Re: [boost] [Trac] Catch-22: Captcha Errors on legitimate submissions

Subject: Re: [boost] [Trac] Catch-22: Captcha Errors on legitimate submissions
From: Jim Bell (Jim_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-11-02 06:55:41

On 2013-11-01 11:54 PM, Rene Rivera wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 10:08 PM, DongInn Kim <dikim_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have looked into the trac admin page to see if there is anything useful
>> for this issue and I found that the current Jim Bell’s tickets and comments
>> were filtered out as a spam.
>> http://www.crest.iu.edu/~dikim/spamfilter.png
>>
> The spamfilter on trac is not perfect. It just filters out anything if they
>> meet some criteria that the filter setup. I have not setup the filter
>> criteria (Yes, I have installed the spam filter as you guys requested).
>>
> It seems that the spam filter has attained some considerable new types of
> filtering, which are not tweaked to Boost's use cases.
>
>
>> It seems that it needs to train the spam filter with some admin’s
>> interaction on the filtered tickets as a spam or ham.
>>
>> I just tried to make four Jim Bell’s ticket/comments selected as a ham. I
>> hope the spam filter does a little better job on Jim Bell’s ticket next
>> time.
>>
> I think that only works for reporting back to services like askimet. Which
> did not actually play a role in filtering the posts.

But it seems, from the page's message, that there's a captcha that lets 
us users jump through the hoop on our own. Doesn't it? "Please provide a 
response to the following." Is there a Trac/server log that might tell 
what tried to display on that page next but failed to?

>
>> The following users are the admin of the boost trac system ...
> I used to pay close attention to the spam filtering. But got tired of doing
> that.. Especially after the spam went down to a minimal trickle.

Can't blame you for wearying on that.

Those coming after can at least find this thread and track down an admin.

Thanks for the screen-shot, DongInn--it's good to know there's a nice 
admin interface available. Interesting, too, to see the various criteria 
applied, and that my being rejected multiple times was for different 
reasons. (I still reserve the right to be paranoid!)

But it seems (thanks to some Ukrainian spammer) that my name will 
permanently block me from Trac. Do I fish for a different one, or is 
there a tweak? Or does hamming a thing or two fix it? Time will tell, I 
guess.

PS: Searching for "captcha" in Trac tickets/comments shows I'm not 
alone, though any of those may have been rectified in the past.