> To avoid this, someone at some point has to step in and clean things up.
> It's true that we can't have just new content, and that we need people
> to make specific efforts at editting.
>
> However, do we need to have formal mechanisms for deciding who is
> allowed to edit things?  Moreover, do we need any particular software
> support?  In my opinion we do not.  We haven't had any incidents of
> people messing up the Squeak Swiki.  Likewise, I'm not aware of *any*
> Wiki that's been vandalized.  I'm sure it happens occasionally, but it
> seems to be rare.
>
>
> Overall, to put it in a nutshell, let's focus on encouraging more people
> to edit, and not worry so much about forcing unordained people *not* to
> edit.

I agree that people should be encouraged to edit.  And, I'm not suggesting
any sort of elitism with regard to whom is allowed to edit and who is not.
I think the current separation of the Swiki and squeak.org is good.  I don't
think squeak.org should be opened up like a Swiki (and I'd love to hear
contrary opinions about this, if any).  And, I think we're talking about a
"front page/public face" sort of thing for the Squeak community, which
should naturally be squeak.org.

With regard to vandalism, I'm aware of quite a few cases...in one extreme
example, a not-so-gentleman (or woman) wiped out many of the pages on
echostar.swiki.net...in fact, John B. detected it while it was happening and
proceeded to start locking down pages as fast as he could.  It happened to
be someone, who for whatever reason, disliked the Dish Network.  While we
did recover everything without any problems, it was a hassle, and took up
much time, and forced us to seek criminal charges against this individual
and pull account records from his ISP.  It was not pleasant and I could
certainly forsee similar things happening with Squeak.org in the future
(just look at the kind of non-sense that happens on comp.lang.smalltalk).

Now, echostar.swiki.net is completely locked down, which is very
unfortunate, and the primary motivation for enabling Swikis where
contributors must first seek the approval of the Swiki moderator(s).

- Stephen