[Wikimediaau-l] official wiki

[Andrew]

At the end of the day, and I think this is a point that isn't well
understood because we have a foot on both sides of the border, this is the
official wiki for a non profit organisation. The wiki's set up in such a way
that those that are willing to support the aims of the organisation can edit
freely. I don't know of any other similar organisations which offer open
editing or participation - one I know that runs meetings for its members
(and this is just networking!) charges $10 for non-members to attend a
meeting; another runs closed email lists that non-members can't even see.

As for the argument re vandalism - that isn't even our biggest prospective
problem. The biggest is actually misrepresentation - the risk that we will
be discredited as an organisation in the eyes of those we seek to build
partnerships with. In the relatively insular world of free culture, edginess
seems like a good thing, but in the real world, quite apart from our legal
and other obligations with CAV, we have to deal with businesses, large
organisations, governments, NGOs and the like. We're competing for their
attention with more professional outfits which can offer them something.
We're asking them to give us something - which requires a standard of
credibility and professionalism. If random chaos is unfolding on our
official website (and that is what it is), we have a bit of a problem in
that area. Expecting already busy committee members (and I'm not even
speaking for myself here) to monitor the wiki in such circumstances is an
imposition on them and a completely unnecessary one - what do we stand to
benefit from it, as against the costs?

cheers
Andrew

2009/12/12 Peter Halasz <qubero at gmail.com>

> Sarah,
>
> The only actual reason you've given for not opening up the wiki to
> non-members is because of fear of vandalism.
>
> Ok, so we have a problem: Potential vandalism.
>
> Solutions?
>
> 1. Actually observe actual vandalism before locking anything down.
> 2. Assign a couple of people to patrolling recent changes once a week
> 3. Locking individual pages when we require their integrity to be
> preserved.
> 4. Requiring wiki users to sign in
> 5. Requiring new wiki users to wait 3 days before editing
> 6. Banning everyone but paid members, who, after paying their
> membership, can apply for an account, which, when it expires, is no
> longer allowed to edit.
>
> C'mon, seriously? You went with #6? To combat vandalism?
>
> Although, as you say, we CAN keep the wiki locked up, why SHOULD we?
> And why with such tight control?
>
> Peter Halasz.
> User:Pengo
> (Lapsed member)
>
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> Wikimediaau-l at lists.wikimedia.org
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>
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