From: Peter T. <pe...@th...> - 2006-01-03 06:42:07
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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 * Is your team already TWiki enabled? http://TWiki.org * This e-mail is: (_) public (x) ask first (_) private |