> >The place for a static is where you want to retain a
> >tight grip of what the contents of the website are / will be.
> >
> >
> I do! I think it would be a disaster area were scoil.linux.ie to read
> something like:
>> "You've been hax0r3d, should have used a real OS" or "can't find
> database.pm in program.pl line76" etc.
>> I'd be quite happy if it just statically read something like ... :
>> "Scoil Linux is a ... which hopes/plans/aims to ... You can join us in
> our wiki to find out more or join in"
This can be achieved by making the homepage non-editable. There is a
'protect' option on mediawiki to prevent this. Protecting a page has
the effect of making it uneditable(except by admins).
> and even have a comparable page in the wiki where people can propose
> updates to that page (perhaps auto-updating if a change has survived X
> days a la debian testing).
I like the idea of a Debian-testing like system. Anyone know what wiki
software supports such a feature? Perhaps this would suggest the use
of SCM software instead of a Wiki though.
>> The rest can be housed in the wiki, and as good content develops we may
> want to build other static areas.
>> I strongly believe we should have at the very least a static homepage,
> for now that's probably all it should be.
>> Does anyone have any experience of levels of vandalism on open wiki's
> now and how much work anyone wanting to firefight it might be in for?
> Do people still have open wiki's out there?
Wikipedia is an open wiki. Personally I think it is evidence that an
open wiki can work, and why we should give ours a chance before
crippling it with moderation.
>> I would guess our registration routines would probably be as easy as
> wiki editing? If this is an issue, we could try to provide an email
> address which anyone can email to add pages to the site along with an
> easy way to add new pages to the same section/index page and therefore
> lock all anonymous content into one area (preferably un-indexed and
> always trying to get a ral user to save or delete it if they read it),
> make a registered user pull it out to the real site? So you have a
> static site, a real wiki, and an anonymous contribution area? Of these
> the anonymous contribution area would be my first for the chop as it
> would b sure to have the highest signal to noise ratio!
I can't see a problem with removing the anonymous contribution area if
there proved to be a problem with abuse. By the time it would begin to
be abused we'd probably have achieved the critical mass to cope with a
don't-post-content-unless-you-register policy.
> This could
> leave anonymous contributions readable, but only by looking for them (so
> a normal visitor should not see rubbish, but may miss the very freshest
> anonymous nugget if it hasn't been seen by a registered user).
That would be an accpetable compromise. It's also been proven by the
Debian MO. I think registered users should still have the option to
view the 'stable' version though.
> >Perhaps tomorrow will be the time for a moderated wiki, or static
> >site. Perhaps tomorrow, we'll have a problem with the submission of
> >inapproperate content. Perhaps tomorrow we'll have to make the site
> >static. Today we need a non-moderated dynamic site that makes it easy
> >for submitters from a variety of backgrounds, and a variety of
> >technical competancies, to add to our site.
> >
> Well I'm not volunteering to be on firefighting/clean-up duty for un
> unmoderated wiki, and I would not be too comfortable with advertising
> the url of one to non-technical people.
I think maybe your different levels of content stability may be a
solution - if there is suitable software to perform that operation.
Give the user the choice, of whether they want to view the (a)
bleeding edge content, (b) content that has survived a certain length
of time, or view-count, (c) content that has survived approval by a
certain number of different unregistered users(from different IP
addresses), or (d) content that has been approved by a certain number
of registered users(possibly one), or (e) content approved by a
moderator. Having that said, I reckon we need to narrow those five
levels of 'stability' down to three.
> My preferred approach would be
> a static homepage/site which leads people to the bulk of the content in
> a wiki which can only be edited by registered by email users, using a
> captcha or something on registration to try and make it messy for
> spammers (provide an email address to a human who can process requests
> for vision impaired people).
>> Also ... and here we go again ... I think we should be making people
> agree to license anything they do for the wiki under something like a
> Creative Commons license (or some other consistent, freedom giving,
> terms (preferably debian free), what does wikipedia do?) and really to
> do this we have should have some authentication and agreement from them?
Wikipedia has the following message at the bottom of the edit screen:
DO NOT SUBMIT COPYRIGHTED WORK WITHOUT PERMISSION!
* All contributions to any page on Wikipedia are released under
the GNU Free Documentation License (see Project:Copyrights for
details).
* If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and
redistributed at will, do not submit it.
> Faith in what? The volunteers ability to clean it up without tiring of
> the project in any way, or spending less time on more productive things
> because they have to deal with the junk? Or faith in the "spammers"
> ability to exploit any opportunity?
Faith in the possibly that people might not actually post rubbish.
Faith in the integrity of our users, and their ability to behave.
Faith in the user : spammer ratio, and the ability of our users to
keep spam under control. Faith in the fact that most educated users
don't like spam, and will remove it before it becomes an issue. Faith
in the fact that anyone who puts up a message sayingthat freely
editable sites content has been 'haX0R3d', will look like a retard.
Faith in the free editing without registration model that wikipedia
has shown us can work.
I think we're getting closer to the ideal solution to what might be
the best solution for scoil.linux.ie. What we have so far are however
long term solutions. I'm not sure how we would implement the solution
we seem to agree is the right one - ie a granular debian-testing-like
system, where different users can view material of a different
'stability'. I'm not sure free software exists for that particular
problem/solution, and developing it would not be trivial.
>> Niall
>
Maintained by the ILUG website team. The aim of Linux.ie is to
support and help commercial and private users of Linux in Ireland. You can
display ILUG news in your own webpages, read backend
information to find out how. Networking services kindly provided by HEAnet, server kindly donated by
Dell. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds,
used with permission. No penguins were harmed in the production or maintenance
of this highly praised website. Looking for the
Indian Linux Users' Group? Try here. If you've read all this and aren't a lawyer: you should be!
