Cancel culture

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cjshawcj
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Joined: 04 Jan 2011 00:21
Location: Bath, England

Cancel culture

Post by cjshawcj »

I should like to apply to join the cancel culture in respect of three work pages that have appeared unrequested by me
https://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Fac ... ristopher)
https://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Christopher
https://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/At_ ... in_Cuzens) CPDL #64663

These have appeared, unimportuned as far as I am aware, during my last two visits to upload items.
Why are these unsolicited pages being created? I am doing nothing different in my upoloading, in which I have a modicum of experience.
Claude_T
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Re: Cancel culture

Post by Claude_T »

When one fills the ‘AddWork’ form, for example creating a new work,
with his web browser’s « Fill forms’ fields automatically » function activated,
the web browser fills the first field (composer name) with your first data kept to fill automatically forms, your first name!

So, please check (first) fields content before validating the whole form!
MandyShaw
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Location: Bath, England

Re: Cancel culture

Post by MandyShaw »

Hi Claude, i have looked into this issue given that it has never happened to either of us in our many previous completions of the form. As you say this is clearly an autofill issue but I would suggest that the real problem is CPDL's use of 'name' as the name of the 'Name of composer' field:

Name of composer (First_name Last_name): <input type="text" name="name" size="30" maxlength="100" id="composer"/>

I don't know whether that has changed, or perhaps browsers are just getting 'better' at guessing (we are getting identical results on Edge and Chrome on two separate computers), but would it be possible to use a more specific name for the 'Name of composer' field?
choralia
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Re: Cancel culture

Post by choralia »

MandyShaw wrote: 20 Jun 2021 11:59 I don't know whether that has changed
No, it's the same since the migration to MediaWiki in 2005. Raf Ornes created the first version of the Add Work form, and the name of the various fields has been the same since then.
MandyShaw wrote: 20 Jun 2021 11:59 perhaps browsers are just getting 'better' at guessing (we are getting identical results on Edge and Chrome on two separate computers)
This problem started happening with Chrome some time ago. It seems that Edge is now becoming affected, too. The composer name field is automatically filled by the the form, so it seems that these browsers are so stupid that they try to guess and overwrite the content of a field even when the field is filled already. I'll still stick to Mozilla Firefox, definitely...
MandyShaw wrote: 20 Jun 2021 11:59 would it be possible to use a more specific name for the 'Name of composer' field?
Yes, I've just changed it to "composer", which is also more consistent with the other existing fields, such as "lyricist", "editor", etc. . Can you submit any other scores, just to check that it works now for you, and that there are no regressions?

Max
MandyShaw
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Location: Bath, England

Re: Cancel culture

Post by MandyShaw »

Hi Max, many thanks for your help.
Unfortunately I have just had another go and on both Edge and Chrome the first name is put in the Composer field and the last name in the Lyricist field - ignoring the form field names of these fields altogether.
The only way to control this seems to be to switch off autofill temporarily (which I have worked out how to do on Edge but not as yet on Chrome).
Browser trying to be very much too clever based on the prompts all saying '(First_name Last_name)', I suppose?
Best wishes
Mandy
choralia
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Re: Cancel culture

Post by choralia »

MandyShaw wrote: 22 Jun 2021 09:53 Browser trying to be very much too clever based on the prompts all saying '(First_name Last_name)', I suppose?
Yes, apparently they read the '(First_name Last_name)' text labels and overwrite anything already present in those fields. Quite crazy, indeed.

A possible workaround may be a CAPTCHA-alike trick where the (First_name Last_name)' text labels are replaced with an image. This may work if browsers are not so "clever" that they perform Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on graphical elements, too. Shall we give it a try?

