Hi Mauro,
What criteria are used to allow someone to create a new account on patchwork?
There's no criteria; anyone can register through the add-an-account interface. This creates an (inactive) account, and a corresponding entry in the 'person' table.
The inactive accounts can then be activated when a link in the account registration confirmation email is clicked.
It seems that there are automated form-submission bots around, who submit bogus data to any forms found on the web. Generally, the intention is to submit comments (typically on blog sites) linking back to their own sites.
Since no confirmation is ever submitted for these accounts, they remain inactive.
What I'm seeing on my patchwork instance is that there are thousands of what it seems to be fake accounts there, like: http://patchwork.linuxtv.org/project/linux-media/list/?submitter=4392&state=*
What you're seeing here is the new entries in the person table. They'll correspond to inactive accounts, and are fairly harmless.
Note that if someone comments on a patch, it will also create an entry in the person table.
Also, as if one never sent a patch, it has no business to do with patchwork. So, I can't see why should he/she should be allowed to create an account there.
I think it's legitimate to register an account and never submit a patch. For example, there may be "administrators" of a project, who manage the flow of patches into the source tree, who need an account to update patches.
So, in the case of the patchwork instance I maintain, I'd like to: 1) run an script that would delete all users that never sent a patch;
This is better implemented by deleting the accounts that are inactive, once their account confirmation link has expired. I'll add to the patchwork cron script to do this.
Cheers, Jeremy _______________________________________________ Patchwork mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/patchwork
