Mailing List Archive

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 17:32:18 +0000, Yann Golanski <yann@kierun.org> wrote:
> I suggested that instead of using some XHTML+CSS pages we could just
> use Moinmoin (the wiki) with a set of access control lists to only
> allow editions of pages outside the FAQ to a specific group of users.

I disagree. A site like php.net or mysql.com with user comments is
more appropriate and less prone to vandalism. I sent a suggestion and
made an offer to Nigel about 2 years ago but never heard back :(

Another big issue I see are the mirrors. They're all over the place
as it is...and now you have to deal with getting them the database.

Frankly, I don't see what the big craze is with wiki. Open source
thesaurus, nice. Everything else, no.

Sam

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 10:57:45 +0000, Yann Golanski <yann@kierun.org> wrote:
> Frankly, static pages are a pain since no one will ever agree on simple
> things like background and text colour, images, where menus are, etc...
> CSS make this slightly easier but then you do need a log in per user
> which adds complexity to the whole thing. Besides, why should I
> register just to get a new look on the site? </rant>

I don't understand what you're saying. Why is having a dynamic
background, text color, images, menus, etc necessary? The normal CSS,
a high contrast CSS and a big text CSS...pretty standard practice for
design. It's all possible (including a nice look in lynx for no CSS)
with XHTML+CSS.

There is no requirement for a user to login...see php.net.

> It allows to have the content in a simple text files and the display in
> another. It allows for users to be able to edit bits without having
> access to the machine it's hosted on. It gives users who are bothered
> the possibility to improve the site. It allows users to have their
> own CSS and thus look.

We *don't* want anonymous people to change the content. The
documentation and FAQ are static. Adding user notes at the bottom
would be the easiest way to add commentary and helpful hints.
Remember, this isn't an encylopedia where things are open to
interpretation and updates. Phil controls the updates. User
contributions are easily handled anonymously as footnotes.

> Fundamentally, not all things suit all needs.

But in this case, doing a wiki-clone type system is overkill, complex
and introduces the issue of user access levels. Very few people
(read: Phil and Nigel) touch the documentation and FAQ.

This is how I see the site:

XHTML+CSS+PHP
- Compliant and clean code
- Looks decent in text browsers for sysadmins
- Multiple CSS layouts (normal, high contrast, large font, etc)
- Static header/footer/menus/etc via PHP includes

Documentation/FAQ
- Each section/function has its own page

PHP/MySQL
- Anonymous user notes for the documentation (with optional email
address field)...no login required
- Perhaps a rating system that will also serve to auto hide comments
(sort of a distributed moderation)

An adaptation of PHP.net's system would work beautifully for Exim's purpose.

Sam

On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 04:28:11PM -0500,
Sam Michaels <samthecomputerman@gmail.com> is thought to have said:

> PHP/MySQL
> - Anonymous user notes for the documentation (with optional email
> address field)...no login required
> - Perhaps a rating system that will also serve to auto hide comments
> (sort of a distributed moderation)
>
> An adaptation of PHP.net's system would work beautifully for Exim's purpose.

php.net also had to take down their user comments section for a while not
long ago because of spammers targeting the notes system.

If something like this does get implemented for exim.org then we need to
make sure to take that kind of inevitable abuse into account when putting it
together. I don't think merely rating them will be enough.

--
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Tabor J. Wells twells@fsckit.net
Fsck It! Just another victim of the ambient morality

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 16:39:26 -0500 "Tabor J. Wells" <twells@fsckit.net> wrote:
> php.net also had to take down their user comments section for a while not
> long ago because of spammers targeting the notes system.

