AVID:Requests for Comment/Enable the ConfirmAccount extension

Enable the ConfirmAccount extension
As some of you may be aware, the wiki has been under recent near-daily raids by a singular, LTA sockmaster with a notorious track record across multiple wikis. This resulted in account creations being temporarily disabled for hours, reaching up to almost half of the entire day to dissuade more socks from raiding the wiki, which in return stalled the growth of the wiki community. This is where I propose the ConfirmAccount extension's presence on AVID, which will have a more profound effect on socks and vandals trying to gain access to the wiki.

The previous extension used to filter out socking and vandalism, Moderation, generally worked, but the biggest flaw, as far as vandalism is concerned, is dealing with VPN abusers, who can still create multiple accounts freely with malicious usernames as an alternative way of raiding and vandalizing the wiki. The Moderation extension does not monitor that aspect, but the ConfirmAccount extension is capable of doing so, preventing inappropriate or suspicious usernames from registering on the wiki. No matter how many accounts sockmasters try to create, they will be rejected and their efforts will not be displayed live to the public. Granted, they can still post requests with inappropriate usernames and comments, but a simple reject to ignore their attention grabbing behavior will do the trick, and I believe that is another power to dissuade trolls from raiding the wiki. Requesting a desperate amount of accounts to access the wiki will allow them to catch their breath and waste hours on requests admins are smart enough to ignore. In other words, the RequestAccount page will either scare them off due to the page requiring the disclosure of their email address and other information or overwhelm them due to their requests always being marked as spam or rejected.

Moreover, although the Moderation extension effectively prevents edits from socks and vandals from going public in mainspace, the thing is that these sockmasters can still make changes to articles regardless if they are rejected or even marked as spammers. Their edits may not be visible for everyone to see, but they don't care. With the ConfirmAccount extension blocking access from them owning another account, apparently they could not publish any edits, which is another effective measure to dissuade them from creating more accounts.

When this proposal gets approved, links to the CreateAccount page will be changed to the RequestAccount special page. The former page itself will encourage users to request account creations instead of directly creating them. Like the page itself says, it is done "to protect the wiki against automated account creation"; the last three words being exactly what VPN abusers do when raiding wikis. It will simply be turned off if failed and normal account creations will be reactivated.

For miscellaneous information, this extension did get enabled a few times in the day; a part of that was due to testing as account creations were temporarily disabled. If you check the user creation log and contributions made by this account I made for testing measures, the general functionality of the ConfirmAccount extension is assured. Considering the daily raids in mind, the extension was and will be kept on and straightforward account creations will remain disabled. However, at this moment, new users have regained the ability to create accounts on the wiki at any time; they just need to use the RequestAccount special page where their requests will be screened for staff before their accounts are registered. So, I am planning to keep the ConfirmAccount extension as a permanent addition to AVID.

The extension will still allow new users to register on the wiki while at the same time keep sockpuppeting out of the wiki. It will continue the Moderation extension's goal of reducing socking and vandalism with a significant difference, nearly wipe out any newer cases of vandalism and sockpuppetry on the wiki. Camenati (talk) 04:32, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Support

 * 1)  Given that sockpuppet abuse is common here as you stated. Rainbow Puppy (talk) 06:00, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * 2) T807sig.png · Talk · Edits 06:07, 5 February 2024 (UTC)