Related to my thread started earlier I'm no a cleanup campaign and one of the things I'm trying to cleanup are over a hundred thousand unmoderated messages sitting around that no one wants to moderate (and I fully understand since I do this job on two lists twice a week myself).
For most lists it's a relatively simple issue, reject messages from non-subscribers in the future and I delete the old messages. However there are exceptions. One of those is the Board mailing list. The Board needs to be contactable as a group. However no one on the Board has the time to look through the gobs and gobs of spam for the rare valuable message.
Craig and I spoke about this on IRC and he brought up the idea of a web form with a captcha. Obviously the ideal location for such a thing would be on www.squeak.org. Does anyone have the time to implement such a thing? I think I might be able to provide a shortcut on the captcha, so don't sweat that one too much. If you would like more information let me know or come and chat on #squeak.
Thanks!
Ken
I've been thinking about something similar for the webteam list. We do get a real message from time to time but the amount of spam is overwhelming sometimes.
Karl
Ken Causey wrote:
Related to my thread started earlier I'm no a cleanup campaign and one of the things I'm trying to cleanup are over a hundred thousand unmoderated messages sitting around that no one wants to moderate (and I fully understand since I do this job on two lists twice a week myself).
For most lists it's a relatively simple issue, reject messages from non-subscribers in the future and I delete the old messages. However there are exceptions. One of those is the Board mailing list. The Board needs to be contactable as a group. However no one on the Board has the time to look through the gobs and gobs of spam for the rare valuable message.
Craig and I spoke about this on IRC and he brought up the idea of a web form with a captcha. Obviously the ideal location for such a thing would be on www.squeak.org. Does anyone have the time to implement such a thing? I think I might be able to provide a shortcut on the captcha, so don't sweat that one too much. If you would like more information let me know or come and chat on #squeak.
Thanks!
Ken
Webteam mailing list Webteam@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/webteam
Sure, and I mentioned it in the subject but failed to do so in the body that I wonder about using such a thing for server issues. So perhaps we could have a single form with a radio list or drop down where the sure specifies the topic of the mailing that would choose the recipient: either the Board or Webteam or Box-Admins. It might be useful to have any messages related to the website or other community services to go to both the webteam and box-admins mailing lists so whoever can handle the issue best can do so quickly.
Ken
On Tue, 2007-12-18 at 21:48 +0100, Karl wrote:
I've been thinking about something similar for the webteam list. We do get a real message from time to time but the amount of spam is overwhelming sometimes.
Karl
Ken Causey wrote:
Related to my thread started earlier I'm no a cleanup campaign and one of the things I'm trying to cleanup are over a hundred thousand unmoderated messages sitting around that no one wants to moderate (and I fully understand since I do this job on two lists twice a week myself).
For most lists it's a relatively simple issue, reject messages from non-subscribers in the future and I delete the old messages. However there are exceptions. One of those is the Board mailing list. The Board needs to be contactable as a group. However no one on the Board has the time to look through the gobs and gobs of spam for the rare valuable message.
Craig and I spoke about this on IRC and he brought up the idea of a web form with a captcha. Obviously the ideal location for such a thing would be on www.squeak.org. Does anyone have the time to implement such a thing? I think I might be able to provide a shortcut on the captcha, so don't sweat that one too much. If you would like more information let me know or come and chat on #squeak.
Thanks!
Ken
Webteam mailing list Webteam@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/webteam
Sounds good.
Karl
Ken Causey wrote:
Sure, and I mentioned it in the subject but failed to do so in the body that I wonder about using such a thing for server issues. So perhaps we could have a single form with a radio list or drop down where the sure specifies the topic of the mailing that would choose the recipient: either the Board or Webteam or Box-Admins. It might be useful to have any messages related to the website or other community services to go to both the webteam and box-admins mailing lists so whoever can handle the issue best can do so quickly.
Ken
On Tue, 2007-12-18 at 21:48 +0100, Karl wrote:
I've been thinking about something similar for the webteam list. We do get a real message from time to time but the amount of spam is overwhelming sometimes.
Karl
Ken Causey wrote:
Related to my thread started earlier I'm no a cleanup campaign and one of the things I'm trying to cleanup are over a hundred thousand unmoderated messages sitting around that no one wants to moderate (and I fully understand since I do this job on two lists twice a week myself).
For most lists it's a relatively simple issue, reject messages from non-subscribers in the future and I delete the old messages. However there are exceptions. One of those is the Board mailing list. The Board needs to be contactable as a group. However no one on the Board has the time to look through the gobs and gobs of spam for the rare valuable message.
Craig and I spoke about this on IRC and he brought up the idea of a web form with a captcha. Obviously the ideal location for such a thing would be on www.squeak.org. Does anyone have the time to implement such a thing? I think I might be able to provide a shortcut on the captcha, so don't sweat that one too much. If you would like more information let me know or come and chat on #squeak.
Thanks!
Ken
Webteam mailing list Webteam@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/webteam
Can I take it that while this sounds good to Karl, that no one on the webteam has any time to make it a reality?
