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GitLab employee here. We have internal tooling that we're working on incorporating into GitLab itself to help with this: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2021/08/

GitLab employee here. We have internal tooling that we're working on incorporating into GitLab itself to help with this: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2021/08/19/introducing-spamcheck-data-driven-anti-abuse/ https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2021/08/19/introducing-spamche....

jancsika 5y ago
Sounds like a potential solution. When will it ship?
- boleary-gl 5y ago
  Looks like it shipped in 14.8 (4 days ago) https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/admin_area/reporting/spamcheck.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/admin_area/reporting/spamche...
  - jancsika 5y ago
    Oh wow, thanks! I'll have a look.
  - jancsika 5y ago
    Wait a sec... this is from the feature request[1]: > Just because I don't think I said it explicitly anywhere above: Because we are using an obfuscated, non-free component (the preprocessor), we can't include spamcheck in CE (users of CE expect no proprietary code to be included in the pacakge), but only in EE. So... is it available in the current version of gitlab-ce or not? I don't want to waste time trying to get it running only to find out you've only made it available for enterprise editions and gitlab.com. 1: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/omnibus-gitlab/-/issues/6259 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/omnibus-gitlab/-/issues/6259
    - dnsmichi 5y ago
      Non-free obfuscated code cannot be included in the community edition unfortunately. https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss/-/blob/master/LICENSE https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss/-/blob/master/LICE... The architecture in https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/spamcheck#architecture-diagram https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/spamcheck#architecture-diagram shows the spam detection, where the ML training models remain obfuscated to not give spammers an advantage. You can run EE without license, it provides the same features as CE. Maybe that is an option for you: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/update/package/convert_to_ee.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/update/package/convert_to_ee.html I've created an MR to help clarify the docs: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/81751 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/81751
      - jancsika 5y ago
        If I didn't care about the open source license I'd simply use github. (Which, unfortunately, may be the only solution that doesn't continue eating more and more of my time.) Anyhow, this sounds like a death knell for gitlab-ce. My GSoC use case isn't fringe (there are 100s of GSoC orgs), and Gitlab wouldn't have spent money on the ML approach for EE if it weren't generally important.
southerntofu 5y ago
Hello, do you have any plans/desire to support ActivityPub federation on Gitlab? It's a killer-feature-to-come for Gitea and certainly would help dealing with spam, as admins could allowlist trustworthy instances on an opt-in basis, enabling easy cooperation across related communities.
- boleary-gl 5y ago
  I don't think it's currently scheduled: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/30672 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/30672
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    Yeah i saw that issue two years ago. It's sad nothing has moved on here, whereas the forgefriends project (ex-fedeproxy, not directly related to forgefed) has been super active in the past year (checkout their monthly reports) in this area of forging interop. EDIT: someone on that issue summarized the issue pretty well: > Its really annoying how fragmented gitlab is rightnow. I have a dozen accounts on a dozen instances. This feature combined with oauth login to other instances, would make it like there is one big gitlab we all use!
- jancsika 5y ago
  Sorry, I'm not sure I understand. How does that help "dealing with spam?"
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    Because once you have federation you can either use an operator/domain web-of-trust, or you can use allow/denylists on your instance. That's how email or XMPP is kept mostly spam-free (on a selfhosted server most spam - if not all - i receive is from gmail addresses, not from selfhosted servers who are easily denylisted if they start sending spam). In particular, if an instance or specific repository concerns only people from specific projects/instances, it would be easy to allowlist those specific instances and not have to deal with spam at all.

jancsika 5y ago

Sounds like a potential solution. When will it ship?

boleary-gl 5y ago
Looks like it shipped in 14.8 (4 days ago) https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/admin_area/reporting/spamcheck.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/admin_area/reporting/spamche...
- jancsika 5y ago
  Oh wow, thanks! I'll have a look.
- jancsika 5y ago
  Wait a sec... this is from the feature request[1]: > Just because I don't think I said it explicitly anywhere above: Because we are using an obfuscated, non-free component (the preprocessor), we can't include spamcheck in CE (users of CE expect no proprietary code to be included in the pacakge), but only in EE. So... is it available in the current version of gitlab-ce or not? I don't want to waste time trying to get it running only to find out you've only made it available for enterprise editions and gitlab.com. 1: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/omnibus-gitlab/-/issues/6259 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/omnibus-gitlab/-/issues/6259
  - dnsmichi 5y ago
    Non-free obfuscated code cannot be included in the community edition unfortunately. https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss/-/blob/master/LICENSE https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss/-/blob/master/LICE... The architecture in https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/spamcheck#architecture-diagram https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/spamcheck#architecture-diagram shows the spam detection, where the ML training models remain obfuscated to not give spammers an advantage. You can run EE without license, it provides the same features as CE. Maybe that is an option for you: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/update/package/convert_to_ee.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/update/package/convert_to_ee.html I've created an MR to help clarify the docs: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/81751 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/81751
    - jancsika 5y ago
      If I didn't care about the open source license I'd simply use github. (Which, unfortunately, may be the only solution that doesn't continue eating more and more of my time.) Anyhow, this sounds like a death knell for gitlab-ce. My GSoC use case isn't fringe (there are 100s of GSoC orgs), and Gitlab wouldn't have spent money on the ML approach for EE if it weren't generally important.

southerntofu 5y ago

Hello, do you have any plans/desire to support ActivityPub federation on Gitlab? It's a killer-feature-to-come for Gitea and certainly would help dealing with spam, as admins could allowlist trustworthy instances on an opt-in basis, enabling easy cooperation across related communities.

boleary-gl 5y ago
I don't think it's currently scheduled: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/30672 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/30672
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Yeah i saw that issue two years ago. It's sad nothing has moved on here, whereas the forgefriends project (ex-fedeproxy, not directly related to forgefed) has been super active in the past year (checkout their monthly reports) in this area of forging interop. EDIT: someone on that issue summarized the issue pretty well: > Its really annoying how fragmented gitlab is rightnow. I have a dozen accounts on a dozen instances. This feature combined with oauth login to other instances, would make it like there is one big gitlab we all use!
jancsika 5y ago
Sorry, I'm not sure I understand. How does that help "dealing with spam?"
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Because once you have federation you can either use an operator/domain web-of-trust, or you can use allow/denylists on your instance. That's how email or XMPP is kept mostly spam-free (on a selfhosted server most spam - if not all - i receive is from gmail addresses, not from selfhosted servers who are easily denylisted if they start sending spam). In particular, if an instance or specific repository concerns only people from specific projects/instances, it would be easy to allowlist those specific instances and not have to deal with spam at all.