[cgiapp] Future of the wiki

[Mark Fuller]

On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 11:01 PM, David Kaufman <david at gigawatt.com> wrote:
>
> I think we definitely need to put some some anti-spam techniques to
> discourage the spammers, but I am worried that real users with ideas or
> corrections to contribute would not bother to ask for access.

I want to mention again: If a forum were used instead of an email
list, wiki edit access could be tied to the forum's authentication
(deriving benefit from the forum's anti-spam registration techniques),
and based upon a forum member's demonstrated non-spammy activity
(they're a member of the wiki editor's group after 10 posts to the
forum?).

I believe a mailing list loses valuable attributes about participants.
There's no way to correlate and capitalize upon the fact that user xyz
has a demonstrated track record of not generating spam, and therefore
can be trusted to edit the wiki.

The other benefit of a forum (over a mailing list) is that it can
exist on the same site as the wiki. The two can be linked together,
helping discussion participants pay more attention to the wiki (and
wiki browsers pay more attention to the discussions). One-stop
location for knowledge-base and discussion information.

Mailing lists seem so 1990. I'd ditch it and go with a forum.

Mark