Ken
On Tue, 2007-12-18 at 22:19 +0100, karl wrote:
Sounds good.
Karl
Ken Causey wrote:
Sure, and I mentioned it in the subject but failed to do so in the body that I wonder about using such a thing for server issues. So perhaps we could have a single form with a radio list or drop down where the sure specifies the topic of the mailing that would choose the recipient: either the Board or Webteam or Box-Admins. It might be useful to have any messages related to the website or other community services to go to both the webteam and box-admins mailing lists so whoever can handle the issue best can do so quickly.
Ken
On Tue, 2007-12-18 at 21:48 +0100, Karl wrote:
I've been thinking about something similar for the webteam list. We do get a real message from time to time but the amount of spam is overwhelming sometimes.
Karl
Ken Causey wrote:
Related to my thread started earlier I'm no a cleanup campaign and one of the things I'm trying to cleanup are over a hundred thousand unmoderated messages sitting around that no one wants to moderate (and I fully understand since I do this job on two lists twice a week myself).
For most lists it's a relatively simple issue, reject messages from non-subscribers in the future and I delete the old messages. However there are exceptions. One of those is the Board mailing list. The Board needs to be contactable as a group. However no one on the Board has the time to look through the gobs and gobs of spam for the rare valuable message.
Craig and I spoke about this on IRC and he brought up the idea of a web form with a captcha. Obviously the ideal location for such a thing would be on www.squeak.org. Does anyone have the time to implement such a thing? I think I might be able to provide a shortcut on the captcha, so don't sweat that one too much. If you would like more information let me know or come and chat on #squeak.
Thanks!
Ken
Webteam mailing list Webteam@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/webteam
I think it's a great idea, but no -- I do not have time to implement it.
On Dec 20, 2007 4:17 PM, Ken Causey ken@kencausey.com wrote:
Can I take it that while this sounds good to Karl, that no one on the webteam has any time to make it a reality?
Ken
On Tue, 2007-12-18 at 22:19 +0100, karl wrote:
Sounds good.
Karl
Ken Causey wrote:
Sure, and I mentioned it in the subject but failed to do so in the body that I wonder about using such a thing for server issues. So perhaps we could have a single form with a radio list or drop down where the sure specifies the topic of the mailing that would choose the recipient: either the Board or Webteam or Box-Admins. It might be useful to have any messages related to the website or other community services to go to both the webteam and box-admins mailing lists so whoever can handle the issue best can do so quickly.
Ken
On Tue, 2007-12-18 at 21:48 +0100, Karl wrote:
I've been thinking about something similar for the webteam list. We do get a real message from time to time but the amount of spam is overwhelming sometimes.
Karl
Ken Causey wrote:
Related to my thread started earlier I'm no a cleanup campaign and one of the things I'm trying to cleanup are over a hundred thousand unmoderated messages sitting around that no one wants to moderate (and I fully understand since I do this job on two lists twice a week myself).
For most lists it's a relatively simple issue, reject messages from non-subscribers in the future and I delete the old messages. However there are exceptions. One of those is the Board mailing list. The Board needs to be contactable as a group. However no one on the Board has the time to look through the gobs and gobs of spam for the rare valuable message.
Craig and I spoke about this on IRC and he brought up the idea of a web form with a captcha. Obviously the ideal location for such a thing would be on www.squeak.org. Does anyone have the time to implement such a thing? I think I might be able to provide a shortcut on the captcha, so don't sweat that one too much. If you would like more information let me know or come and chat on #squeak.
Thanks!
Ken
Webteam mailing list Webteam@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/webteam
Webteam mailing list Webteam@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/webteam
Ken Causey wrote:
Sure, and I mentioned it in the subject but failed to do so in the body that I wonder about using such a thing for server issues. So perhaps we could have a single form with a radio list or drop down where the sure specifies the topic of the mailing that would choose the recipient: either the Board or Webteam or Box-Admins. It might be useful to have any messages related to the website or other community services to go to both the webteam and box-admins mailing lists so whoever can handle the issue best can do so quickly.
So, what is needed to get this going ? I'm not sure what is required to do this.
Karl
Ken
On Tue, 2007-12-18 at 21:48 +0100, Karl wrote:
I've been thinking about something similar for the webteam list. We do get a real message from time to time but the amount of spam is overwhelming sometimes.
Karl
Ken Causey wrote:
Related to my thread started earlier I'm no a cleanup campaign and one of the things I'm trying to cleanup are over a hundred thousand unmoderated messages sitting around that no one wants to moderate (and I fully understand since I do this job on two lists twice a week myself).
For most lists it's a relatively simple issue, reject messages from non-subscribers in the future and I delete the old messages. However there are exceptions. One of those is the Board mailing list. The Board needs to be contactable as a group. However no one on the Board has the time to look through the gobs and gobs of spam for the rare valuable message.
Craig and I spoke about this on IRC and he brought up the idea of a web form with a captcha. Obviously the ideal location for such a thing would be on www.squeak.org. Does anyone have the time to implement such a thing? I think I might be able to provide a shortcut on the captcha, so don't sweat that one too much. If you would like more information let me know or come and chat on #squeak.
