4 Sep
2015
4 Sep
'15
11:59 p.m.
Hi Alex,
On 4 Sep 2015 at 19:56:31, Alex Henrie
(alexhenrie24@gmail.com(mailto:alexhenrie24@gmail.com)) wrote:
2015-09-02 7:30 GMT-06:00 Eduard Moraru :
Indeed that’s the general premise of a wiki and that’s how it differs from other tools:
collaborating and creating content is hard, which is why wikis make it easy for users to
do so without having to ask for permissions. Notifications, history and rollback features
are the way to provide oversight. In the huge majority of cases, no action is required and
serendipity happens :)
In XWiki, wiki pages can contain either unstructured data or structured data (xobjects).
There’s no fundamental difference between both types of data and users should be free to
add and modify any type of data (provided they have edit rights on the page).
You mention “a page that is supposed to be wikitext-only”. Who says that? :) Who says that
a page which starts with wiki text cannot be improved by having some part of it
structured? I’ve done this countless of times to provide more features.
I personally would find it a pity to arbitrarily restrict permissions to only some users.
That’s not the principle of wikis at heart. I’d say: always try to be the most open, and
if it causes problems then close down a bit if there’s no other way.
In addition, some companies are used to the traditional way of working and would prefer to
close down things a bit. Because XWiki is a flexible platform and because it’s an
Enterprise Wiki, it has a strong permission model. Recently (in XWiki 7.2M1 and 7.2M2),
we’ve added a new permission called the Scripting Permission and it’s possible to give it
only to some users.
See http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/ReleaseNotes/ReleaseNotesXWiki72M1#HScr… and http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/ReleaseNotes/ReleaseNotesXWiki72M2#HScr…
I hope the rationale is more clear! (not sure if I explained it right :)).
There is no such restriction or best practice. It
all depends on what that
page is used for and what are the objects inside that page used for as well.
Some objects can be used to mark certain pages. Others can store extra
data: structured content in general (defined in user created xclasses) or
even page comments, tags, etc. Other objects can set the document's rights.
Other objects can specify which is the sheet to apply when viewing or
editing the current document.
The document's content (what you call "A string of wikitext") can have
static content or dynamic content (scripts/code) which can execute either
independently of the objects in the page or by reading some data from those
objects, processing it and/or displaying/presenting it as the (dynamic)
content of the document you are viewing.
There are enough cases when a document has both content and objects, as the
ability to have structured content in your document is a very big plus in
XWiki, compared to some other wiki platforms.
XWiki is a flexible platform and it all comes down to the usecase you are
using it for, i.e. what you want to achieve.
If I understand you correctly, manual monitoring and moderation is the
only way to prevent a user from, for example, adding a bunch of
objects to a page that is supposed to be wikitext-only. I don't think
I would have designed XWiki with such loose restrictions, but if this
was the design philosophy from the beginning then it makes more sense.
Thanks for the explanation!
Thanks
-Vincent
-Alex