[pmwiki-users] wiki farm terminology

[Hans]

Sunday, March 19, 2006, 7:48:31 PM, H. wrote:
> On 3/19/06, Hans <design at softflow.co.uk> wrote:
>> farm administrator
>> field administrator
>>     It is a useful distinction, as a wiki on a farm can be
>>     independently administered by a wiki admin who does not need
>>     access to the pmwiki directory.
>>     I suggest we keep "farm administrator", and use "wiki
>>     administrator" for someone who has access to a wiki's local/config
>>     files.

> These terms serve no useful purpose.  They only serve to add confusion
> rather than remove it.

> An administrator who only has access to certain configuration files
> doesn't need a new title.  I suspect it's rare for these "two
> administrators" separate individuals.

> It's self-evident that denying access to the farmconfig.php file and
> the farm's cookbook/ and pub/ directories will disallow global
> configuration.  If it's not self-evident, one sentence to that effect
> in the documentation would render the two titles obsolete.

I don't see why distinguishing between two types of administrator
shall only serve to add confusion. Perhaps it is not very often used,
but WikiFarms give the possibility to set up wikis which can be
independently administered from each other, running on totally
different domains for instance for totally different clients. As a
farm administrator I can give each wiki totally different
administration access rights. This possibility of WikiFarms needs at
least to be mentioned somewhere, it is not necessarily self-evident,
same as it is not self-evident that you can set up wikis on different
domains.

Wiki administrators (former field administrators) can work their wikis
(fields) totally unaware of each other, and with no need to concern
themselves with software updates. They can use skins and cookbook
scripts provided by the farm administrator, and they can also install
their own skins and cookbook scripts.

I think this approach is important enough to be documented, and as you
see, for documenting it two different terms for administrators are
very handy.


Best, 
~Hans