trac ticket spam

[Simon Marlow]

On 12/03/11 09:00, Max Bolingbroke wrote:
> On 31 January 2011 16:54, Simon Marlow<marlowsd at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> On 31/01/2011 16:45, Claus Reinke wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Is there any way to have a "moderate first comment by new submitter"
>>>>> policy for trac, to avoid the kind of ticket spam we have at the moment?
>>>>>
>>>>> They seem to have started commenting on existing tickets now (#4510),
>>>>> which could turn into a real mess really quickly, if the currently known
>>>>> spam accounts aren't blocked soon, btw.
>>>>
>>>> We've deleted all the spam tickets and ticket changes. Ian blocked a
>>>> few IPs, and I've added some more patterns to the spam filter:
>>>>
>>>> http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/BadContent
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>> You've been using trac's spam filter for a while now, and these still
>>> got through. Also, I hadn't seen the commenting
>>> and "make random changes to fields" aspect before - it
>>> could be that someone is improving/testing trac spamming
>>> tools (as trac is in wide-spread use).
>>>
>>>   From checking the spam filter plugin description, and since
>>> spammers hardly ever make a useful contribution before
>>> posting spam, adopting the mailing list trick of moderating
>>> the first post for each new account might help a little (and
>>> might be easy to implement for a trac hacker).
>>
>> If such a thing is already available as a plugin then we can drop it in, but
>> otherwise it's unlikely - we don't really have the brain-cycles available
>> for hacking Trac itself.
>
> (Since the spam problem doesn't seem to be getting better, I'm
> resurrecting this thread)
>
> There is this plugin: https://software.sandia.gov/trac/fast/wiki/TicketModerator
>
> """
> The TicketModerator plugin is an extension for the  Trac project
> management and bug/issue tracking system. It supports the human
> moderation of new tickets and ticket comments for unprivileged users
> within Trac. When an unprivileged user submits a ticket or ticket
> comment, their submission is recorded in a "moderation queue" and is
> not visible on the main Trac site until a Moderator reviews their
> submission and either accepts or rejects it. Accepted submissions are
> then inserted into the main Trac ticket database.
> """
>
> So someone would have to volunteer to moderate but it would prevent
> spam showing up immediately. After a first valid ticket by a new user
> account they can be assigned the MODERATOR_PASS_* privileges so they
> can contribute freely.
>
> Possibly useful?

Maybe.  Before we look into that, I've also mentioned to Ian that I'm 
somewhat suspicious about the current spam plugin - I don't think it's 
actually working properly.  The log is supposed to list every content 
submission, but it only has a paultry few, suggesting that most content 
submissions are not actually being piped through the spam filter.

Cheers,
	Simon