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Alan Pope alan.pope@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/10/05, Wayne Stallwood ALUGlist@digimatic.plus.com wrote:
Why not have a cyclic secret that is placed in the main list's signature (the one that appears on every main list posting) Surely the only people who have a legitimate interest to modify the wiki are already list members.
Some people may want to update the wiki but aren't on the list?
Undoubtedly true.
We have had edits to our (HantsLUG) wiki from the USA and Sweden recently. The people who made those edits made valuable contributions to the site, but they're not on the mailing list.
Makes sense.
The way I see it *any* barrier to maintaining a site is a barrier to maintaining the site!
We know all about maintainence barriers... so, who other than MJ Ray has access to the website, and can upload changes to the static pages? It appears that we've ended up in the situation of having a defined method of updating the static content of the site, but the method involves knowing how to (at the very minimum) use make, and read the README in the tar ball of the site source, which is not in the most obvious of places.
The thing about wikis is anyone can edit at any time from anywhere. I often edit wikis (not just the HantsLUG one, but others too) when I am not logged in. It doesn't make my content any less valid or useful..
Hmm, well, OK - so, here's a new, slightly sadistic idea... how about having 2 different stages for wiki edits, how about a maintainance section for logged in, trusted users (where the trust is assigned via discussion on the list, maybe), the changes these 'trusted' users make are immediately available in the wiki... changes done anonymously are accessable to all, but are not the default view of the wiki, they go through a 'staging' session...
I'm not aware of a wiki that currently does this, but it seems to me that this would be closer to a CMS than to your usual wiki, and so maybe we could move the rest of the website in to a similar system, and finally seperate the design of the site from the actual content...
If I get some copious spare time in the next couple of weeks I'll knock something up in django[1] to try to address these issues, and give you all a shiny URL to play in to see if it addresses some of the issues that we're thinking of...
(Yes, I know that I no longer live in East Anglia, before anyone helpfully points that out, but I don't believe that ALUGs goals state that you have to live in East Anglia to contribute, or to be a member... if anyone has got an objection with me contributing, though, feel free to bring it up).
Cheers, - -- Brett Parker web: http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/ email: iDunno@sommitrealweird.co.uk