I wrote this today to Thomas, author of Halo ACL...
Hi Thomas,
MW today provides the capability to define one interwiki descriptor which
points to the local wiki - I want to build on that with my aim to avoid the
technical and administrative hassles of extensions like Distributed Semantic
Wiki which shares common information across physical wikis. There's another
way though to share common information, across not physical wikis but
logical wikis, that is based on interwiki descriptors.
Consider the fully qualified pagename a:b:c (a=wikispace, b=ns, c=pgnm).
This page can only be accessed when its name is fully qualified. I want to
attach an ACL to all pages in the "a" wikispace. Wikis have one physical
database today managing "b" logical databases. I want a*b logical databases,
and to attach ACLs to a:b wikispace-qualified namespaces.
This would likely eliminate the headache of federating wikis within an
organization, while preserving access to common information resources held
as unqualified pages in the wiki. Replication schemes like DSW would be more
integrated with the MW base software if the base software was aware that
a:b:c pages MIGHT exist in the local wiki, accessing the federated wiki only
when the page could not be resolved in the local wiki.
You ask about brittle Category ACLs. If the category is (inadvertently)
deleted, removed from a page, mistyped or redirected, I'd imagine there'd be
a problem to be resolved by someone (else). And I wonder how receptive folks
are to using the Category namespace both for a folksonomy & for the database
of security tags. And I wonder about maintaining schemes that categorize
security categories... All messy.
But my point is not to bash Category ACLs. They play an important role for
managing page security within a namespace. I dislike their use across
namespaces however so I believe another approach is worthwhile to explore.
Wikispace ACLs make little sense today, I agree, but they would if my
proposal to orient interwikis descriptors as wikispace descriptors is
acceptable to the MW community; indeed my proposal rests on attaching ACLs
to wikispaces (and to namespaces within wikispaces) - whether it's a Halo
ACL or a MW ACL, I can't say I care too much. I'm just hoping to start the
conversation among you.
Best regards,
John