[Tikiwiki-devel] Setting up individual permissions for students (aka Tiki usability)

[Bryan P. <bp...@vi...>]

I'm responding to Denny's query about permissions for his students, but 
I'd like the developers to see this.  It highlights a MAJOR usability 
shortcoming (that could, I think, be easily fixed).

To create individual permissions for each person in the class, do the 
following:

1.  In the Admin drop-down menu, click Groups.
2.  Create a group corresponding to each student's individual user name. 
This is somewhat laborious, but it's nothing compared to what follows.
3.  In the Admin drop-down menu, click Users.
4.  Pick a user. (They are still sorted in reverse (descending) 
alphabetical order by default, which just makes this process worse -- 
reverse sorting requires the user to expend considerably more cognitive 
resources than would otherwise be required. This is a major usability 
flaw in Tiki, and it's endemic -- reverse sorts come at you from all 
over the place.)
5.  Click Assign Group. You'll see the list of groups you made -- again, 
in reverse alphabetical order.
6.  Find the group with the same name as your user.
7.  Click Assign.
8.  Repeat Steps 4 through 7. As you will discover, this will take you 
quite a bit of time. I have 60 students, and this takes me several hours 
at the beginning of each semester. You have to check like the devil for 
errors -- they're easy to make if you get tired.
9.  Go to the object to which you want to assign permissions.
10. For each relevant permission (including, minimally, read and edit 
privileges), choose the student's group. For example, suppose you want 
to create feedback blogs, which only you (admin) and the student can 
use. You will need to choose read, edit, and post permissions for each 
blog. (For 60 feedback blogs, you will have to define a total of 180 
permissions.) Inevitably, you will screw up some of them, which means 
that student A will be able to read student B's feedback (but not her 
own). So you'd better double-check! Triple! (Tip:  Look at the 
permissions icon in the blogs list. If there are parentheses around 
them, you've set individual permissions. If not, the blog is public.)

Congratulations! You are done. Have a beer. Get some sleep.

^_^

How to fix this?

Option #1 (hard, probably):  Enable individual-level permissions.
Option #2 (easy, probably):  On registration, automatically create an 
eponymous (='of the same name') group for each individual. This can be 
an admin option ('Automatically create group with the same name as new 
user?') in the Login tab of Admin.

And how about a 0.7.3 release -- just to address the usability issues 
that have repeatedly come up, only to play second fiddle in the rush to 
get new features in Tiki?

Very best wishes to all
Bryan