[Glastonbury] wikis

[Martin WHEELER]

On Sun, 7 Dec 2003, Nick Irwin wrote:

> Hey, I have deadlines coming out of my ears.

OK.  But the wiki editing info was designed to be assimilated in 5
minutes -- that's why it's called 'wikiwiki'.  It's not a bloody great
manual; it's a few simple directives.

> I have edited my page and just thought I'd say it works like a charm. However
> whats to stop someone else coming along an putting loads of offensive
> material on your wiki's?

Sweet FA.  That's the WikiNature, I'm afraid.
(Having said that, hardly anyone ever does.  Remember the old 'Strode
College Sucks' and 'Tarmac the Tor' pages?  They stayed unchanged for 3
years, despite all attempts to make them controversial.  I've peppered
the phpwiki site with outrageous spelling, but I doubt whether anyone's
bothered to go in and edit it to the correct version.  Inertia rules.)

> I know the whole 'everyone contributing to a piece of work' thing is a great
> idea, but you are also the guy in charge of the site and responsible for its
> content. So are there ways of protecting a wiki?

Yes.  You can lock down a page if you're the site admin.
And there are now wiki engines which allow registered subscribers to
control their own pages; or release them for global editing.
(That's what I'm playing with at the moment with the phpwiki, but I
haven't got it to work yet.)

Cheers,
-- 
Martin Wheeler   -   StarTEXT / AVALONIX - Glastonbury - BA6 9PH - England
mwheeler at startext.co.uk                http://www.startext.co.uk/mwheeler/
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