[pmwiki-users] cookbook fatal error on pmwiki.org

[H. Fox]

On 3/28/06, Joachim Durchholz <jo at durchholz.org> wrote:
> Patrick R. Michaud schrieb:
> > On Mon, Mar 27, 2006 at 07:16:20PM -0700, H. Fox wrote:
> >> A "history merge" capability has also been discussed, where a wiki
> >> administrator could remove a restore point in a page's history.
> >
> > Is it important to remove a single restore point?  Or is it just
> > better to just expire the history prior to that point?
>
> Better remove the history at two points: the change that the spammer
> introduced, and the change that removed the spam.

Maybe better, but not if it's more complicated, which I think it might be.

Your suggestion is similar to (but not the same as) Sandy's, which
amounts to "pretend this change never happened at all".

Before:
   <restore point 1>
   12:00 "corrected spelling"
   <restore point 2>
   12:30 "spammed your page - hahaha"
   <restore point 3>
   12:35 "restore spammed page"

After:
   <restore point 1>
   12:00 "corrected spelling"

I'm suggesting something subtly different, where the administrator
leaves evidence that the spam was removed.

After:
   <restore point 1>
   12:00 "corrected spelling"
   <restore point 2>
   12:35 "restore spammed page"

This also leaves room for

Before:
   <restore point 1>
   12:00 "corrected spelling"
   <restore point 2>
   12:30 "replaced your whole cookbook page with spam - hahaha"
   <restore point 3>
   12:35 "restored original content, plus added a recipe link"
   <restore point 4>
   1:00 "added recipe link"

After:
   <restore point 1>
   12:00 "corrected spelling"
   <restore point 2>
   12:35 "restored original content, plus added a recipe link"
   <restore point 4>
   1:00 "added recipe link"

where the history page and, importantly, the wikipage file in wiki.d/
only contains the diff information for the link added between #2 and
#4.  The spammer's changes are thrown away.

Going from #2 to #3, then to #4 requires a lot of extra unwanted diff
information of the type that led to the original post of this thread.

Hagan