Take 3: Editors and Trackers

[Luis Villa]

On Dec 1, 2007 2:01 PM, John Cowan <cowan at ccil.org> wrote:
> Luis Villa scripsit:
>
> > So, I admit I haven't been following this discussion very closely, so
> > perhaps I'm misreading the page. But it seems to suggest that this
> > wiki (as opposed to all other wikis) will allow only experts to edit
> > it. Obviously, having a core of people who maintain and oversee edits
> > by others is not a bad thing (~Administrators in wikipedia-speak), but
> > if I'm understanding it correctly, allowing only those people to edit,
> > and no one else, seems a bit bizarre to me.
>
> Wikis with restricted membership are now common.

Of course wikis which require registration are now common; but this
doesn't seem offhand to be about registration, but rather something
well beyond that. My experience with wikis that require some sort of
blessing to become a contributor is that they are typically quickly
abandoned- they don't get the momentum required to maintain them as
actual, up-to-date websites.

Again, I admit I haven't followed this whole thread, but restricting
editorship to some sort of elite doesn't seem to be solving any
problem I've seen adequately described. This seems particularly true
since the things most prone to vandalism/trolling (the license
approval discussions) are (correctly) being handed off to a team and
to a tool more appropriate to handling such problems. If we expect
vandalism/trolling to mostly go elsewhere, why not default to
openness, and only lock things down on a page-by-page basis when there
are problems?

[As far as spam goes, granted that it has been a while since I looked
at the options for public wikis, but modern software-based techniques,
even without required registration, is more than sufficient to keep
spam off most blogs; on mine a combination of plugins catches 100+
spam a day with only rare misses. Aren't there equivalents to akismet
and such for wikis, making spam mostly irrelevant as a consideration?]

Luis