Mailing List Archive

On Tue, Mar 11, 2003 at 07:33:46AM -0700, Fred Bauder wrote:
> How does one disable editing by bots such as the one RamMan used?
>

There is no easy way to do so. Your server has no means to
distinguish between a human editor or a bot.

The technique used by most websites to get rid of bots is
to force the user to type in a text that is presented to
the user in an image. Ideally, the image should be hard
to scan by a computer.

Regards,

JeLuF

One of the great and amazing discoveries of wikipedia is that while
there are a few jerks out there of course, the general population of
the Internet as a whole is not filled with rabid savages looking to
wreck websites.

Brion blocks abusive bots from time to time, but it's not often a big
problem. I'd say for a smaller site just starting out, there's almost
no chance of a bot doing anything.

--Jimbo

On Tue, Mar 11, 2003 at 06:41:18PM +0100, Jens Frank wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 11, 2003 at 07:33:46AM -0700, Fred Bauder wrote:
> > How does one disable editing by bots such as the one RamMan used?
> >
>
> There is no easy way to do so. Your server has no means to
> distinguish between a human editor or a bot.
>
> The technique used by most websites to get rid of bots is
> to force the user to type in a text that is presented to
> the user in an image. Ideally, the image should be hard
> to scan by a computer.

This is extremely stupid technique of course - it does much
more to annoy users than to prevent an attack.
Just make a policy that bots should not be used on your site.