[Moin-user] TimeChanges: an edit-timing extension for MoinMoin

[Paul Boddie]

Hello,

I've been thinking of making an extension like this for a while, but I finally 
got round to it today. The TimeChanges extension measures the time between a 
user viewing a page and then saving it. If the measured time is too short, the 
edit is rejected.

One motivation for this extension is to prevent automated edits of a certain 
kind where a script or robot attempts to rapidly edit pages. There appears to 
be similar extensions for WordPress that attempt to detect robot-like 
behaviour.

I've uploaded the code to a repository in the following location:

http://hgweb.boddie.org.uk/TimeChanges

I think there are probably other interesting techniques that could be applied, 
too. These days, deploying Moin can be a challenge due to the pervasive 
spamming that now takes place on the Web, and it would be interesting to 
explore solutions that make it easier to cultivate trusted communities of wiki 
contributors without the manual effort that is currently needed to do so.

Maybe this, amongst other counter-measures, may be useful to someone.

Paul

P.S. This might also serve as inspiration or as a reference to other potential 
extension authors, especially since it isn't much code at all.