开云体育

Hi all,

This week's change log:


Feel free to reply to this topic if you'd like to comment on the
changes. Or better yet, if you expect a lot of discussion start a new
topic (or rejoin an existing one) about a specific change.


* System for dealing with DMCA takedown notices, for hiding topics and for storing notices.

That may all be part of DMCA handling, in that the handling of a take-down notice requires that the message be removed from the site, but handling a put-back notice requires that it be restored. So a mechanism to hide it instead of actually deleting it from the database would be useful.

There's also speculation in beta@ that the "hiding" part could be a step towards resolving the various problems that occur when people reply by email to messages which have been deleted from the group. And/Or that it could become the basis of a future "undelete" feature. Whatever the case, I haven't spotted any new user controls related to hiding messages or topics.


* Testing adding Recaptcha for some registrations. Sigh.

The "Sigh" no doubt relates to Mark's expressed dislike of captcha systems. But at least the Google "reCAPTCHA" mechanism works at being minimally troublesome. It is adaptive, putting up a something as simple as a checkbox or something more challenging, depending on whether the user seems more human-like or more robot-like, according to its own heuristics.



Note that Mark is testing this with a single group so far, and only in one of the registration (sign-up) flows leading to joining the group. Failing the captcha would prevent the user (presumed robot) from creating a Groups.io account, and hence from joining the group via a web link. I don't think this would affect +subscribe email commands or responding to an Invite.

The group was selected because they embedded a signup form on some website and were subsequently besieged by robotic attempts to join the group. See the Promote page (under Admin) in your group, under "Embed a Signup Form" for more information about that. I gather (from an earlier message) that the group's moderators couldn't keep up with rejecting Pending members quickly enough to keep ahead of the robot(s), and were put at some risk of tossing legit people along with the robots.


Comments about these others are also welcome:

INTERNAL: Work on tracking down a crash bug in the database replication system.
SYSADMIN: Moved the monitor instance to another physical machine.
CHANGE: Try to 'clean up' invalid search queries.
BUGFIX: Possible fix for Chrome autocomplete location field in adding an event.
BUGFIX: You could not edit a message from someone whose entire account has been deleted.
BUGFIX: New databases were not being indexed by the search cluster.
CHANGE: Group guidelines are sent to the group, not to individual subscribers. There's also now a separate email subject field. The guidelines are sent with the hashtag #guidelines, which if it doesn't already exist, is created with a topic duration of one month.


Please call out any you find significant.

Shal

Hi all,


Captchas are a nuisance for all of us who are blind and can't see the screen. They are also a problem for those of us, including me, who are hearing-impaired and have trouble hearing audio captchas. I've dealt with them in various ways, but they are always a nuisance. If you plan to add captchas, please have some type of alternative for multifactor identification, such as sending a code to the person's email address, so that the code can be easily accessed and typed into an edit box on the page with the captcha.


If I'm responding inappropriately, I apologize for that; I am new to the site in general, and new to this group.


Thank you,


Mary Emerson

Mary,

If I'm responding inappropriately, I apologize for that; I am new to
the site in general, and new to this group.

Welcome! Your response is fine. GMF is a help and discussion group run by volunteers. If you haven't you might also want to check out beta@, the official "suggestion box" group run by Mark (Founder of Groups.io):

Captchas are a nuisance for all of us who are blind and can't see the
screen. They are also a problem for those of us, including me, who are
hearing-impaired and have trouble hearing audio captchas.

The CAPTCHA system Mark is testing is from Google. He didn't say exactly which version he's using, other than "latest". Hopefully that's the same or newer than the one reviewed here:

If you plan to add captchas, please have some type of alternative for
multifactor identification, such as sending a code to the person's
email address, ...

That's an interesting variation.

Mark is testing Google's reCAPTCHA in the registration (sign-up) flow, a point at which the site does not yet know your email address, or maybe it is when you've first entered your address. So the question is whether the robots would be able to handle entering an email address and receiving the code. I suspect that they must be capable of that in order to have gotten as far as they did, but that's something only Mark would know.

I haven't seen the email code idea on beta@, you could add your idea to the topic over there and see if Mark replies.


Shal

If I understand that correctly, that is exactly the kind of Captcha I
said I did NOT want. It seems tightly linked into Google and unless
the site is registered with Google AND you are logged into Google
ticking the 'I am not a robot' box only brings up the dreaded series of
picture boxes where you have to select all the boxes with cars etc and
go round the loop several times. Maybe I am wrong, but I hope this is
not the type Mark is talking about, I hate them with a vengeance.

Dave

On 4 Nov 2017 at 18:07, Shal Farley wrote:

The CAPTCHA system Mark is testing is from Google. He didn't say exactly
which version he's using, other than "latest". Hopefully that's the same
or newer than the one reviewed here:

Dave, I agree wholeheartedly. I had to deal with this when I did my income taxes last year. Being both totally blind and deaf on one side, I had to try quite a few times to get past the captcha. I subscribe to software that will figure out numbers and letters, but it can't figure out those pictures at all. This wonderful site is accessible to all of us with disabilities; must it be ruined with captchas?


Mary

Mary,

This wonderful site is accessible to all of us with disabilities; must
it be ruined with captchas?

It seems that the internet is the kind of neighborhood where doors must have locks.

I understand you've had great difficulty with CAPTCHAs, but hopefully your worst fears won't come true here. There are at least two mitigating factors.

1) Mark is only talking about the registration flow - when you first create an account on the site. You only have to do that once, unless you create additional accounts for testing or other purposes.

2) As Lena pointed out (in another thread), you can create an account by using the email +subscribe command and thereby avoid the CAPTCHA.
/g/GroupManagersForum/message/2570

Dave's dismissal notwithstanding, my reading of the SimplyAccessible post I cited as well as Google's pages about it suggests to me that Google is taking the accessibility problems of traditional CAPTCHAs seriously, and working hard to make sure that their implementation stays out of a human's way as far as possible.

Shal

Having looked a bit more into the reCaptcha and noCaptcha options from
Google I realise they work very much on keeping Google's cookies in
your browser. noCaptcha in particular relies on identifying your
browsing habits from a cookie, and if it doesn't find one forces you to
go through the 'select images with cars' routine ad infinitum.

Google rightly assumes that most won't delete cookies regularly or
ever. I am also not sure whether it also assumes you remain logged into
Google, as some but by no means all will, or also whether blocking
third party cookies also defeats the process.

I only log into Google if I ever need to access my (rarely used) GMail
account or for a few other things. Google cookies are deleted everytime
I close my browser, other cookies reviewed and deleted once a day.
Third party cookies are blocked, many of us do this to reduce tracking
and for other security reasons.

For these and other reasons Google's Captcha is not as revolutionary as
they claim.... May suit many but not all.

Dave

On 5 Nov 2017 at 12:52, Shal Farley wrote:

Dave's dismissal notwithstanding, my reading of the SimplyAccessible
post I cited as well as Google's pages about it suggests to me that
Google is taking the accessibility problems of traditional CAPTCHAs
seriously, and working hard to make sure that their implementation stays
out of a human's way as far as possible.

Shal