Subject: We need an Advocacy wiki

From: Josh Berkus <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2007 15:33:39 -0700

All,

We need to set up an Advocacy wiki with more liberal permissions.  I've 
been trying to use the developer wiki for that purpose, but it's just not 
set up for people to add themselves so that they can do things like sign 
up for shifts at a booth.

So we need a wiki which works the normal way; anyone registered can edit.

-- 
--Josh

Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco

---

From: "Joshua D. Drake" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2007 15:41:01 -0700

> So we need a wiki which works the normal way; anyone registered can edit.

Is it possible to create "open" pages with media wiki?

Joshua D. Drake

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From: "Marc G. Fournier" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2007 20:04:37 -0300

I can setup wiki.postgresql.org as a seperate VPS with MediaWiki installed ... 
or is there another wiki software you prefer?  Who will 'moderate' this, or do 
you plan on making it a totally open system, self-moderated?

- --On Friday, August 03, 2007 15:33:39 -0700 Josh Berkus <[email-masked]> 
wrote:

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Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
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---

From: "Greg Sabino Mullane" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2007 13:56:31 -0000

> up for shifts at a booth.

I'm still not sure why we need two wikis - we are a transparent organization, 
after all, and we have enough brains to separate the advocacy pages from the 
development pages, with Categories if need be. We can also discuss changing 
the wiki permission scheme, but opening it up to anyone is generally a bad idea 
unless, like Wikipedia, you a) are willing to put up with vandalism and 
general subtle mischief and b) have the critical mass of watchers to keep (a) 
to a minimum. The experience of the interactive docs indicate that we do 
not have that mass yet, and I am reluctant to go that route anyway for 
public-facing pages that represent the project via a postgresql.org address.

> So we need a wiki which works the normal way; anyone registered can edit.

Not sure what your definition of normal is; that depends on what you mean by 
"registered". If it means just creating an account via web form, that's 
harldy an impediment to vandalism. We can certainly give more people the power 
to grant write-access to wiki accounts, if that's the perceived hold up.

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane [email-masked]
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200708040952
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8

---

From: Robert Treat <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 10:20:35 -0400

On Saturday 04 August 2007 09:56, Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:
> but opening it up to anyone is
> generally a bad idea unless, like Wikipedia, you a) are willing to put up
> with vandalism and general subtle mischief and b) have the critical mass of
> watchers to keep (a) to a minimum. The experience of the interactive docs
> indicate that we do not have that mass yet, 

What experience is this?

> and I am reluctant to go that 
> route anyway for public-facing pages that represent the project via a
> postgresql.org address.
>

This is more likely the problem, ie. your personal feelings.  

-- 
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

---

From: Dave Page <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 16:15:24 +0100

>> indicate that we do not have that mass yet, 

I imagine he's referring to the mountain of garbage that used to build 
up until Magnus and I had a monster session moderating a few thousand 
comments to get them back under control.

>> route anyway for public-facing pages that represent the project via a

I don't see any need to have any public facing pages on a Wiki - are we 
too lazy to write things up for the website when we want to present them 
to the world? It's not like it's difficult to do.

For collaboration work however, the Wiki is important I think - but I 
agree with Greg, we shouldn't need a second one. Can't we have an area 
on the current one with looser permissions?

/D

---

From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 17:24:39 +0200

Dave Page wrote:
>>> and I am reluctant to go that route anyway for public-facing pages
>>> that represent the project via a
>>> postgresql.org address.
> 

Agreed. The whole idea behind a wiki is "reasonably loose permissions",
right? AS Greg already suggested, perhaps we just need a "better way"
for people to request permissions? (For example, right now it just says
"contact greg or neil", but it doesn't tell you how - not even an email
address...)

And a structure of the wiki that has a section for advocacy of course -
but we already have that.

/Magnus

---

From: Decibel! <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2007 11:44:57 -0500

> on the current one with looser permissions?

I think this is being blown way out of proportion.

We're not wikipedia. We have nowhere near the attention level, nor the
type of content that's likely to attract vandals. And before someone
brings up the doc comments, there hasn't appeared to be much of a flood
of garbage there since we instituted the login requirement.

It's also completely unfair to try and correlate keeping an open wiki
clean with doing the same for docs, because unlike docs we've got
hundreds of folks who could ensure that the wiki stays clean.

Can we please just give the public wiki a chance instead of coming up
with a bunch of reasons it won't work before we've even tried? It's not
like it's hard to change things later if needed.

(BTW, when I say public wiki I mean one where anyone with an account can
edit, not one where you don't need an account.)
-- 
Decibel!, aka Jim Nasby                        [email-masked]
EnterpriseDB      http://enterprisedb.com      512.569.9461 (cell)

---

From: Gregory Stark <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 17:48:58 +0100

> to grant write-access to wiki accounts, if that's the perceived hold up.

