[mb-users] Fake editors! Again!

[David Kritzberg]

* Kuno Woudt <kuno at frob.nl> [2008-05-06 01:12:39 +0200]:

> On Mon, May 05, 2008 at 11:21:30PM +0200, Vincent Poulain wrote:
> > Does this often occur, as far as we know? (question behind: does it worth
> > doing something to prevent that?)
> 
> Not often, but it's increasing.  
> 
> I haven't given much thought to possible solutions, but in general I
> believe there is no technical way to reliably detect fake accounts.  That
> doesn't mean we shouldn't detect the obvious cases, but expect slightly
> more creative vandalists to work around it easily.
> 
> So, IMO this should be part of an overal attempt to limit the damage
> vandalism can cause.  Luckily, we don't get many attempts at vandalism 
> yet, but I would still like to see a rollback option for destructive 
> edits for example.  And there's one or two other things mentioned on the
> mailinglists or bugtracker not too long ago.
> 
> -- kuno.

If the db is managed sort of like a wiki, then rollbacks should mostly
solve the vandalism problem particularly if it is the drive-by
variety.  Limiting damage could also be done by limiting powers of
recent accounts.  Both could be monitored with some kind of alert
page/report.  Since people take responsibility for certain archives,
they probably notice changes to the data they take responsibility for
pretty quickly.

If I sound like I don't really know what I'm talking about, this is
because I signed up for this list thinking I would be a contributor,
but instead I have only been a consumer of musicbrainz data.  If I can
I would like to say to anyone reading this Thanks!  Musicbrainz is my
most-trusted source, and I really appreciate the work people do here!

Dave


____________________________
Dave Kritzberg
http://dijon.colorado.edu/
Dave.Kritzberg at gmail.com