anti-spam features for laconica wiki

I note several people spending quite a bit of time keeping TRAC spam-free - their volunteer time would be better spent indexing, tagging, cross-referencing etc. Currently most (or all) seems to be new pages - this suggests they are made by a script.

Two suggestions for simple (and accessible!) anti-spam measures:

* add an extra input field with a simple question (such as 'type "orange"' or 'is the sun hot or cold?'); validation is also simple and it will defeat most bots. If they "know" the answer just change to a new question-answer pair;

* put a limit on the number of URLs that can be ''added'' when creating or editing a page (a simple regex can do the counting before-and-after).

See also: http://laconi.ca/Profiles/Igorette

Update: I just deleted a spam post myself - it definitely looks like the work of a script. -- Marjolein Katsma August 06, 2008, at 10:54 AM