Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

["Michael D. Thomas" <mdthomas AT mindspring.com>]

> Concerning (2) below:
> To be more specific: I'm paranoid, and what I meant was that having
> "Promote this email" links embedded in a public archive has the
potential
> for abuse.  The potential is very low, I concede, being housed at
ibiblio
> and being the INW discussion list; but the potential is there.

Excellent point! 

I think the question here is: who do we allow to be editors? Who do we
allow to promote emails to the web site? Is there anything wrong with
Dirk Dufus being an editor?

First, who are editors? One way to define this is to say that anyone --
including Dirk Dufus and his cousin -- can be an editor and can promote
emails. Since they need the author's permission anyway, the worst they
can do is suggest that something be published. The worst Dirk Dufus can
do is pay some INW list member a compliment. Unless Dirk Dufus's love
becomes too much for us, we may not have to worry about it.

This route is also easiest to implement -- I'm noticing that the easiest
implementations for this system are latitudinarian, inclusive and
Wiki-esque, just like this choice.

However, if we want this to be a big-time system, we can expect that
future users of the software will want to restrict who can be editors.
For such situations, I think you make editors register beforehand. Then,
when they click the link they have to enter a user id and password. (If
you develop the system right, you tie each piece of functionality to a
named privilege. Then you can flip authentication on for any piece of
functionality by changing a setting in a configuration file.)

But if you make the functionality hard or costly to use, then it will be
used less. Is setting a password going to be too much work for INW
editors? Will Dirk Dufus promote a bunch of rotten emails to our site?
Burning questions of our times...

Cheers!

> Hypothetical situation:
> Dirk Dufus stumbles across the archives one day.  While browsing this
> newfound curiosity he discovers that a link exists allowing him to
> "promote" the messages.  He has no idea what this means, but he clicks
on
> the link anyway.  Maybe Dirk is stupid, or maybe Dirk is an ass, but
> either way he proceeds to promote dozens of messages....
> 
> Do we care?  Is the risk low enough for the hassle of having to fix it
> even once?  Do we even perhaps *want* Dirk Dufus or his smarter cousin
> (who really would like to see Michael's email as an article) to have
the
> ability to promote messages?
> 
> -Alan