Combatting gitlab spam vs being approachable
Spam on the gitlab has been a problem for a while. Different things have been tried in the past to combat it, but combatting spam may have the effect of making pleroma less easy to approach for new people who want to contribute.
We've already tried a honeypot, which didn't seem to have any effect[1]. I remember reCaptcha was turned on at some point. Now we ask people to ask an account on a dedicated chatroom. There's a link and a web interface, so I think this is about as easy as we can make it, but sometimes people don't get a response[2].
I don't really have an answer for this problem myself, but at least wanted to make sure this is known.
[1] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss/-/issues/46548#note_244919214