia sites require authorised-user approval of some
anonymous edits, but I'm not sure what controls that.  Anyone know?

Hope that helps,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op.
Webmaster, Debian Developer, Past Koha RM, statistician, former lecturer.
In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Available for hire for various work http://www.software.coop/products/