Notes from the wiki BoF at DebConf

[Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com>]

Hi folks,

Here's my (slightly cleaned up) notes from the BoF. Slightly delayed
and probably not complete, sorry... :-(

 * spam:

   + suggesting to add recaptcha at user creation time
     It's far too easy to add accounts for spamming, so we're going to
     limit that. Broad agreement in the room that this is a reasonable
     step, but we don't want to go any further with captchas (e.g. on
     page save), that'll be too intrusive. Sledge is working on this
     now, adding recaptcha support into moin.

   + pattern matching for bad URLs etc.
   + wikipedia blacklist?
   + page protection etc.?
     all possible, but need investigating

 * slowness:
   + the wiki is sometimes very slow at saving. Not clear why. Need to
     investigate what's going on. Not believed to be HW related, as
     the system is idle otherwise.

 * features:
   + nothing new suggested, pabs had some ideas

 * merge wiki.d.o and wiki.dc.org?
   + change of sw for one side, no agreement so far...
   + to be discussed at the debian/debconf bof later
     General feeling that we should merge the two wikis, reduce admin
     time and spread the load for spam killing etc. No real
     disagreement, but will lead to a lot of work switching wiki
     syntax. Volunteers?

 * switch to ikiwki:
   + useability issues suggested by some people
   + most seem happy enough with moin? no great push for a change to a
     new backend, certainly not enough to justify the work involved.

 * more people needed:
   + As always - we could do with more volunteers for admin etc.
   + Licensing issues still an issue, but nobody has found the time
     and motivation to do much about it.

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.                                steve@einval.com
"This dress doesn't reverse." -- Alden Spiess