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

Scott Connard connard at dsg-inc.com
Sat Mar 31 00:00:25 CDT 2007


On Mar 30, 2007, at 11:14 PM, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 30, 2007 at 10:32:21PM -0400, Scott Connard wrote:
>
>> 4. Pm: Are you considering a Publish password so that publishers are
>> given special permissions via a password attr (including id and
>> groups in AuthUser)?
>
> I can see two approaches, both with positives and negatives.  One is
> to introduce a "publish" password to pages (which defaults to the
> "edit" password when not otherwise set).  This has the advantage of
> being consistent, but part of me doesn't like introducing yet another
> layer of passwords -- we have quite a bit there already.

This is what I did with my use of Draft pages. The only place I used  
the publish authorization was in the Site.EditForm (or the group with  
$EnableDrafts turned on) to determine which buttons to display and  
what names to use.  The edit permission remained in control of  
everything else.

> Or, we could go the other way and claim that "edit" privileges are  
> needed
> to publish, while "draft" privileges only allow creating/editing a  
> draft
> but not publishing.  This seems a bit harder to follow, but it does  
> have
> the advantage that 'edit' privileges retain the same meaning ("publish
> to original page") even in groups where the draft feature isn't  
> enabled.
> Otherwise we have the case where 'edit' passwords mean "able to draft
> but not change original" in one group and "able to change original" in
> others.

I hear your concern, but the fact that people without edit permission  
can click the Edit button seems more difficult to integrate into  
existing wikis.

> Still another approach would be to delegate the authorization to a  
> central
> page that defines "publish permissions"; for example, we can say  
> that "anyone
> who has permission to edit Page.XYZ is allowed to publish".  Then the
> edit passwords of Page.XYZ determine one's ability to publish.  This
> has the advantage of not introducing yet another level of passwords to
> keep track of... but it isn't consistent with the way we do other
> authorization-type-things.

Yuck.
>> 5. Something that hasn't been discussed at all is the history -
>> should the history show what is a Draft vs what is the real document?
>
> Draft edits don't appear in the original page's history -- however,  
> a draft
> will have its own page history from the point where the draft was  
> first
> started until it is published.  When the draft is published, all of  
> the
> changes to the original appear as a single entry in the original's  
> page
> history.

I'm confused here because I did a test before I wrote my original  
comments and it seems like the draft history IS kept when it is  
finally published to update the original document.  Unless you are  
planning on changing it.  I think it is essential to keep the history  
of all of the Draft edits and any final Publish edit.  Multiple  
people may be involved in a draft before it is published.

Scott Connard.




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