[pmwiki-users] Preventing vandalism

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Sat, Jun 10, 2006 at 09:43:02AM -0400, Pico wrote:
> PmWiki's Save As Draft function couldn't be simpler and more obvious, 
> and yet, it was so confusing to me that I (mis)used it once and then 
> never took the time to figure out what I was missing and, as a result, I 
> just avoided using it.
> [...]
> In this case, the underlying assumption that I made was that the Save, 
> and Save As Draft, buttons always work in the same way - Save always 
> saves the current document with the same name and Save As Draft always 
> renames the current document by appending "-draft" to the prior name.
> 
> I failed to recognize that these buttons had more intelligence behind 
> them to allow them to behave differently under different situations.
> 
> So, how could PmWiki best communicate to authors that the Save and Save 
> As Draft are "smart" buttons that behave differently depending on context?

I don't have a good answer for this that also makes sense in the
context of internationalizations and various other skin customizations.

> 1. Dynamically relabel the buttons when their function changes, i.e. 
> when the document being edited ends with "-draft" change the labels to 
> reflect the fact that the "Save" will now publish the draft to the 
> original and that the Save As Draft will save this draft.

Suggest labels, please?  

> 2. Prompt the author with a message when saves will be posted to a 
> different name.  

Prompts like this are a *real pain* to do on the web, because it means 
adding an extra set of transactions into the editing cycle.  Consider
the ripple effects on simultaneous edits, and (eventually) section edits
and comments and you'll see that things are complex enough already
without adding yet another "prompt the author for XXX and wait for
response" stage into the mix.

Pm