Do we have any history of vandalism on the -hackers mailing list? There is no
approval mechanism for people subscribing to the list. Would people be happy
if every subscription to -hackers required someone to approve your membership?

I went to do update the wiki recently, found I didn't have write access and
gave up and went back to other things. I think any extra barriers are a bad
thing. It ought to be open until there's a demonstrable problem rather than
preemptively making it less useful because we anticipate problems we have no
evidence of.

-- 
  Gregory Stark
  EnterpriseDB          http://www.enterprisedb.com

---

From: "Joshua D. Drake" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 09:56:32 -0700

> to the world? It's not like it's difficult to do.

Yes, in fact it is. It is a complete pain in the butt in comparison to
editing a wiki. If I want a page added to the .Org I have to:

A. Understand CVS
B. Understand HTML
C. Understand patch

Worse, if I want to test my changes:

A. Understand apache
B. Understand mod_rewrite
C. Install and configure PHP
D. Figure out how everything is laid out in the htdocs structure for pgweb

Now, *I* understand all these things (except mod_rewrite). I *can*
contribute to the website and have.

*I* and nobody else in this community should have to go through that
much effort to add a page.

As a comparison for CMDs website:

(if the page exists)

A. Login
B. Edit page
C. Review changes
D. Save changes

(if the page doesn't exist)

A. Login
B. Insert new row into pages and site_items table
C. Edit page
D. Review changes
E. Save changes

The only time anyone has to do any type of coding is if we want a new
feature such as my blog.

Compare to a wiki:

A. Login
B. Make change
C. Review change
D. Save change

Now that I have written all of this. I am not suggesting that we change
our web infrastructure. I am however suggesting that we stop insulting
people and looking very arrogant about our, "It isn't like it is that
hard", because it is indeed hard and much harder than it should be.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

- --

---

From: "Joshua D. Drake" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 09:57:25 -0700

> "contact greg or neil", but it doesn't tell you how - not even an email

Or just have them email pgsql-www with the request and have more than
two people that can give the permissions?

Joshua D. Drake

- --

---

From: "Joshua D. Drake" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 09:59:49 -0700

> hundreds of folks who could ensure that the wiki stays clean.

Not to mention cleaning a wiki is as easy as "revert". The real problem
here is people that don't want to accept what is now common technology
not only for collaboration but also for public facing pages.

Joshua D. Drake

- --

---

From: "Joshua D. Drake" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 10:02:07 -0700

> preemptively making it less useful because we anticipate problems we have no

Yep, which is why it wasn't until OSCON that I had a wiki account that I
actually paid attention to.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

- --

---

From: "Joshua D. Drake" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 10:03:08 -0700

Oh, and have a great weekend! :)

Joshua D. Drake

- --

---

From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 19:10:07 +0200

> if every subscription to -hackers required someone to approve your membership?

No, but we *do* have a history of vandalism/spamming on the website.
This includes the interactive docs, news posts, event posts and
professional services. That's pretty much every single part of the
website that actually has a submit button, except for the bug reporting
form - which goes through the majordomo moderation system so it's still
moderated.

But - it helped significantly when we started requesting community
logins for these forms. It's still not gone - there are people
advertising for UK hotels and a few other things that actually sign up
for a community account with a temp email address and post from there.
This is the main reason why we still have manual verification on all
these things even though they require a login.

That said, allowing people to sign up for an account in an automated way
that does require email verification would work, as long as there is:
1) A way to revoke and ban addresses
2) Somebody to keep track of things, and remove spam and revoke/ban
these users.

(this would be the same level of verification that we have for the
mailinglists - it's not like they're unvalidated)

But the work required for (2) is a lot less than a completely open
system of course. If there are a couple of people who are willing to
take that upon them (which there seems to be, given the activity on the
wiki) we could always give that a try?

//Magnus

---

From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 19:16:09 +0200

> editing a wiki. If I want a page added to the .Org I have to:

Ever tried techdocs? ;-)

> A. Understand CVS

No, no need for that. You can just send your files to -www.

> B. Understand HTML

That, there is need for. Personally, I know a lot of people who find
that easier than some of the weird wiki markup thingies around :-P

I think the big problem for testing that is that our web *layout* (the
CSS and div-ifying) is very complex. I'd really love to see that
simplified - by someone who know it well enough.

But the truth is, most pages would be perfectly fine written just using
a couple of <h> and <p> tags, along with possibly a couple of <a
href>:s. As long as you don't need to muck about with complex layout
stuff, that's trivial. And AFAIK, you can't really muck around with said
complex layout stuff in wikis either, without hard-coding CSS and HTML
the same way.

