Re: We should get active ...

On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 01:18:44AM +0100, Jean-Paul Argudo wrote:
> > I would say, to protect ourselves from stupid users we should avoid
> > wiki/forums.
>
> I'll bet you had a bad time just before writing this e-mail, right?
>
> Do you frankly think any of us is a "stupid user" ?
>
> Surely not, hey?

All users are stupid (select * from users where clue>1).

Susanne's point is a valid one. If you are mixing public and private
content, and require the user to fill in the appropriate ACL on each
page, mistakes will be made (see recent cock-ups on the ffii moinmoin
installation).

However, if you have a properly configured wiki, with good access
control support, you can take that burden from the user and avoid
mistakes like that. Mediawiki surely does not fall into that category,
wikipedia does not need access control so that part is largely
underdeveloped in mediawiki.

I mentioned TWiki, which is an example of a wiki that _can_ be set up in
a good way. You can designate different distinct sections with different
access privileges. I've been using it like that for years now, without
ever having a problem with a 'stupid user' publishing something private
that should not have gone public.

I strongly suspect Susanne indeed has had a bad experience where a wiki
was chosen based on popularity (hey, mediawiki is used by everone, so
that's probably good for us!), rather than on the required set of
functionality.

Gr,

Koen

--
K.F.J. Martens, Sonologic, http://www.sonologic.nl/
Networking, hosting, embedded systems, unix, artificial intelligence.
Public PGP key: http://www.metro.cx/pubkey-gmc.asc
Wondering about the funny attachment your mail program
can't read? Visit http://www.openpgp.org/