[pmwiki-users] Preventing vandalism

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud at pobox.com
Sat Jun 10 07:03:21 CDT 2006


On Sat, Jun 10, 2006 at 07:42:16AM -0400, Pico wrote:
> Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> >On Sat, Jun 10, 2006 at 12:59:48AM +0200, kirpi at kirpi.it wrote:
> >>Just an idea, while reading these lines; is there any way to let the
> >>posts (read edits) to a site/group/page be handled about the same way
> >>they often are in many usenet forums or blogs, or even shared
> >>calendars, which is: queued for a "moderator" to approve them?
> >
> >Yes, it can be done.  I'll write up a complete recipe for it,
> >but the essential concept is to change Site.EditForm so that the
> >"Save as draft" button is labelled "Save" and is all that
> >a typical author sees, while the "Save" button is labeled
> >"Publish" and and is displayed only to moderators.
>
> What happen with multiple edits prior to approval under such approaches?
> 
> For example, if five authors edit a page (one after another) before the 
> moderator approves any change, what versions of the page is each person 
> presented with?
> Would each author edit the original page, or the unapproved "draft" page 
> as it existed when the author started editing?

The first author would get the original page; pressing "Save"
would invoke PmWiki's "save as draft" option, and would save the
draft page under PageName-Draft.  Each subsequent author would then
be given the latest (unapproved) draft held in PageName-Draft -- i.e.,
the version that has all of the prior authors' edits.  

> Would the moderator be presented with a single draft page that reflects 
> the cumulative edits of all five authors, or with five drafts that must 
> be reconciled?

The moderator gets the single draft page that reflects the cumulative
edits of all five authors (i.e., PageName-Draft).  Pressing "Publish"
invokes PmWiki's normal "save" operation, and saves the draft as
the official version of the page.  What's more, the draft has its 
own history, so the moderator can revert some of the draft edits
before saving.

> How would such approaches differ from the process that occurs now, when 
> authors edit PmWiki.org and Pm reviews those changes in preparing 
> documentation for distribution?

The way we handle things on pmwiki.org for distribution is totally
different (and unrelated).  Details are below [1] for those who are
interested, but it doesn't belong in the docs.

> I suppose that all my questions might be answered if I had a clearer 
> understanding of how drafts work under PmWiki right now.  In that light, 
> if you humor me by explaining the obvious, I will try to incorporate it 
> into the documentation about drafts.

Excellent!  I'm not sure if it belongs in the official documentation
or as a cookbook page.

Pm

[1] When someone edits a page on pmwiki.org, it's immediately 
reflected on the site (i.e., not moderated), and the edited 
version of the page is held in wiki.d/ .  When I review pages for
distribution, I have a script that goes through all of the
pages in wikilib.d/ and tells me which pages in wiki.d/ are
different from wikilib.d/.  Then I'm given the option of
    1.  accepting the new version of the page, by copying the wiki.d/
        page into wikilib.d/
    2.  reverting to the distribution, by removing the wiki.d/ page
    3.  leaving things alone for the time being, by not doing anything






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