> C. Understand patch

No need for that if you're adding a page. And not really needed if
you're changing one either, as one of the web guys can take care of that.

> Worse, if I want to test my changes:

There should be no need to test your changes unless you're writing
*code*. Which is not what we're talking about here, really.

> The only time anyone has to do any type of coding is if we want a new

Same goes for postgresql.org - as long as you're just putting in text,
there is no need for the majority of the points in your list.

> hard", because it is indeed hard and much harder than it should be.

If it really is that hard (and I honestly don't believe that it is, but
I'm willing to accept that others find it that way), then we *should*
fix it. The hard part is agreeing on *how*, because there are so many
requirements...

> Oh, and have a great weekend! :)

You, too!

//Magnus

---

From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 19:18:57 +0200

> not only for collaboration but also for public facing pages.

I certainly know it's turning into a common technology for that. The
unstructured nature of it has made it a *lot* harder to find anything on
the homepages of many of the projects that have switched to it. It also
in general makes it impossible to determine what information is official
and what is not.

//Magnus

---

From: Decibel! <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2007 12:21:30 -0500

> these things even though they require a login.

Actually, I rather doubt it's real, live people, because it's pretty
easy for a bot to spoof a form that doesn't have captcha or some other
means of verification.

In any case, any wiki should have that in place, so it's essentially a
non-issue.
-- 
Decibel!, aka Jim Nasby                        [email-masked]
EnterpriseDB      http://enterprisedb.com      512.569.9461 (cell)

---

From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 19:23:48 +0200

> of garbage there since we instituted the login requirement.

Correct. There's still some, but it's much better now.

> hundreds of folks who could ensure that the wiki stays clean.

Not sure that's a fair count. Looking at the wiki user list there are
certainly 215 accounts. But by my untrained eye, a lot of those look
like automated users created by spam-bots in order to see if they can
create spam-pages. It could be that we have actual users named Zy9Yqd,
Yx9Qbh and Xj0Y6g, but I seriously doubt it. And that's a clear
indication that there are people (or rather, bots) probing the wiki
already trying to post crap.

> edit, not one where you don't need an account.)

As long as that holds, I'm absolutely up for giving it a try. Maybe part
of the disagreement has been from a misunderstanding of what a "public
wiki" is. In my book, a *public* wiki is one that doesn't need a
verified account. (I assume that you refer to verified account above. If
not, I don't agree until you add the word verified)

//Magnus

---

From: Decibel! <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2007 12:28:33 -0500

> already trying to post crap.

Well, my point is that if we allow our users to easily get accounts,
we'll have a lot of eyes on this...

> not, I don't agree until you add the word verified)

Well, at the bare minimum we need a captcha or something similar.
Without that then yes, we're going to get all kinds of crap accounts.
Do we just have that turned off, or does mediawiki actually not support
that?
-- 
Decibel!, aka Jim Nasby                        [email-masked]
EnterpriseDB      http://enterprisedb.com      512.569.9461 (cell)

---

From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 19:39:20 +0200

> Do we just have that turned off, or does mediawiki actually not support

I'd say we want email verification, so that we can contact the authors
when needed.

That said, I have no clue about mediawiki ;-)

//Magnus

---

From: Robert Treat <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 13:47:17 -0400

On Saturday 04 August 2007 11:15, Dave Page wrote:
> >> generally a bad idea unless, like Wikipedia, you a) are willing to put
> >> up with vandalism and general subtle mischief and b) have the critical
> >> mass of watchers to keep (a) to a minimum. The experience of the
> >> interactive docs indicate that we do not have that mass yet,
> >
> > What experience is this?
>

*sigh* 

Doesn't this suggest we do have mass to prevent vandalism/mischief ?

---

From: Lukas Kahwe Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 19:49:03 +0200

> preemptively making it less useful because we anticipate problems we have no

Well we should definately require a login, even if its just so that we 
can trace who made what changes so that we know who has taken 
responsibility over a given section.

regards,
Lukas

---

From: Decibel! <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2007 13:18:55 -0500

> That said, I have no clue about mediawiki ;-)

I have a suspicion that spammers are sophisticated enough to be able to
handle simple email verification... :/
-- 
Decibel!, aka Jim Nasby                        [email-masked]
EnterpriseDB      http://enterprisedb.com      512.569.9461 (cell)

---

From: "Joshua D. Drake" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 14:18:02 -0700

>> editing a wiki. If I want a page added to the .Org I have to:

No. I don't like the layout (and yes that is an opinion thing and I
don't want to get into it).

> No, no need for that. You can just send your files to -www.

You mean the straight HTML? what about everything that resides around it?

