Re: [tlug] Web-based edit/update software?

[Michael Smith <smith@example.com>]

Jim Breen <Jim.Breen@example.com> writes:

> I've been looking at possible software platform I could use to build
> an online moderated edit system. There are several wiki engines
> around, but all seem rather geared to the anything-goes, full wiki
> arrangements. What I want is to have a pool of trusted moderators
> interposed between edits and the live database. That way I will cease
> to be a bottleneck in the process, and the projects might continue if
> I fall off the twig.
> 
> Does anyone know of open-source software that does that sort of thing?
> My target environment is Apache, and if necessary MySQL.

For the DocBook Wiki, we use MoinMoin. The setup it currently uses
in that in order to edit pages, I user must be registered and be
part of the "User Group" that has edit perms -

  http://wiki.docbook.org/topic/UserGroup

And the way to get into that is to ask one of the existing users
to edit that page and add your name.

I would guess that most other Wiki systems have some kind of
similar optional mechanism for controlling who has edit perms
and/or automatically blocking vandals/spammers.  They would have
to, if the Wiki instance they are used for has any visibility at
all. Because, from my experience, what happens these days if you
put up an fully open Wiki instance and it starts to get any
traffic and linkage at all is that it will pretty quickly start
to get hit by script-driven vandalism/spamming, at the rate of
several pages a minute at least (anyway, faster than you can
manually delete it as it comes in). That's what happened with
DocBook Wiki, and that's why it was moved to using the edit-perms
mechanism in MoinMoin.

  --Mike

-- 
Michael Smith
http://sideshowbarker.net/

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