[Wikimediaau-l] official wiki

[private musings]

Having open editing for accounts only sounds great to me :-)
If this idea could gain consensus, and get done by christmas I think that
would be wonderful :-)
cheers,
Peter,
PM.

On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 5:44 PM, Craig Franklin <craig at halo-17.net> wrote:

>  I think that presenting editing access to the chapter wiki as a “benefit”
> of membership is a bit silly really.  When I spruik membership to potential
> members, “the ability to edit our wiki!” doesn’t even register on the things
> I tell them.
>
>
>
> Perhaps a compromise between the “no access for non-members” and “open
> access” viewpoints is in order.  We could open access to everyone, provided
> they had an account.  Accounts would still need to be approved by someone to
> weed out spam bots and the like (having managed a public-facing Wiki, I know
> that this is often a serious problem), and perhaps the accounts of
> non-members could be sequestered into the user space or something.  If you
> look at Wikimedia UK’s “Recent Changes” page, there is a lot of rubbish
> there that their admins are having to spend their time cleaning up – frankly
> I think our people have better things to do than play janitor on the chapter
> wiki.
>
>
>
> I don’t know, apart from the whole “open philosophy”, I don’t see any real
> reasons why anyone who is not a member would want to post on our Wiki, and
> the fact that the Billabong is quiet… I don’t really see that as a problem
> since most of the communication and discussion occurs on this list, which is
> essentially open to the public anyway.
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Craig
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* wikimediaau-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:
> wikimediaau-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] *On Behalf Of *Andrew
> *Sent:* Saturday, 12 December 2009 9:38 AM
> *To:* Wikimedia-au
> *Subject:* Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
>
>
>
> 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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