Thanks!
Ken
Webteam mailing list Webteam@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/webteam
On Mon, 2008-01-07 at 13:17 +0100, karl wrote:
Ken Causey wrote:
Sure, and I mentioned it in the subject but failed to do so in the body that I wonder about using such a thing for server issues. So perhaps we could have a single form with a radio list or drop down where the sure specifies the topic of the mailing that would choose the recipient: either the Board or Webteam or Box-Admins. It might be useful to have any messages related to the website or other community services to go to both the webteam and box-admins mailing lists so whoever can handle the issue best can do so quickly.
So, what is needed to get this going ? I'm not sure what is required to do this.
Karl
Well, let me just catalog my ideas:
1. Obviously the base is a page on the squeak.org website at a readily linkable URL, perhaps something like http://www.squeak.org/Contact .
2. On the page will be a form for contacting at least the Board and as previously discussed possibly the web team or box-admins team. I suggest we just start with the Board initially and deal with the rest once we have that working.
3. The form will consist of
3a. (eventually) either a choice of who to contact (board, web, box-admins) or perhaps a 'reason' choice that maps to the contact. This will not be needed in the first version that would only emails the board.
3b. The name of the person submitting the form.
3c. The email address of the person submitting the form ( I suggest the user be required to enter this twice to help ensure that it is typed correctly).
3b. A subject field.
3c. A large textarea for the message content.
3d. A captcha image. I need to work on this a bit but I believe I can provide this functionality for you since it is used on the Mantis server and I had to fiddle with it quite a bit to get it working. I don't think it will require too much effort for me to export it. Of course this would not be a Squeak implementation (PHP), but unless someone has an itch to pursue this in Squeak, this seems like an expedient solution.
3e. A field to type in the value the captcha represents.
3f. A submit button, maybe a cancel and/or reset button.
4. Once sumbitted the following checking should be done:
4a. Check that the email address entered twice matches.
4b. Check that the captcha matches. I'm still thinking about this but the way this will work will probably be something like:
i. When the form is created you generate a random short string which will be the value.
ii. Obviously you need to be able to link the value to the form in some way, however you should not send it in a hidden field for obvious reasons. If you are using something like Seaside it's not a problem since you can simply record the value in the session. Otherwise you might also generate an ID which is temporarily stored on the server side along with the captcha value and only the ID is sent with the form. Clearly there are various solutions to this, the exact one is not important.
iii. When generating the form you will insert an img tag with a URL crafted to request the generation of the captcha image. Here is one possible problem. The value will need to be sent as part of the URL. First of all, despite my long discussion of hiding the value above, I don't think we need to go to a great deal of trouble to hide the captcha value, the main point of course is to defeat standardized bots. As long as the value is not in the page in some form that it can be readily detected by the bot, I think we are OK. At the same time perhaps we can encrypt the value before placing it in the URL. Something as simple at ROT13 or the like might be good enough, we can discuss other better solutions.
iv. Beyond that it's simply a matter of checking what the user enters as the value and confirming that it matches the stored value.
4c. Check that the required fields are filled in: user's email address, subject, message text. Perhaps the name should also be required, I'm not sure.
5. If all the checks in step 4 above succeed then an email message will be generated with the appropriate content. The message will have a From field of a specific email address that will be subscribed to the appropriate list. The user supplied email address (and perhaps name) should be placed in a Reply-To field. The subject in the Subject field, the message in the body. It might also be valuable to include other information such as the submitters IP address, the time of the submission, etc. The email will then be sent to the appropriate mailing list address.
6. The user will get an HTTP reply confirming that her message has been received and that someone will respond as soon as possible.
7. Optional: we might also consider automatically sending an email to the address the user supplied with the content and a notice that the information has been received, etc.
Well, that's my thoughts. I would be happy to chat about this on IRC if anyone likes of course, or by email.
Ken
Ken
On Tue, 2007-12-18 at 21:48 +0100, Karl wrote:
I've been thinking about something similar for the webteam list. We do get a real message from time to time but the amount of spam is overwhelming sometimes.
Karl
Ken Causey wrote:
Related to my thread started earlier I'm no a cleanup campaign and one of the things I'm trying to cleanup are over a hundred thousand unmoderated messages sitting around that no one wants to moderate (and I fully understand since I do this job on two lists twice a week myself).
For most lists it's a relatively simple issue, reject messages from non-subscribers in the future and I delete the old messages. However there are exceptions. One of those is the Board mailing list. The Board needs to be contactable as a group. However no one on the Board has the time to look through the gobs and gobs of spam for the rare valuable message.
Craig and I spoke about this on IRC and he brought up the idea of a web form with a captcha. Obviously the ideal location for such a thing would be on www.squeak.org. Does anyone have the time to implement such a thing? I think I might be able to provide a shortcut on the captcha, so don't sweat that one too much. If you would like more information let me know or come and chat on #squeak.
Thanks!
Ken
Webteam mailing list Webteam@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/webteam
webteam@lists.squeakfoundation.org
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Jason Rogers -
karl -
Karl
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Ken Causey