> If something like this does get implemented for exim.org then we need to
> make sure to take that kind of inevitable abuse into account when putting it
> together. I don't think merely rating them will be enough.

absolutely rating is not enough. they're not spamming so that you read it,
they're spamming to tweak their google scores.

it doesn't necessarily need logins, but it at least needs some sort of
robot protection. link spammers aren't manually putting in links, they
are writing perl scripts that run around adding links to vulnerable
bb systems and blogs.

richard
--
Richard Welty rwelty@averillpark.net
Averill Park Networking 518-573-7592
Java, PHP, PostgreSQL, Unix, Linux, IP Network Engineering, Security

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 17:54:21 -0500 (EST), Richard Welty
<rwelty@averillpark.net> wrote:
> it doesn't necessarily need logins, but it at least needs some sort of
> robot protection. link spammers aren't manually putting in links, they
> are writing perl scripts that run around adding links to vulnerable
> bb systems and blogs.

User notes are infrequently made...one of those distorted image
anti-text-readers would work (the official name escapes me at the
moment) along side the normal restrictions (IP based, throttling,
etc). I think the benefits outweigh the BS.

Sam

On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 01:44:54AM -0500, Sam Michaels wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 17:32:18 +0000, Yann Golanski <yann@kierun.org> wrote:
> > I suggested that instead of using some XHTML+CSS pages we could just
> > use Moinmoin (the wiki) with a set of access control lists to only
> > allow editions of pages outside the FAQ to a specific group of users.
> I disagree. A site like php.net or mysql.com with user comments is
> more appropriate and less prone to vandalism. I sent a suggestion and
> made an offer to Nigel about 2 years ago but never heard back :(

I'd just like to say that when I had to do some PHP for work, I found that
for the most part the user comments were worse than useless - mainly due to
the users posting the comments not having understood the thing they were
commenting on correctly. This meant that at best they were ignoreable, at
worst, confusing. I, personally, don't think user additions have any place
in technical documentation, especially not if it can stay at the very high
standard that Phil has set.

Cheers

MBM

--
Matthew Byng-Maddick <mbm@colondot.net> http://colondot.net/
(Please use this address to reply)

On Fri, 2005-02-25 at 01:44 -0500, Sam Michaels wrote:
> I disagree. A site like php.net or mysql.com with user comments is
> more appropriate and less prone to vandalism. I sent a suggestion and
> made an offer to Nigel about 2 years ago but never heard back :(

OK, if I managed to mislay or overlook an offer you have my sincere
apologies (this should be partially overcome by moving to a BTS - my
exim mailbox gets tons of junk and I can overlook the occaisional gem.

> Another big issue I see are the mirrors. They're all over the place
> as it is...and now you have to deal with getting them the database.

Someone has been working on this. We have a good mirror monitoring
setup (which includes documenting them) on his site. We will be moving
it to the exim.org machines this week or so.

How we handle the web site primarily depends on the mirrors. If we have
a requirement for web site mirrors then that limits what we can do with
the site. Specifically if we are going to mirror the site then the site
is limited to:-
* Pure (X)HTML/CSS
* No server side scripting (PHP or otherwise)
* No database or similar

Our mirroring is done by rsync and cannot assume anything other than
basic web server functionality.

There is a question of whether we need the mirrors. Personally I think
that mirroring the documentation is useful, but the basic website
probably does not need to be mirrored. However in practical terms what
I think might be easier to attain would be a 3 section website:-
* Front page (ie www.exim.org/index.html) - static (but maybe
regenerated from dynamic state daily), mirrored. The front page
actually could be different on mirrors and the master site - on
the mirrors it would be a jump off point.
* Documentation - static, mirrored
* Main site.

I could be convinced to go the wiki route for everything, or a CMS, as
long as the documentation can be mirrored.

Spam protection for wikis is not too bad now - as long as you have
proper rollback and some anti-spam features. The one on the exim site
has a (mainly) URL based blacklist that is mirrored from the main Moin
site. That works pretty well - its had a couple of defacements, but in
each case those normally last a very short time.

Nigel.
--
[ Nigel Metheringham Nigel.Metheringham@InTechnology.co.uk ]
[. - Comments in this message are my own and not ITO opinion/policy - ]