[pmwiki-users] Drafts, moderated wikis, and PITS 00755

[Patrick R. Michaud]

Given that we've had a couple of recent requests for moderated
posting on a wiki, I'd like to go ahead and resolve PmWiki's
"edit draft" feature.

Pico put together an excellent page at http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PITS/00755
that describes the current state of "edit drafts".  His comments are
recommended reading, but I'll also try to summarize things here.
The basic issue is that we want clearer labels on the "save" buttons
in the edit form when drafts are enabled.

Currently, when $EnableDrafts is set, a new "Save as Draft" button
appears on the edit form.  Thus the typical buttons are

   [Save]  [Save and edit]  [Save as draft]  [Preview]  [Cancel]

The [Save] button saves the page, as normal.  The [Save and edit]
button saves a copy of the page, but also returns the browser
immediately to the edit form so the author can continue editing.
The [Save as Draft] button saves the current page and any changes
to a new page with a "-Draft" extension added to the pagename.

When an author attempts to edit a page for which a "-Draft"
version exists, the author always gets the -Draft version to
edit.  Thus we don't have a case of draft edits being lost.

The confusion arises when the buttons above are presented
on the -Draft page, because it's not completely clear what
"Save" (and possibly "Save as draft) will do.  Thus it
appears we need alternate labels for these buttons editing
a draft.  I just need to know what labels we want to use
that will make sense to people editing drafts.

Currently the [Save] button always saves back to the original
page without the -Draft suffix, and removes the -Draft version
of the page.  The [Save as draft] button saves back to the -Draft
page.  This can be a bit confusing, because some people expect
[Save] to save back to the -Draft, and they don't see a button
that clearly indicates they're saving to the original.

So far the best idea I've seen is to use [Publish] to mean
"save to original", but I want to see if there are any other
suggestions before committing to it in the core.

In each case (original page and draft), the actions are
essentially the same:

  - save page to original location
  - save page as -Draft version
  - save and keep editing
  - preview
  - cancel editing

All that differs is the labels.  The current approach
I'm considering uses the following labels for editing
the original page:

  - save page to original location   [Save]
  - save page as -Draft              [Save as draft]
  - save and keep editing            [Save and edit]
  - preview                          [Preview]
  - cancel editing                   [Cancel]

And when editing a -Draft page:

  - save page to original location   [Publish]
  - save page as -Draft              [Save as draft]
  - save and keep editing            [Save and edit]
  - preview                          [Preview]
  - cancel editing                   [Cancel]

As far as moderating posts go, there will likely be
some sort of option that hides/disables the "Save" 
and "Publish" button for moderated authors.  Such authors
would then be able to edit pages (as drafts), but
only a moderator/admin would be able to "publish" the
draft back to the original location.

Comments and questions greatly appreciated.

Pm