On 7/2/03 5:00 PM, "Mark Christensen" mchristensen@humantech.com wrote:
Making wikipedia easier to use for everybody isn't a terrible violation of basic wiki-nature, it's just being nice to users. And, that -- in my opinion -- is a just a good idea.
If "Anybody can use any skin they want!" were true, I would agree with you 100%.
But only logged-in editors can use any skin they want. Forcing editors to log in to use useful features is a violation of Wiki-nature. I'm willing to hedge on "terrible".
I'd first try to develop an interface that avoids confusion without requiring cookies, etc. That would be the optimal solution.
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But, from this last post you argue that skin design could be a way to hide useful features from a whole class of users (those who have not logged in for whatever reason). If the original proposal suggested that features would be hidden this might potentially be a concern. But as I see it nobody is suggesting that any features which are currently available to anon users will be take away, just that they may be available only from specific pages so that they don't clutter up every screen.
But even if some features were only available to logged in users, I would not consider it a violation of the wiki way as long as anon users can "edit this page right now!!!".
You wrote: "If the original proposal suggested that features would be hidden this might potentially be a concern." That's what the proposal is.
It's true that taking away features currently available to anon users would be wrong, but that's different from adding new, hidden features.
Adding new, hidden features is also not right.