Max
MandyShaw
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Re: Cancel culture

Post by MandyShaw »

What a pain for you Max! Sounds like a plan. I have done that on a website in the past to prevent harvesting of 'phone numbers, I have a tool to generate the images using ImageMagick, so happy to help with this if useful.
choralia
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Re: Cancel culture

Post by choralia »

I frequently deal with visually impaired internet users, who make use of screen readers to have the contents of web pages translated into audible information. For this reason I wanted to try an alternative solution first, which should be compatible with screen readers:

autocompletion.gif
autocompletion.gif (6.9 KiB) Viewed 84606 times

Could you please try to fill in the updated add work form? Is this trick enough to circumvent those "clever" autocompletion features?

Max
MandyShaw
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Re: Cancel culture

Post by MandyShaw »

Many thanks Max as always. I must admit I had missed the accessibility point. We will be publishing a dozen or so scores over the next few days so will test with those early next week if that's ok.
Mandy
choralia
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Re: Cancel culture

Post by choralia »

MandyShaw wrote: 08 Jul 2021 20:42 will test with those early next week if that's ok.
Yes, it's OK of course! Around 30 new submissions have been made since I modified the form, so I guess that at least no regressions occurred.

Max
cjshawcj
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Location: Bath, England

Re: Cancel culture

Post by cjshawcj »

F.A.O. Max
A day of mixed fortunes with my uploads. The first 7 were via Microsoft Edge. On two occasions the details changed while I scrolled down, creating two new workpages in my name, and a new composer page. The work pages I recycled using "move" but I am afraid the the composer page "Christopher John Shaw" needs deleting. I achieved a modicum of stability in the composer box by "correcting" the last two letters of the composer names provided by CPDL (add new work). I was wary of this propensity, yet was still caught out: the price of accuracy is eternal vigilance.
The latter 4 uploads were via Google Chrome, and the fault did not manifest itself.
MandyShaw
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Joined: 28 May 2007 09:11
Location: Bath, England

Re: Cancel culture

Post by MandyShaw »

Hi Max
Following Christopher's findings I have done some more research.
I find that populating the email1 field autopopulates the 3 fields above it, both on Edge and on Chrome; Christopher had the same experience, but with the email2 field, and only on Edge. I imagine differences in browser versions and/or in saved autofill data cause these differences.
I have done a bit of investigation and found that the key here may be the field autocomplete attribute.
I created a small form with just the first few fields, and made the following tweak:
Name of composer <i>(see remark hereafter)</i>: </td><td> <input type="text" name="composer" size="30" maxlength="100" id="composer" autocomplete="random98765">
Name of lyricist <i>(see remark hereafter)</i>: </td><td> <input type="text" name="lyricist" size="30" maxlength="100" autocomplete="random98765">
This worked perfectly on both browsers, disabling autocomplete on the composer and lyricist where we don't want it, but leaving it enabled for the editor/contributor.
The reason for the random string random98765 is that it appears the standard setting of "off" is not respected in Chrome: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/is ... 68153#c164. A random setting is recommended in multiple locations on the web.
Hope that makes sense and helps
Mandy
choralia
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Re: Cancel culture

Post by choralia »

Hi Mandy, thank you for your investigation.

I was a little bit doubtful about trying this trick to fool those crazy autocompletion features, as I was afraid of some side effects. However, I was keeping an eye on the latest submissions, and I noticed some similar problems from contributors who never experienced the same before, and therefore I wonder if browsers are getting worse from this viewpoint. So, I've just implemented the change that you suggested. Let's see what happens!

Max
cjshawcj
Posts: 76
Joined: 04 Jan 2011 00:21
Location: Bath, England

Re: Cancel culture

Post by cjshawcj »

Wotcher, Max
This fix works very well: I've uploaded 9 items in record time tonight, since I am no longer revisiting every box three times.
(Google Chrome - can't speak for others)
cjshawcj
Posts: 76
Joined: 04 Jan 2011 00:21
Location: Bath, England

Re: Cancel culture

Post by cjshawcj »

I'm afraid that on my first posting of the evening tonight, I have been the victim again of aggressive auto completion.
Please delete "The willow song" appearing under my name, and also the composer page in my name which was created automatically.
I shall proceed with caution, but if this error recurs, I will discontinue posting until such time as a more recent, effective fix is implemented.~~~~
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