[pmwiki-users] email notification of page changes (watchlists)

[Joachim Durchholz]

Patrick R. Michaud schrieb:
> On Sat, May 27, 2006 at 01:00:01PM +0200, Joachim Durchholz wrote:
>> I see one problem with it: it doesn't play well in an environment with 
>> user-based authentication. Mail notifications are configured through a 
>> single page that needs to be editable by everybody with read access to 
>> PmWiki (configuring mail notifications should be roughly equivalent with 
>> read access after all). In a wiki where not all users are trusted 
>> equally, this isn't feasible.
> 
> False, false, false.  Quoting from my first post in this thread:
> 
>     What if we have someone who wants to watch only a certain set of
>     pages?  There are several ways to do this.  First, we can specify
>     a trail with pages to be watched:
>     
>         notify=bob at example.com trail=Profiles.Bob
>     
>     This sends Bob email notifications only for pages listed in the
>     trail at Profiles.Bob.  This makes it easy for Bob to adjust the
>     pages he's interested in by simply editing the Profiles.Bob page.

OK. I hadn't seen that.

>     This also means a wiki administrator can control who is allowed
>     to receive notifications (by restricting editing of the Site.NotifyList
>     page), while still allowing non-administrators to maintain custom
>     watch list trails.
> 
>> So *if* there's user-based authentication, *and* users have personal 
>> pages, PmWiki should take the watch list off that user's personal page 
>> (if every user gets a group, it could be taken off the user's NotifyList 
>> page).
> 
> I believe this is already contemplated by entries such as:
> 
>     notify=bob at example.com trail=Profiles.Bob
>     notify=dave at example.com trail=Dave.NotifyList
> 
> which allows Bob and Dave to maintain their watch lists in their personal
> page(s), and doesn't require edit permission to Site.NotifyList.
> 
> All that we need is a secure way of adding entries to Site.NotifyList,
> which for the moment is done manually by the wiki administrator.

OK.

> But even with manual maintenance, the ability to create custom
> notify lists is a huge improvement over what we had before.

Definitely!


I think the main problem (for me, right now) is that I don't know what 
kinds of scenarios the upcoming scheme is designed to serve in general. 
All I see right now is something that looks like an overcomplicated 
thing with an overcomplicated configuration - maybe because I don't see 
useful applications of the facilities that I don't need personally.

> Eventually the addition of entries to Site.Notify list can be done
> by forms that verify recipients' email addresses prior to adding
> an entry to Site.NotifyList.  Again quoting from my earlier message:
> 
>     Also note that this is just the first step of the overall plan I wrote 
>     in http://www.pmichaud.com/pipermail/pmwiki-users/2006-March/023990.html .
>     At some point in the future we can add features to obfuscate email 
>     addresses in the Site.NotifyList page, forms for adding and verifying
>     email addresses to that page, links to add pages to watchlists, etc.

I'm very much aware of that. My post wasn't intended as an "this stuff 
is all bad" kind of critique, just a report of my initial reactions.

Regards,
Jo