RE: [Axiom-developer] Re: Has anybody attempted to buildAldor+Axiomlately?

[Bill Page]

On August 13, 2006 6:16 PM Bob McElrath wrote:
> 
> I'm gonna vote with Simon here...I know spam is a problem but
> this is overkill.  Banning http will cause a lot of problems
> for new users, exactly those a budding young project can't
> afford to alienate...
> 

After two years of running the Axiom Wiki I am inclined to disagree.
It seems to me that there is very little we can do to overcome the
reluctance that new users feel to using a wiki. Those who do not
have this reluctance already have a high tolerance for the kind of
problems created by banning the use of http://anything. And then
there are people out there on the wild web who are willing and able
to exploit our resources for there own ends, no matter what we do
to try to prevent it.

Mostly I would conclude from this excersize that simply building
a wiki (however sexy or easy to use) and hoping that people will
simply show up to create content is misguided. You can point to
the counter-example of Wikipedia but I am convinced that here the
difference is only a matter of scale and not one of ease of use.

On the other hand I notice that a relatively high number of new
users (more than 120 people!) have registered for a user id and
password on the Axiom Portal - the Plone site that we run in
parallel to the Wiki. This in spite of the fact that we do not
make much of an effort to advertize it's existence. Plone's user
registration process does seem very easy to use. Oddly perhaps,
like the Axiom Wiki users most of these Portal users also do not
seem to create much in the way of new content. But they were
willing to register. 

Now personally I do not much like sites that require me to register
although I have to admit that I have gotten used to it over the
last couple of years.

So the solution to the spam problem that I like most right now is
to embed the existing Axiom Wiki site inside Plone and use the
standard Wiki skin to keep the same look and feel as the existing
site. This gives us access to the Plone user registration process
which allow us to limit edits and comments to authenticated users
and also would allow us to merge the content of both the Wiki and
the Portal without loosing any functionality.

What do you think?

Regards,
Bill Page.