On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 20:20:14 -0500, Lex Spoon <lex at cc.gatech.edu> wrote:

> So, I dislike basing editing privilage on your programming prowess.
>
Personally, I don't see SqP 'ranks' as programming prowess indicators, but  
that's of course for everyone to interpret ;).

I do like the scheme you propose for the wiki. At least worth a shot.

> There are a lot of schemes that are tempting due to security by
> obscurity -- for example, requiring that people have registered on
> SqueakPeople is already going to shut down gazillions of bots that just
> won't bother -- but security by obscurity bugs me.

Well, security and openness are in direct conflict, of course. So you have  
to resort to patchwork in any case. I'm completely with you about SbyO,  
but this is more a case of hardening an open system against vandalism, not  
quite unlike how parkbenches and other 'public furniture' is hardened.

The nice thing about ranking systems is that you move away from a  
completely open community (which, obviously, does not work in these times)  
to something with fuzzy borders. Whether you have to register with SqP or  
a Wiki does not really matter in this case, both schemes are in essence  
similar (personally, whether it's called SqP or SqSource or whatever, I'd  
greatly prefer at least a single sign-on to Squeak community services).

>  Additionally, there
> are a lot of schemes that stop stupid bots, e.g. requiring someone to
> decode a GIF, but those bug me even worse because they just seem to
> breed ever better bots.
>
Yup - algorithms to defeat the GIF trick have already been developed.