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  • From: Heide Hermary <heide.hermary AT gaiacollege.ca>
  • To: Permaculture Information Web <piw AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [piw] Re: [pcplantdb] data/security model proposal
  • Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2005 13:00:23 -0800

Sorry, I am not totally clear about this technical stuff, especially with respectto who can enter / change what. Whatever the system, we want to make sure that many people can contribute information under each topic, since we are collecting information that is not currently available in such concentrated form. Plant information is also commonly climate / locality dependent
Heide


Richard Morris wrote:

Chad Knepp wrote:

Hello everyone,

I have a new topic for discussion which is the data model (and its
security implications) for piw. Most of this I've discussed at
various times in smaller portions but here it is all together.

The basic points:

o All data in the dataset is owned by a user/author.
o Users/authors can add/edit/delete objects.
The "PFAF/Ken Fern" elements will not be
editable unless some designated representative of PFAF desires to
do so.


> I'm inclined to discourage write access to the PFAF/Ken Fern account

(see security implications).

I'd agree here.

I would allow a duplication and then edit.
I.e. someone wants to change the pfaf text. To do that they create
an copy of the pfaf text and add it as their own object. They can then
edit the text at will. If the edits are good then the info
will eventually be modded up until it better than pfaf data.

o Writeable objects will be open to peer review/moderation which
will affect display priority.


o The core part of the plant object will be its botanical name.
This allows attachment of multiple descriptions, synonyms...

o The elements of the current plant report that are titled Cultural
Notes, Propagation Notes, Known Hazards, Edible Uses, Medicinal
Uses, and Other Uses will become comments by PFAF attached to the
plant object (with a high score)

o Registered user/authors (only) have the ability to moderate.

Security implications:

o Being a decentralized data model, an account compromise can at
worst cause a data loss of the contents of the data of that
specific user/author, and possibly spurious moderation.

Hopefully a backup system can be included at some point so we never loose data.

o Security is less critical with this model which means less than
best practice authentication methods are more acceptable such
as clear text transmission of authentication data.

Anyway, think about it and let me know what y'all think.

Cheers,
Chad

Great stuff. We really need to get this into whever our formal specs
etc. goes.

This model seems to have a stronger idea of ownership than say
wikipedia, where the information is really a common, owned by no
one. When people contribute to wikipedia the do so knowing that the data can and will be changed.

This has advantages that we can aproach authors who are
understandable cautions about their IP and may be more likely to contribute.

It may also make it easier for new people to contribute.
I know from my experience of editing wikipedia is that
its taken six months until I've felt confident enough to edit
a page, it is quite a big responsibility to edit this data.
However adding a comment is something a new user would feel
easier about, less responsibility.

The disadvantage is that we'll end up with
more fragmented data. There won't be the (current) definitive version of
the dataset for a particular plant. Instead there will be
a loose collection of datachunks.

It does, I suspect, solve the locilisation problem.

General feeling is its a bit complicated, but it could well work
and it would be very interesting to see what happens.

Go for it.

Rich

p.s. Seen a great movie of how a wikipedia page changes with time.
Its one of the best things I've seen for understanding how this whole
open content stuff can work and very convincing. Have a look at
Heavy Metal Umlaut the movie
http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/umlaut.html
its well worth the download time.

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