> fix it. The hard part is agreeing on *how*, because there are so many

O.k. perhaps this is a perception problem. Consider my involvement in
the community and the fact that I thought that I had to do all of the
above in order to contribute to the site... Now take into account
someone who isn't as involved as I?

Where is the "Contributing to the PostgreSQL.Org website HOWTO"?

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

- --

---

From: "Joshua D. Drake" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 14:19:03 -0700

> in general makes it impossible to determine what information is official

Not when managed correctly. Keep in mind that I have zero problem with
requiring accounts for accessing the pages.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

> TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to
>        choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not
>        match
> 

- --

---

From: "Joshua D. Drake" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 14:20:00 -0700

> I'd say we want email verification, so that we can contact the authors

Yes that is what I would expect.

Joshua D. Drake

> TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
> 

- --

---

From: Tino Wildenhain <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 05 Aug 2007 10:11:50 +0200

Magnus Hagander schrieb:
...
> not, I don't agree until you add the word verified)

Maybe the users could be created by referral or invitation? This way
you would form a little web of trust instead of having almost alien
people (or bots) trying to write something related to postgres.

Regards
Tino

---

From: Tino Wildenhain <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 05 Aug 2007 10:13:13 +0200

Decibel! schrieb:
...
> Do we just have that turned off, or does mediawiki actually not support

No Captcha please. These s*ck horribly and do not fight spambots
if they really want to get in. Please see my other mail on alternative
proposal.

Regards
Tino

---

From: Greg Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2007 02:00:44 -0400 (EDT)

On Sat, 4 Aug 2007, Magnus Hagander wrote:

> AS Greg already suggested, perhaps we just need a "better way" for 
> people to request permissions? (For example, right now it just says 

Fixed; there's now a new page at 
http://developer.postgresql.org/index.php/Editing_Guidelines that explains 
what to do (which our moderaters should look at now that I've made them 
more public--I left the e-mail addresses somewhat obfuscated similarly to 
the mailing lists).  Like Greg Stark's story, this was a sore point for 
me.  The week I wanted to start editing I tried just e-mailing GSM for 
approval, but it was during a time when he was unavailable.  I waited a 
few days while unsure if I'd even contacted him correctly, then e-mailed 
Neil, then finally got in; had I not been really motivated I would have 
just given up long before getting permissions.

Despite all that, I waste enough of my time cleaning up after spammers, 
vandals, and idiots on other wikis that I'm still on the side of those 
here suggesting this particular resources should stay controlled in this 
fashion.  Clearing up the instructions solves most of what bugged me.

What I'd suggest is turning those who can approve edit rights into a 
mailing list (so the note on the new page I made can say "e-mail 
[email-masked]" or something instead of mentioning 
multiple names) that forwards the request to everyone who has approval 
permissions.  Then expand that list a bit so that's it's more likely it 
will hit someone who can do the approval in a timely fashion; first person 
to grant the rights cc's the list and the requester saying it's done, and 
barring the occasional harmless race condition dupe the whole thing would 
be simple enough.

If Josh or others really need a true open wiki without such an approval 
process, I'd suggest popping that into another database and create another 
Wikimedia instance for it.  I think having that all mixed in with the 
content on the developer's wiki will just make tracking edits harder for 
both groups.  Having a "Recent changes" page that's small enough to browse 
easily is helpful for the scale of people involved in these pages at this 
point, and I do browse that section of the Developer's Wiki to see what's 
been going on.  I know I'd be bothered if that got filled with booth work 
edits instead--and the booth workers would have an easier time policing 
their area if the developer edits weren't in their way.  Plus, if it gets 
nailed hard you can just save the important stuff and nuke the whole 
temporary wiki rather than be compelled do a time-intensive cleanup; 
losing the history isn't as good of an idea for the developer's wiki.

--
* Greg Smith [email-masked] http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD

---

From: Greg Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2007 02:10:14 -0400 (EDT)

> Do we just have that turned off, or does mediawiki actually not support

There are a couple of levels of captcha you can setup.  For example, one 
wiki I work on a regularly allows edits by any account as soon as it's 
created.  But if you add a reference to a URL that's outside of the Wiki 
itself, committing that edit requires completing a captcha (where the data 
you type is a combination of two common words appearing in the wiki). 
This makes it so anyone can add regular content almost instantly, but 
since the spammers can't automate linking to their sites it makes them 
less likely to target you.

---

From: Decibel! <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2007 13:43:44 -0500

> people (or bots) trying to write something related to postgres.

That's not really much better than what we've got right now... you're
still relying on a human somewhere to get things done, which adds a lot
of latency.
-- 
Decibel!, aka Jim Nasby                        [email-masked]
EnterpriseDB      http://enterprisedb.com      512.569.9461 (cell)