commented by freebeer (2018-02-18 17:40:58+00:00): This will probably appear twice.  Seems my provider has picked a minute before I submitted to start to screw around with my IPv6 connectivity/routing.  Overridden at my end for now...
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The laxness is probably due to the regional differences.  Notes vandalism is a significant issue in other countries that would not allow a fraction of what I can get away with.  The dutch forum has an active thread that of late seems to have drifted off-topic but had been discussing a similar anonymous troll, and the german note vandalism in several threads has been handled (including deleting my most creative work, *sob*) when a DWG member decided to get actively involved.
I know that note contents are not ignored by the DWG members, but until one of them steps in, I'm pretty sure I don't have the needed authority to handle the situation as in Freiburg, where off-topic or insulting commentary is quietly disappeared.
I am also disappointed that for such a simple line of attack, there's no actual rate limiting in place that I can see or similar limits in quantity.  No serious anonymous contributor has a need to open hundreds of scattered notes per hour.  Even ten is pretty rare, not to mention inefficient.
Ultimately these numbers and similar proposals have been hashed out in detail in those regional lists or fora.  The US forum is pretty much dead like many others, also it's a map-wide issue, while the proposed solutions to regional issues would have too much (negative from my view) impact in this part of the world.
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The Saint Valentino Massacre was not a brute-force attack as there was nothing to be cracked or broken into.  It was a simple spamming attack, with a DOS on the side.
The DOS does not come about so much as we understand it, but more in the implementation of how only a limited number of bugs can be displayed per screen, so that in an overview, these junk reports pushed out valid ones from being displayed, much like in NYC or other note-filled ghetto.
Then there is of course the wasting of resources of everyone concerned, myself resolving at the start to keep things under control from the start to spare others the effort later, when they could resolve actual bugs.
It's a shame that at the same time, there has been a flood of spam reports in India I've been dealing with, where a spammer had once again added a flood of hundreds of advert nodes in a popular tourist area, which has been reverted but was present in the maps.me snapshot so that for the near future, the cached nodes will result in a flood of users attempting to delete them by posting repeatedly, multiple times, in every one of the places, a new Note, all piling atop each other, that have to be each manually closed.
It would have been just desserts if one of those had been timed to grab the coveted spot.  Or if some admin had stepped in beforehand...
Anyway, this anonymous vandal has been at this for as long as I've been doing notes since the Houston hurricane, but of late has stepped up the annoyance level past the occasional advert spamming of notes that I typically slay just one or two a day now.
He didn't stop upon reaching his goal, posting a further hundred or so, and I can see bug report #1'333'333 being the next target, much like after missing out on changeset #55'555'555, I'm eyeing 56'789'012 or something as my goal.
It is simple attention-seeking behaviour, for which there is no punishment, some fake sense of achievement, and even any behaviour from my side, or Constable's, or yours, may serve only to egg him on to try to get away with more.
The person is not stupid, although apparently resistant to learning, and I am hoping/wishing the present calm is, much like the day I took of for myself and to regret not having done so on monday when I could have gotten a special bright lamp and heating pads at a discount -- maybe it is a time of reflection, rue, and regret.  Lent.  Time of fasting (strong Fastenbier is available and *hic* encougra ... incorriga ... *hic* izzh BEEER <slams fist>.  Izzza beer.  <misses table with fist>  BBeer.  <falls off chair>)
Sadly, I doubt it.
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There are a number of things I should relate from my observations of Pascal's pages:
The changeset commentaries seems to be serial and up-to-date.
The per-country notes stats has some issues (graphs not up-to-date for, say, Cuba).
The summary pages per country for the four states of notes, gets sporadic updates every half hour, but not complete coverage.
At sometime around 06h GMT and 12 hours later, the pages appear to be empty until the next update.  Not sure if that's a `cron' job that will take summer time into account.
The database appears to be rebuilt at the 06h GMT more-or-less time, so that comments or new bug-reports missing from the summary over the previous day then appear.  Very often your comments won't show up until that time, so I learn not to finish reading when I come to a familiar note (else the Entune app suite scout-osm spams multiple times per day would fool me), but until I go back at least a day, usually further to revisit other notes I chose to pass first few times around.
I'm not sure what the exact issue is there, but I can live with it now I've learned  its peculiarities.
There have been times the https: port has not answered briefly, but not recently for me.
I don't think keeping up is an issue as such, this being a manual attack rather than a bot pushing out hundreds per second.  Still, it should have been throttled by rate-limiting before the second bug-report, and a backoff after that.
Character overruns are also likely a non-issue, or my posts like this would never appear (they usually do).  Pascal's code strips out the newlines for display, yet still displays the remaining string of bangs spilling off the right of my browser (should go back to viewing those in Lynx, like my changeset reviews, but it's too convenient to actually visit the note with a single click and view the area before my snarky remark and resolve).
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I do honestly feel sorry for this person, not just annoyed.  (I'm responsible for my Notes actions myself.)  There is a person behind the obnoxious facade we see, and when I've turned my back on OSM to take time for myself, buy only two of the three heating pads I planned for, do my traditional Valentine's Day search in the woods for the first Bärlauch of the spring (success! a mild winter until now so even the nearest patch that is usually the last to appear, had some thumb-length green shoots visible, my first concentrated vitamins in a while, yay, garlic breath now until June or so)...
What motivates someone to miss out on that, or the weekend's Fasching I wrote about?  Or am I lucky to still be able to do the things that matter to me far more than OSM?  And, am I really as unhappy with my life as I make out?
There are a lot of extreme individuals who get involved with OSM, or with any of the Internet activities I've been involved with since the 1980s when networking took over from the Hollerith punch-card batch jobs... enough memory lane.  The Internet offers a good escape or outlet for people not as fortunate as myself as much as it seems to bring out the worst in people or draw the obsessives together.  So I have no idea if my criticism of this behaviour as belonging to someone with a sad, pitiful life is because  this is someone who cannot enjoy the same things in life that I do, or really revels in inconveniencing others.
Sorry, gotta stop there, the beers are kicking in.
It's an hour and a half since my christmas lights switched on, still daylight, and in the mornings another hour of daylight now passes before they shut off.  Last year I adjusted the times every few weeks.  This year I won't bother.  Two other houses on the street still have their simple, soft, subtle holiday lights up even now as well.  Pretty soon I'll be able to spend more time outside in comfort, and I'll give up on the obsession I took up with OSM over the winter with nothing else to do in a dark unheated room and 30cm width, 150cm length to stretch out and sleep (I am somewhat tall and fat).  I'll be at the beach again, interacting with people, studying the printed image, and being far removed from any Internet connectivity.  And I don't think I'll miss it.  And honestly, OSM won't miss me.  Yes, I cleared thousands or tens of obsolete bug-reports (not counting the last half-thousand), in the hopes of making Notes a useful tool for mappers again.
But ultimately the fate of notes rests with the OSM Cabal and how to react to events like this or the cyrillic letter spamming.  Here and in general, Notes, while being a part of OSM and supported and encompassed by the guidelines (Pascal's site is independent), are treated more as an unwanted stepchild, or a sewer where a lot of shite gets dumped for someone else to clean up.  And for that to change, someone has to take a hands-on approach as around Freiburg, as there simply isn't the people-power to handle everything in a volunteer organisation, as hinted at in the discussion brought upon by the slashdot article based on emacsen's blog post.
Need another beer, be right back
Need a bucket too