[pmwiki-users] PmWiki useable for special website-project

verbraucherinfo.org admin at verbraucherinfo.org
Sun May 1 03:06:03 CDT 2011


Hi Folks,

first of all: Sorry I think this Post will get a little bit longer than
normal and also a little bit more general (as I`m currently researching some
possibilitys) - maybe you should/would like start with a coffee before going
on ;)

I`m trying to set-up a new consumer-information page around Internet-Fraud /
Subscription Traps in Germany as one very useful site
(verbraucherabzocke.info) which has warned by telling names of the companies
and their staff, telling bank-accounts, etc. recently has to close because
there webmasters (even old webmaster which actually has nothing to do with
the site any longer!) were heavily sued by the fraud-companies for different
reasons (e.g. "Competition Protection Act [= Wettbewerbsrecht], damage to
someone's reputation, etc.).

Because the information about the fraudulent companies and their staff can
change quickly and all sites and persons should be linked together but still
should be easily to search for as well as an additional shield (alongside
of: anonymous hosting on www.prq.se [Sweden-Host which also has hosted
WikiLeaks and is well known for protecting the real webmaster], etc.)
against law-suits claiming the webmaster I think the best solution is to use
a Wiki-Software for hosting: Inter-Linking is easily done, information can
be added quickly and last but not least (if for any case the anonymous
webmaster will be found) the webmaster maybe can say "I did not post this
information personally; I just provide a technical platform" and maybe
"Sorry, I cannot tell anything about who has posted this entry as we did not
log anything".

BUT I also discovered at least 3 big problems / disadvantages for my project
by using a Wiki-Software:
1) For startup-phase and maybe even after that - depending on if there will
build up a safety-community which consist of enough people in a timely
manner - if everybody is allowed to edit this will lead to changes from the
fraud-companies to misinform people, delete entries, change entries,
malformed entries, and so on! (Just that you get a glue: The old webmasters
of verbraucherabzocke.info also received death threat against their persons
and swiftboating about them, etc.)

As well for a second reason: I as the webmaster would like to follow the
German "press-code" [= Pressekodex - see
http://www.presserat.info/service/english/press-code.html; a freely code by
the German Press Council for which publishers can declare they will follow
this freely rules]. So if some users (say a victim) will post - in the heat
of the moment - information which is not really "lawful / ethical correct"
this also leads to an unwanted situation.

Therefore it would be necessary (or "nice to have"?) to avoid
unseen/unchecked changes, edits, and so on which leads to the "feature" to
have a possibility to approve the submissions I think (even in
start-up-phase!)

Yes, I know that this "wish" does the opposite a Wiki stands for, but I
don`t see a real alternative alongside? (If you see some just give me a hint
please ;) ) 

2) Normally - what I know from Wikipedia - Wiki Software will recently track
IP-Addresses to track users and/or un-registered edits. For any
"leaking"-platform this is not ideal for reasons of protection of the
source-persons. Mainly useful information will be known (and maybe as well
as hopefully posted/shared) by insiders or maybe posted by persons who are
not allowed to do so (e.g. banking-clerks sharing/posting new bank-account
any of the fraud-companies has registered with their bank and maybe the
status of the account, e.g. "cancelation planned", "already canceled", etc.

If the Wiki has some add-on or any other function to turn of IP-logging
editing for everybody is not really possible anymore (see 1) as you then
cannot ban unwanted comments by IP-Address/IP-Range furthermore.

Am I right with this problem regarding logging/non-logging? - Is there any
solution not to track IP-Addresses or maybe at least do not show them to the
public?

3) My Web-Host PRQ AB, Sweden (www.prq.se) uses a PHP-CGI-Wrapper (means:
PHP is running as CGI), as well as only enables 1 MySQL-Database per
customer, so I have to use any Wiki-Software which can deal with this
issues. 

As I have done a research (mostly to get a solution for problem/disadvantage
1 "approve submission") and did not really found a Wiki which is fitting the
special needs of my site-project, so I`m wondering:
- Should/Can I use a Wiki - especially PmWiki - for my project? 
> If yes; can PmWiki come close to a solution for points 1-3?  Or are there
any  easy workarounds available for 1-3?
>> If no; do you have any other software/script you can recommend for my
project?

Greetings,
verbraucherinfo.org-Administration aka. MacGyver




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