[Mailman-Developers] Wiki Migration Update

[Mark Sapiro]

On 07/26/2013 12:59 PM, Barry Warsaw wrote:
> On Jul 19, 2013, at 01:15 AM, Paul Boddie wrote:
> 
>> Once again, I've had some time to push the wiki migration along. As always, 
>> the results can be found here:
>>
>> http://mmwiki.boddie.org.uk/
>>
>> I've updated the archived content to that of 16th July, so the translated 
>> content should reflect the existing wiki fairly accurately.
> 
> Thanks very much for continuing to work on this Paul.  I think it's looking
> great and I'd love to start coming up with a plan to migrate officially.
> Input from top wiki editors is key, so perhaps Mark, Terri, Steve and others
> can chime in.


Yes, thank you Paul. I too think it looks really good.


> I can tell you though that my motivation to garden the current
> wiki is pretty low, and I think I'd be more motivated to clean it up after the
> Moin migration.  If the other wiki editors feel the same way, then we should
> seize the opportunity to get the migration started.


+1


> What features are missing from Moin that would prevent us from migrating, or
> make it more painful than staying with Confluence for now?


I think we can do alright with a switch. I support a Moin wiki for my
bike club, and I think we'll be OK. I have a bit to add below.


>> But the solution above may be good enough: it just creates an account for
>> each existing user and employs the same username, full name (or alias) and
>> e-mail address, and sets a random password. It also obtains the URL of any
>> profile picture, with these user details obtained by scraping the home page
>> of each user on the existing wiki. How people then log into their accounts is
>> something we can decide: e-mailing the random password is not exactly secure,
>> but they could reset their account in the MoinMoin interface instead (which
>> involves a reset e-mail that isn't too secure either, but it's the slightly
>> better choice).


The reset email shouldn't be a big issue if the user is prepared to
receive and act on it. The reset token is only valid during the window
from when it is sent to when it is used.


> I'm happy with just asking everyone to reset their password.  We can't do it
> on the demo site because email is disabled currently.
> 
> What can we do about setting up the ACLs for editing?  I'm happy if we start
> by enabling a small group to start with and having folks who want to edit
> pages re-request enabling their editing permissions.


It's fairly simple to add ACLs to pages that give one or more groups
various access rights. Groups are just wiki pages with a list of the
login names of the members of that group and so are administered by the
members of the group that can modify that page.

I think we can deal with that by making a small 'admin' group and then
having people at large request permission (i.e. addition to the larger
'authors' group as they do now.

There is an issue on my own Moin wiki in that people who are logged in
but not members of any group can create and edit pages which don't have
ACLs. At one point I was discovered by wiki spammers. I 'fixed' that by
using Moin's textcha facility to effectively require a password to
create an account. It could be solved more readily by not giving 'Known'
users default (or any) write access.


>> One thing we also discussed were the redirects that occur for "tiny URLs" and 
>> where page identifiers are employed. For example:
>>
>> http://mmwiki.boddie.org.uk/x/AgA3
>> http://mmwiki.boddie.org.uk/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=3604482
>>
>> A mapping of page identifiers is extracted from the exported data, and this 
>> mapping is used to support a simple redirection script that looks up the 
>> appropriate page name and redirects to that page. One thing it does not yet 
>> do is to redirect to a specific revision, however.
> 
> I think that's fine.  I don't mind if redirects to anything other than the
> latest revision is enabled.  Mark might disagree.


I do not disagree. I see no need to redirect those URLs to other than
the current page.


> I guess we won't be able to use tiny urls after the migration though, right?


I think that's right, and it's unfortunate, but I can live with it (or
implement a tiny url feature for Moin).


>> I always provide a list of things that still need doing, so here are some 
>> familiar items:
>>
>> The way comments are presented on pages still needs improving. I may write a 
>> macro to include the comment pages in a nicer way and maybe even to allow new 
>> comments to be added. Meanwhile, the comment pages should now only be 
>> editable by their original authors (by applying ACLs).
>>
>> It might also be nice to have a list of attachments on pages that have them, 
>> and I will take a look to see how Confluence tends to present such things.
>>
>> User home pages should probably be populated and have things like profile 
>> images (if provided), activity indicators, and maybe the dashboard 
>> functionality should be emulated, too.
> 
> Would this work be better tackled before an official migration or can some of
> these things be done after the fact?


I think after the fact, at least for the home page stuff, is fine.


>> I hope this is of interest!
> 
> It *is*, very much so.  Thanks again!


Yes, absolutely +1

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan