[pmwiki-users] Drafts, moderated wikis, and PITS 00755

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Sat, Mar 31, 2007 at 04:54:51PM -0400, Scott Connard wrote:
> On Mar 31, 2007, at 4:27 PM, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> 
> >I've now implemented the new drafts handling code in the 'Test'
> >group on pmwiki.org -- feel free to try it there:
> >
> >    http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Test/Sandbox
> 
> So I started to torture test it a bit.  When no draft document  
> existed, I manually created a draft document Sandbox-Draft, which it  
> let me do.  I had cleared the publish password at that point, so I  
> was allowed to Publish, which I did.  I mostly expected to Save the  
> page I was creating (Test.Sandbox-Draft) but of course PmWiki was  
> running with EnableDrafts and I hit Publish, so it published it as  
> Test.Sandbox.  OK, I didn't expect it, but I understand it.  However,  
> I then checked the history and discovered that the prior history for  
> Test.Sandbox was lost (Neil's edits and my earlier edits) and only my  
> creation of Sandbox-Draft was visible.  (It showed Neil and my  
> previous page being replaced by my Sandbox-Draft from scratch page.)
> 
> This was VERY unexpected.  I was able to restore the page to have  
> Neil and my edits, but the History was wiped.
> 
> I'm not necessarily complaining, because it WAS a torture test, but  
> you'll have to decide if it's worth worrying about.

Yes, it's definitely worth worrying about, as losing page history
is a Bad Thing.  It could also be used to interfere with passwords
on the non-draft page.

So, for the time being I've set it so that if someone tries to 
manually create a draft document (e.g., Sandbox-Draft), PmWiki 
switches to use the non-draft version instead.  Yes, this could be
a little confusing to someone who does this, but for now I think
the answer will be "Don't do this."  :-)

Thanks!

Pm