MediaWiki instead of Trac Wiki?

[Chris Shoemaker]

On Wed, Nov 30, 2005 at 02:38:46PM -0500, Derek Atkins wrote:
> >Now a question unrelated to my main point...
> >
> >Assuming no account is needed to *read* content, what possible
> >incentive is there to create an account that has no edit privilege?
> >It lets me read under my own username?  Is it a dirty trick?
> 
> The incentive is that you need an account in order to edit content.
> It's just a question of the delay between creating the account and
> being able to edit content.

Ah, so a user knows before he signs up for the account that he won't
be able to do anything with the new account that he couldn't do with
no account... unless and until someone flips the bit on his account?
I predict that user participation will be *very* strongly correlated
with their expectation that they will certainly and promptly receive
write access.

> >Unless I misunderstand, this just won't work.
> 
> Why do you say that?  It just wont work unless the delay is zero?

I thought Josh was describing something effectively different from
manual account creation.  I think I misunderstood.

> Why do you believe that to be true?  Isn't that as much an assumption
> as the level of wiki-spam that you're arguing so vociferously about?

Well, I wasn't suggesting that such a scheme would result in any
particular amount of wiki-spam, only that a very high expectation of
being able to edit content is the only motivation I can think of for
requesting an account.

As for the effect that time-delaying the write-bit would have on
wiki-spam, I have no idea what to expect.  I've never heard of that
technique.  Is it intended to deter human vandals or wiki spam-bots?

BTW, I'm much more confident of my (and others) ability to predict the
effect of restrictions on benevolent users than I am of my (and
others) ability to predict the effect of those same restrictions on
the level of wiki-spam.  Something about me being a friendly human
probably...

-chris