On 04/08/11 03:32, Jean Hollis Weber wrote:
I've got completely lost in all the mutations of the "Refactoring"
thread, and don't recall all that has been said, so please forgive me if
what I'm about to suggest has been dealt with already.
Two low-barrier methods I have seen work quite successfully on wikis,
forums, and similar sites are:
1) People must ask for an account; they can't self-subscribe. Nothing is
required except a few words about who you are and why you want an
account. Any one of several people authorised to approve or reject these
requests can deal with them expeditiously. Very few spammers, in my
experience, take the trouble to actually request accounts.
We need to implement this in a way which sits within MediaWiki
functionality and complies with the goals.
One way would be
* to allow the normal self-registration and optional email address
with email verification
* and have a new wiki role, say "contributor" (or is this
contributer in US-speak?).
* guest have no write access
* registered users can write to User and User_talk namespaces but to
no others
* registered users can request to become a Contributor, but the must
have completed their User page, verified their email address and
confirmed that all future edits to the Main or Talk namespaces are
made under licence (CCA AL2 or whatever we decide.
* the granting of Contributor is done by the bureaucrats.
* The Main and Talk pages contain "reference" content.
* There is a standard disclaimer that user/user talk is user content
is user content
* We would still need main and user namespace guidelines TOUs.
This might seem a little convolved, but this can be configured with std
MW/extension functionality.
2) Alternatively, or in addition, the first X edits/ contributions/
whatever are moderated by a group of people, any one of whom can approve
or reject the items. After X acceptable contributions, the person is
then allowed to edit the wiki without further supervision -- until or
unless they start posting inappropriate material such as spam. Again,
very few spammers will take the trouble to post some useful info before
going into spam mode.
These methods deal with the vast majority, if not all, of the concerns I
have seen Rob expressing about systems with no control at all, but at
the same time they do not require more time or commitment on the
contributors' part to be authorised to participate.
AFAIK, most wikis& similar sites provide some way to limit the editing
of specific pages to a smaller group of people (admins or whatever).
--Jean
We could add another committer layer so that contributer (but not
committer) edits are moderated
However, I suspect that a trust-but-verify attitude is easier for
everyone. When we catch contributers deliberately abusing the rules,
then we can always back out their changes and remove contributer
status. This is similar to our forum model and works well there.
Regards
Terry
