[Mediawiki-l] Annotating a protected document on a per-user, per-section basis

Kelly Jones kelly.terry.jones at gmail.com
Sat Jan 27 19:31:32 UTC 2007


I've posted an existing document to a MediaWiki and broken it up into
sections (not pages). I want registered users to comment on each
section as follows:

* Users can add/edit/delete their own comments section

* Users (except admins) can't edit/delete other people's sections

* Users (except admins) can't edit the original document at all: it's protected

* Users' comments will be fairly long: multiple lines, not a single line

* At the bottom of the page, users can add general comments, not
specific to a given section

What's the best way to do this? Using the inputbox extension (thanks
for letting me know about this, Lonny!)? Or something else?

What I have now is ugly and doesn't do some of the things above:

http://wiki.lspace.org/index.php?title=Sandbox&oldid=10855

[pretend this page is protected and named APF-the-light-fantastic]

Bad things about this:

* Each "comment block" is a new page, which may confuse users-- they
want to add a comment and end up on a blank page. I realize I can
use "Preload" (or even inputbox) to pre-load a template when a new
page is created, but that still seems ugly.

* Once a "comment block" page is created, the search engine may return
it as a result, confusing users (they want to see the document with
annotations, not a single annotation). The comment block pages are
"subpages" of the original, but that's still not great

* Since the "comment block" is just a regular MediaWiki page, users
can edit/delete each other's comments (this part actually doesn't
bug me too much-- it's important that the original document be
uneditable, but it may be OK if users can edit/delete each other's
comments)

* Overall, I sense my approach is kludgey and incorrect. I'm sure
there's a more standardized/"correct" way of doing this.

-- 
We're just a Bunch Of Regular Guys, a collective group that's trying
to understand and assimilate technology. We feel that resistance to
new ideas and technology is unwise and ultimately futile.



More information about the MediaWiki-l mailing list