[pmwiki-users] Is 'Page Creator' worth to discuss?

[Peter & Melodye Bowers]

> My view on this is that it should not be part of PmWiki's core, but a
> recipe for those that really need it - although I think they should
> fight it long and hard.
> 
> As an aside, the original author can always be derived from action=diff.
> In this case, at least it's in context to the changes that follow. And
> if you use expirediff, as I do, I would argue that you are not
> interested in a page's history - at least, beyond some point.
> 
> To my way of thinking, page ownership should be kept to the bare
> minimum. The idea that x remains the "creator" of a page is anathema,
> and counter to wiki philosophy of 'freedom to edit'.

It comes down to 2 issues: philosophical and technical.  Philosophically (is
it wiki-ish) there are certainly issues depending on how the cauthor is
applied and used.  If someone were to create a whole new role with different
permissions and etc then (a) it's not very wiki-ish but (b) it's their wiki.


Technically the issue seems very simple.  Not just implementation, but the
decision whether to implement.  If someone has need for cauthor in their
specific requirements and it is a recipe then there are large technical
issues of deriving it from data that may or may not be available (i.e., may
have expired before the requirement became known).  Adding a couple lines of
code to the core and a 10-15 byte overhead in each pagefile leaves the
administrator the decision of whether and how to use it.  Not having it in
core means that the technical issues continue ad infinitum for those who
truly have the requirement for it.

If we were trying to change something about the role/responsibility of the
cauthor then that belongs in a recipe.  But making the data available seems
to me to clearly belong in the core...

Just my $0.02...

-Peter