Relevance of this post? Re: Jonathan Parr presents www.libeldefense.com

[simo]

On Fri, 2007-11-02 at 14:22 +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> simo <simo.sorce at xsec.it> wrote:
> > On Fri, 2007-11-02 at 11:40 +0100, Reinhard Mueller wrote:
> > > Yes, he is. And more than that, he is one of the modern spam bots that
> > > is able to subscribe to mailman mailing lists. :-(
> > > 
> > > If this problem gets worse, we have to think about a solution.
> >
> > Captcha on subscribe, it's becoming necessary :(
> 
> Please do *NOT* put a bloody eyetest on this mailing list.  That will
> almost certainly lock out people like me, while allowing in some
> robots with visual-recognition code.  If you want to test spamminess,
> then eyesight and hearing have little to do with that.  If anything,
> I suspect spammers probably average better on eyesight and hearing
> tests than the general population these days ;-) I have met one user
> who read by touch, with solenoids pushing on fingers and I think I've
> seen braille strip output devices in the past - why should we lock
> such people out or give them second-class service unnecessarily?

No need to jump on the chair, there are captchas (maybe they have a
different name I don;t care too much about the acronym of the day) that
just ask you a smart question that requires a brain to answer. Simple
arithmetic is one of them but I guess that will not last long. But there
are many ways to not use images.

> I believe the best test would be to put new members on moderation-hold
> until they make some sensible posts.  (Ultimately, who cares if it's a
> bot if it's posting relevant stuff? ;-> )  Shouldn't the FSFE be
> following best practice instead of false sense of security?
> http://www.w3.org/TR/turingtest#security

It's a catch-up game, this system will give us some more months without
requiring stricter moderation of the list (expensive).

Simo.