01458: A captcha is getting necessary to prevent page sandboxing

Summary: A captcha is getting necessary to prevent page sandboxing
Created: 2020-10-23 21:49
Status: Closed
Category: Other
From: CarlosAB
Assigned:
Priority: 1
Version: latest
OS: apache

Description: Perhaps a captcha on the site would be good to prevent sandboxing.

Also a way to skip it with an option in the url and a cookie to make it permanent for those who need it.

The captcha recipe proved to be really solid for me in my site.

Also a message on "action=edit" explaining what to do if they want to test pmwiki, that could also be skipped with url/cookie option.

I am not sure but I bet Petko must get tired to clean up all sandoxed pages, because it is too much to do by hand.

When I see the sandboxed pages, in a moment they are all deleted by Petko most of the time.

This is just a suggestion.

CarlosAB

It is not a problem for me to de-sandbox the wiki, I have a few custom functions that allow me to do it with one click (per page).

A more likely need would be to somehow prevent people to edit pages here by mistake. I assume some of them have installed PmWiki and while reading the documentation, they click on the link in the footer

There may be a more recent version at pmwiki.org or a talk page.

Then they keep reading, forgetting they are no longer on their own wiki, and post here. When we de-sandbox the content, they may lose their work.

This may have to be improved -- maybe a required checkbox that they know they are editing on PmWiki.org and not on their own wiki. --Petko

I wrote a small script that does this -- it is initially unchecked, and if you edit and check it twice, it remembers that it is checked for the next 2 hours. --Petko

I find something like this OpenPass works very well, - see the "easy alternative"

simon October 26, 2020, at 08:33 PM

Here Pm always wanted to have as few obstacles to editing as practical. Obviously, if the amount of disruption increases, we can take measures, but for now I don't see it as too annoying. On the contrary, the majority of these cases look like someone doesn't realize they are not on their own wiki and may lose their work. So I think we should be careful -- in the past I've locked pages and left messages so the authors can access the source and recover their texts. It is also possible for me to recover content from a deleted page. However, pictures uploaded to the Main group are automatically deleted within a few days and I cannot recover them. --Petko October 26, 2020, at 09:17 PM


Problem with checkbox "You understand that you edit on pmwiki.org and your edits may be reverted or modified".

I frequently edit a page to ask a question or comment. I usually preview it, then make changes, then preview
it again and again and again and again. I want my question/comment to be well written before saving them.

When I edit a page to ask a question or comment, and then preview it I have to click the checkbox first. The
second time I preview it I have to re-click the same checkbox. After more previews I do not have to click the
checkbox again. Why do I have to click it two times before it remembers that I clicked it the first time?
Can this be adjusted so only the first click is required? --gnuzoo

I've added a feature for regular PmWiki editors: middle-click with your mouse on the checkbox and the whole line will disappear for 30 days.

As mentioned above, I suspect many of the reverted edits are not in bad faith but from someone who just installed PmWiki and started editing their own wiki then without noticing they are on pmwiki.org they add their own content. Such a person may have already edited WikiSandbox, and checked the checkbox once, this is why I set it to twice. --Petko

I've also enabled known people who often contribute here to see the checkbox at most once per session (based on the Author field). And I'll add more as I see them in Recent Changes. --Petko