[Moin-devel] Page Permissions

[Nick Trout]

> From: Magnus Lycka [mailto:magnus at thinkware.se] 
> Sent: January 30, 2003 6:41 AM
> At 19:30 2003-01-29 -0800, Nick Trout wrote:
> >It would be nice to be able to set different levels of access e.g.
> >Administrator can add new users and edit anything.
> >Manager can read, edit and create pages.
> >Editor can read and edit pages but can't create.
> >Reader can only read pages.
> 
> Aren't you beginning to make MoinMoin into a Content Management
> System? It is after all a Wiki System. Perhaps you should use Plone
> or something like that instead? ( www.plone.org )

I did look at plone for my home site as I wanted to restrict access.
Plone is built on Zope though which is way to complicated for what I
want. I just don't have time to learn it. Thanks for your suggestion
though, you are right that would be a better solution for a CMS. I'd
probably go with some PHP solution if I went this way.

> Somehow, for the kind of users you seem to have in mind, I feel that
> Wiki isn't the right thing. But of course, you know that better than I
> do.

There are certain things that wikis probably arent good for. I did try
and coordinate an event by having people alter a wiki page to insert
various details. This was a minor disaster. Everyone kept losing their
changes because they tried to change pages simultaneously and only found
out the details couldn't be entered *after* the changes. This does not
encourage new users. With hindsight, this was a bad use of the wiki and
a mistake on my part. With a feature to warn people that a page is
currently being edited the whole process could have been smoother, hence
my suggested change.

> Used right, noone will loose editing in a wiki. If someone else beat
> you to it, you will have to do some manual work, but you have your
> edited content, you just have to merge it, and there are tools that
> will indicate exactly what the other guy modified, so you should be
> able to do these things. If this happens often, the page should be
> refactored into several smaller pages. This is not for everybody...
> 
> To quote http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyWikiWorks
> 
> "Wiki is not WysiWyg. It's an intelligence test of sorts to be able
> to edit a wiki page. It's not rocket science, but it doesn't appeal
> to the VideoAddicts. If it doesn't appeal, then don't participate,
> which leaves those of us who read and write to get on with rational
> discourse."

I take your point but it would be nice to know you face a possible
collision. It would be nice if the wiki were "polite" and told you you
might have to do some work to merge stuff because someone is currently
editing a page. And, what if you were editing a page when someone *did*
refactor and cut a page up. Your edits would be dispersed all over the
place. 

I'm a fan of wikis and there are tonnes of them out there and they are
all different. I really like Moin, since its written in Python and its
well engineered. I have set two up (both Moin), at different companies
and I find users are slow to buy in (but eventually do once useful
information appears) and a constant complaint has been that they lose
changes and are discouraged. One reason is bugs in IE and loses changes
in an edit window whilst browsing in another window. Another reason is
someone editing a page whilst someone else is editing it.

I'm trying to create an environment, as I'm sure everyone else who has
installed a wiki has, where people want to contribute and feel
constructive. This warning feature is a little niggle which I think
everyone would benefit from. I don't want to be too instrusive in the
implementation of this feature, hence I'm asking what the minimum
changes would have to be, or even not modifying the base at all (which
doesn't seem possible). Moin seems pretty polite in other respects,
hopefully this will round it off a little more. I've probably commented
a little too much, I think you were only criticising the CMS additions!
:-)

Regards,
Nick