> I do think that we can do the addition of new people who want to be
> able to edit the wiki manually. That should also filter out the
> spammers. There is only a delay between wanting to edit the wiki and
> being able to do it the first time. Not perfect, but it's something
> that we can setup right now and try out.
Ok, so here's the proposed workflow:
1. Potential tip editer/adder (Veronica Vimlover) visits the Google
vimtips project. On the front page, she sees a message that tells
her to post a message to 'vimtips-general' Google group if she wants
to post or edit a tip.
* Please note that if Veronica visits the wiki page first instead of
the "Project Home" page, she won't know how to gain the proper
access to edit wiki pages since for the following reasons:
1. The wiki page itself doesn't tell you how to gain the
necessary access to edit pages.
2. I don's see how you can define a default "FrontPage" for the
wiki, so we can't specify how to gain edit access on any sort
of wiki front page.
2. Veronica joins the vimtips Google group and posts a message asking
someone to please give her the necessary access to edit the wiki
page.
* Please note that if she doesn't have a Google id at this point,
she'll need to acquire one.
3. The admins will monitor the Google group. When Veronica requests
access, one of us will "take ownership" of the request by responding
to the Google group message.
4. When the project admin has the time, he/she will add give Veronica a
"Project Member" user status, and notify her via the group that she
has the proper access.
* Please note that if Veronica only obtained a Google id so that she
could post to the wiki (like I did), she probably won't check
either the vimtips group or her Gmail very often. It is therefore
possible that Veronica will not know in a timely fashion that she
has be given the proper access to update the wiki.
* One probable solution to this problem is that we could have
Veronica post her wiki access request the vim mailing list.
This certainly has its advantages, but it might clutter the
vim mailing list, and it would make it more difficult for the
admins to spot access requests.
* Another option would be to have Veronica directly e-mail one of the
project admins listed on the "Project Home" page, but I think that
the disadvantages of this solution are pretty obvious (problems
with admins checking Gmail, vacations, etc).
Ok, I know that was long, but I just wanted everyone to know what was
necessary to implement the process of manually adding wiki editors to
the vimtips project. This is definitely more labor-intensive and
error-proned than any web app registration process that I've ever seen.
I still think that the process listed sets the registration bar too
high, and it is not conducive to a vibrant, robust wiki.
Also, I know that spam is an issue, but there are tradeoffs. The
process listed above may eliminate 98% of all spam, but what percentage
of possible wiki editors will it also deter? Also, we need to compare
the amount of work we would put into deleting spam from a different
member-only wiki each week with the amount of time it takes to add
dozens of wiki users to the Google wiki using the process above.
What do you guys think? Should we still move ahead with the Google
wiki?
Thanks!
Tom Purl
