Current wiki access status

[Alan Pope]

Hi Paul,

This is not a permanent solution. The ultimate goal is to move away
from Moin, probably to MediaWiki. However, we are where we are right
now, as that migration won't happen this week.

On 21 June 2016 at 16:54, Paul White <paulw2u at ubuntu.com> wrote:

> I've seen suggestions that we shouldn't post too widely any revised
> requirements to posting to the wikis. I disagree. We should any
> requirements widely but have *bullet-proof* procedures for allowing
> edits. rights.
>

With respect, you weren't the one getting hundreds of requests, and
personal mails and pings on IRC from people *begging* to be allowed
access to the "ubabto wiki".

It's not so much having procedures. The procedure is simply to make
sure the applicant is a real Ubuntu contributor. As I said before I'm
not going to publicly outline all the ways in which people fail that
test. Simply because real bad actors will do whatever they can to
circumvent them. Don't let anyone believe that these are bots, they
are not, at all. They are real people who are being paid to put
content on our wiki (just like other wikis) and if we make it really
clear all over the place that you just have to "join this team to put
your spam on the wiki" then people will, in huge numbers.

We don't want that again, because that's exactly what we had with the
etherpad team. It is relatively easy to spot "real" contributors, but
when you're flooded with hundreds of bad ones with a good one in the
middle, it's a somewhat thankless task.

Can we not just inform leaders in our community, and have it as their
responsibility to pass on the awesome news about the launchpad team.
I'd be happy to have a hangout sometime soon where we can discuss this
rather than keep bouncing mails back and forth?

Again, this is not a permanent solution, merely a workaround to get
people able to edit the wiki, and bad people not to, in the short
term.

Thanks,
-- 
Alan Pope
Community Manager

Canonical - Ubuntu Engineering and Services
+44 (0) 7973 620 164
alan.pope at canonical.com
http://ubuntu.com/