The Butt Ugly Weblog

Yeah. This is the main reason I've always been a bit dubious about the "open wiki works", and have put authentication on the "must have" list for any wiki I install. As long as nobody uses a tool there aren't any problems, but the moment the tool becomes a success it also starts attracting Net scum. Damned if you do, damned if you don't - since every tool wants to become a success.

I really don't see myself running a totally open and anonymous wiki at any point, at a minimum I'd want to have people log in as some sort of "anonymous user" to foil automated bots. It's a bit of a bother, but hey, if a person can't be bothered to go via one login screen he/she probably didn't have anything important to contribute anyway.

--Orava, 12-May-2004

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Well, Wikis have worked fine for about ten years or so... So I wouldn't still write them off.

The problem is that Wikis work partly because of the extremely low publishing threshold. You can just change a page, no worries. Just leave your mark and go. Any registration, however simple, will reduce the usability of a public Wiki. Obviously, for intranets this hardly matters, since they are protected by a firewall anyway.

--JanneJalkanen, 12-May-2004

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It's a tough call. Schucker.org is protected to keep the casual edit-scum out. I give user/passwords to anyone that wants them, but there have been very few asking in the last year.

I hit recent changes on JSPWiki about once a day to see what is new and to clean the mess the edit-scum have left. It looks like there are a number of us that do that.

In the States we have groups that go out and pick up trash along the highways as a public service, it's a shame that we can't just teach people to not throw the trash in the first place. Wiki is the same, it would be nice if we could teach people to be nice.

It's nice that you are important, it's more important that you are nice. Old family saying

--Foster , 12-May-2004

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Absolutely. And I am very grateful to everyone who goes around jspwiki.org and cleans up the trash. I don't thank you as often as I should.

And I completely agree on the family saying. I think I'll adopt it, if I may.

--JanneJalkanen, 12-May-2004

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The Docbook Wiki was recently hit by a spammer using a bot and anonymizing proxies to spam every page on a regular basis. They ended up creating a login system where you can only edit pages after being added to this page by an existing user:

http://wiki.docbook.org/topic/UserGroup

--Matt Brubeck, 13-May-2004

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