Re: [TWiki-Dev] "Some things man is not meant to know..."

[Peter T. <pe...@th...>]

Happy New Year to all :-)

This is an interesting discussion. But I am not going to
participate here on twiki-dev because e-mail will be lost
in no time. Please carry this over to the Codev web.

Cheers,
Peter


Anton Aylward wrote:
> Crawford Currie wrote:
> 
>>TWiki is supposed to be a wiki; as such it is intended to encourage
>>participation. It's like training a kitten; if you want the users to
>>understand they are able to edit, you have to grab them by the scruff of
>>the neck and rub their noses in it. I can see the point of only offering
>>the option to edit to autenticated users, but I think it's a specialist
>>requirement, and I'm inclined to say "do it in your own skin". You have
>>the tools.
> 
> 
> *sigh*
> Encouraging participation and allowing just any ignorant and uniformed
> or possibly vandalistic passer by to fiddle with the configuration
> settings are two very different things.
> 
> Unless and until the TWiki web becomes ONLY documentation and all
> configuration is moved to some controlled and access restricted
> mechanisms like =bin/configure=, and ditto to infrastructure things like
> Web Preferences, Left, Top, and Bottom bar, the CSS attachments and so
> forth restricting access will remain a requirement.
> 
> TWiki has webs.
> An application web, a BlogWeb ... yes, it should be open and encourage
> participation.
> That the architecture of TWiki mapped configuration & management into a
> another web gives the potential for abuse unless that web is secured.
> Think, as an analogy: the local transformers of the electricity
> distribution grid are fenced off or housed and access to them is
> restricted.  Why do you think that is?  Why do you think corporations
> don't give the root access for the servers and routers to every user on
> the network?
> 
> In many situations there simply isn't a need to know.  The application
> users don't even need to  know details of the infrastructure, the power
> generators, the transformers, the servers and routers.  They only need
> to know that thinks work and that keeping them working is someone's
> responsibility.  Most users are not geeks.
> 
> Arthur has created a number of cookbook topics.  Removing the left bar,
> the top bar or centering the page, or as I've done for one site,
> removing them all and making the "portal" look quite different are all
> possible.  Petr Thoeny has illustrated a couple of portals that are
> quite different.
> http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiNewsPortal
> and
> http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/HomePageNavigation
> 
> 
> Finally, there is a very simple and ROI-sensitive reason to hide options
> (even things like edit) that the user can't use be use of downstream
> access control limitations.  Good user interface design advises not to
> offer menu options to which the user gets a response "Sorry you're not
> allowed to do that".  Its frustrating and results in calls to the help
> desk and the concomitants costs and frustrations.
> 
> User:       "Why can't I edit?"
> Help desk:  "Because you're not logged in"
> 
> That is the most common complaint my clients' support report as problem
> with Wiki.  But IT and policy and BASEL 2 and SarBox won't allow
> anonymous updates.
> 
> Yes, I plan to "do this on my own skin".  I have.  Often.
> One example is attached of what can easily be done with PatternSkin.
> I started with an idea from Peter's portal, got a few hints from Arthur,
> showed them to one of my users and we rapidly worked this out.  Its a
> testimony to (a) the flexibility of TWiki and (b) the power of Pattern
> skin and (c) what a cookbook can help with.  Yes, Arthur had to add a
> few details to the CSS we are not using to "separate out" some
> granularity of control.  You can see that in the subversion history.
> But just as Arthur has made available thee mechanisms and details that
> allow admins to customize, so to add the tools for a  on the "need to
> know".
> 
> Nothing is forcing the admins to use it any more than they are forced to
> use my alternative 'front page'.  But lets give them the capability,
> lets show them it CAN be done and how easy it is to do it.
> 
> What would be great would be a %IF{}% that checked for group inclusion!
> At the moment I'm having to battle with SpreadSheetPlugin and
> TopicsVarPlugin .
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 

-- 
    * Peter Thoeny                           Peter@Thoeny.org
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