Request for Ubuntu Doc Leadership

[Chris Perry]

Morning all (UK time),

Here is my summary of the situation as regards the community help wiki:

The community help wiki (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/) was
attacked by spammers starting on 23rd Dec 2015. The spam changes were
removed in early Jan 2016 and the community help wiki was locked to
launchpad users, and is still locked to launchpad users now. There was
a short discussion of solutions (how to make spamming more difficult)
on this list in mid Jan 2016. People seemed to agree that the obvious
solution was to add CAPTCHA screens. A CAPTCHA screen at launchpad
registration would ensure that only humans could register. A CAPTCHA
screen at launchpad login would ensure that only humans could log on.

Lyz wrote this on 8th Feb 2016: "To quickly follow up, I updated the
ticket [Canonical IS] #27950 with suggestions from this thread on
January 18th (almost 3 weeks ago), including asking whether they could
just open it back up to edits for everyone and see what happens. I
haven't yet gotten a response about it, so I don't know what the
status is. Hopefully they're working on it and will let us know
something soon." I believe there has been no action on the Canonical
IS ticket yet.

Apparently it is possible for ordinary launchpad users to edit the
community help wiki. They have to join the Etherpad group.

My suggestion: If it's straightforward to restore the community help
wiki from a backup (in case spammers attack again) then can we simply
ask Canonical IS to unlock the community help wiki and see what
happens (this was one of Lyz's suggestions)? I mean ask them directly
if possible, not via an update to the (ignorable) ticket.

Regards,

Chris.