Re: Bricolage: Impressive

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Josh Berkus [mailto:josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com]
> Sent: 19 January 2004 17:41
> To: Dave Page
> Cc: PostgreSQL Web Development Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [pgsql-www] Bricolage: Impressive
>

Hi Josh,

> Paranoia doesn't pay. Really.

It pays my wages actually! Seriously, as an IT manager I have to
consider every aspect of our systems at work and any potential risks to
the business from them. Our auditors would not even let any random
member of staff edit things on our public website, never mind Joe
Public, in case they opened us to prosecution somehow. We *have* to make
every best effort to ensure that none of the systems we deploy can cause
grief to the company.

I realise the PostgreSQL project is not the same as Vale Housing, but
still, the same considerations must be made to some extent.

> Despite Wiki's potential for
> abuse, the Wikis
> out there have been remarkably grafitti-free. For example, I
> don't know that Wikipedia.org has been defaced once in the
> last season despite its public profile, and more technical
> wikis like the madwifi wiki (http://
> madwifiwiki.thewebhost.de/wiki/FrontPage) have gone their
> whole lifetimes
> free of interference. So that's *not* a consideration --
> especially as any
> good wiki includes version rollback.

LOL!! So because it hasn't happened yet, it never will (or won't to us)?
Besides, a quick Google shows that Wiki defacements are hardly unheard
of, even if they can be rolled back.

<snip pros/cons>

Reading your pros and cons, the only *real* advantage of a Wiki over
some other CMS is that the would be editor/author needn't register to
use the system first. Given that registering for such a site and waiting
for a return email is likely to be more or less instant, and only
required upon the first use, I would rather use just one system for the
whole site, and know that we do at least have a valid email address for
each editor on the system (who would have had to agree to T&Cs upon
registration).

The advantages to such a system are:

1) Only one content management system to maintain etc.

2) The liability for any unsuitable postings is placed firmly back at
the editors themselves.

Regards, Dave.