[CentOS-docs] Announcing the CentOS on Laptops initiative

Mon Nov 26 21:48:29 UTC 2007
Ralph Angenendt <ra+centos at br-online.de>

Dag Wieers wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Nov 2007, Ralph Angenendt wrote:
> > Dag Wieers wrote:
>>> I would prefer to open it up to anyone who has registered.
>>
>> There has to be *one* step more in it. Selfregistering and then getting
>> write access doesn't work (okay, it works for spammers).
> 
> Captcha's are not possible to avoid the SPAM ?

Captchas don't work. If you do them easy enough, they can be solved
automatically, if they are too hard people cannot solve them. And if
you're (colour)blind, you're fucked anyway. There are no technical
solutions for social problems. Or do you get less spam than two years
ago - even with all those technical measurements in place?

> If the one step could take up more than 5 minutes (or even half an hour),
> I think we lost momentum for those people that want to do it *now*, or
> never.

It's not about the time, I think. *If* we say "All parts of the wiki are
editable by everyone, except some special parts which aren't open to the
public anyway", it's just some adding a WikiName to a list on the wiki.
If two or three people watch that, adding people is fast.

The real question is: Do we want everybody to be able to add stuff or do
we want to see some sample work before? Enabling people to add to the
wiki after they send you their WikiName is easy. 

> If waiting for approval takes longer than the fix, I doubt many people
> will go for the fix.

Na, I don't think so. I get many mails about fixing stuff on the wiki. I
get close to no mails about people who want to write stuff on the wiki -
well, there are several here on the mailing list, but that's what this
mailing list is for.

As said: The real question we need to solve is "Do we want to lower the
bar regarding adding content?"

And I think the answer is yes. But the answer cannot be automated
registration - there are too many wikis on the net, where I already had
to revert pages which were destroyed by spammers.

But relaxation of ACLs and a lower entry level to write stuff - yes, I'm
all for it.

Cheers,

Ralph
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-docs/attachments/20071126/2df08f0c/attachment-0004.sig>