[Textbook-l] Some concept ideas

[Daniel Mayer]

Magnus Manske wrote:
>....
>One more thing (more like a personal request): 
>I would like to limit editing to logged-in people 
>only. Now calm down, I don't try to rip the wiki 
>principle apart. I just think that since this will be 
>a more organized effort than wikipedia, and as 
>I'd rather not spent my time cleaning up vandals 
>on the textbook wiki all the time as well, I think 
>it might be a good idea to prevent bypassing vandals 
>from inserting "yo mom's stupid". Everyone would be 
>free to get a user account, just like on wikipedia. Just 
>an extension: "You can edit this page right now. Just 
>get a free user account first". People who'd like to 
>invest serious time here will most certainly do that.

I don't know if that is such a good idea, but it still might be worth trying 
for the first reason you mentioned (that this is a more organized project). 
But me being me (a worry wart) I just think the vandals will get user names 
and we will loose valid contributors by forcing them to set-up an account 
(probably also provide a valid e-mail address) just to correct a typo. IMO it 
would also make it much less obvious that anyone /can/ edit any page just by 
logging-in -- all they would see was "Protected page" where the edit button 
should be and "Log-in." That doesn't make it obvious we are a wiki, no?

We might, however, allow anon edits but limit them to say 10 a day like 
Slashdot. But I do recall getting pretty pissed on Slashdot when trying to 
submit my 11th post as Anonymous Coward and getting the message "Hold on 
there cowboy!" (the SlashCode and my browser were not cooperating and I 
wasn't able to log-in in the first place). We could manage that better 
though.

So maybe we can coax people in a nice way to log-in by just reminding them 
about logging in after they make their 10th (or whatever) edit by having a 
short message in bold text under the edit button. And also maybe have those 
IPs show up in bold in Recent Changes. 

Yeah, I know, I'm babbling and off-topic. So I'll stop now. 

I guess I'm not sleeping tonight - oh well.

BTW, I agreed with all your other concept ideas. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)