[Mediawiki-l] Page access restiction (resend)

[Rob Lanphier]

On Tue, 2005-11-22 at 10:48 +0100, Jej wrote:
> It seems that many people need this feature. Since I published this 
> patch 
> (http://conseil-recherche-innovation.net/index.php/1974/04/11/41-restrict-pages-under-mediawiki-15), 
> we have 25% of visits on this single article. Generaly people need 
> restriction feature to manage small wikis, private intranets. I guess 
> they choose mediawiki for the syntax, templates, and 
> reliabilty/community support, and not for the ability to manage projects 
> as big as wikipedia nor encyclopedies.

I've added the link you provided to the following page:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_control

...and I propose using the meta page as a hub for activities on this
subject.

>  From a wikipedia point of view, I think nobody wants more restriction 
> features (protect is enough). We cannot polute the core of MW with 
> features not useful for WP, it's difficult to maintain patches for ages, 
> and it's not necessary to carry WP specific features in a forked 
> project. So my choice would be a fifth... E. To write some 
> specifications from needs, abstract the problem, and start a new project 
> :) Any ideas ?!...

Actually, that's just proposing a process for determining which of A-D
to select from.  Not that I think it's a bad idea to do that, but I
don't think that agreeing to a process absolves anyone from the
responsibility of picking an approach.

Are you volunteering to start the new project?  It looks like you've got
a really good start with your patch.

Rob

> >Asking again...
> >
> >If someone were to get gung-ho about implementing access control
> >measures in MediaWiki that go way beyond the immediate needs of
> >Wikipedia, would you prefer that that person/group:
> >
> >A.  Submit patches for inclusion in mainline MediaWiki
> >B.  Submit patches to extend the MediaWiki core to allow for a security
> >layer
> >C.  Submit patches to modularize/wrap some MediaWiki components (e.g.
> >the parser) in a way that they can be used as libraries for an otherwise
> >forked/rewritten wiki product
> >D.  Fork MediaWiki
> >
> >Curious Robla
> >