[Black Cadillacs] Code genius needed

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi,

Are you really smart with web stuff?

Can you build me something that will:
- let people post content (sort of like a 'blog or a wiki)
- let other people drop by and edit that content (yeah, I know, still a wiki), but with a limit to how much they can change?
- do this in a way that all your code is doing is handling the input/editing/storage of the content, not is appearance
- be easily maintainable by me, who's ok with HTML but doesn't grok stuff beyond CSS, and certainly not anything database-ey.

Do you want to get paid in small amounts of money, cool hand-made objects and/or beer?

If so, please email me: darcy attasign achtung-spiel dotta com 

Let's handle questions re:specifics here in this thread, because I've undoubtedly not explained this at all well.

Thanks,
Darcy

[lachek]

Hi Darcy,

Did you get this stuff done already?

I'm not a code genius, but I thought I'd make a suggestion: would a MediaWiki with an approval workflow work for your purposes?

* Someone posts a new content item - you get an email and you say "yes" or "no" or edit it yourself to meet guidelines and then say "yes"
* Someone makes a change to a content item - you get an email and say "yes" or "no" as per above in order to make the changed version the new public version
* You can make your own MediaWiki skin to handle presentation, I hear it's not rocket science if you know your way around a css file

What say you?

Mikael

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi Mikael,

Thanks!  These are exactly the sort of questions I was hoping to get.

One of the core principles guiding this project is that the only editorial authority is exercised by the contributor.  I can't have a hand in things, other than to weed out obvious spam and illegal content.

Here's a for instance.

Let's say there's an existing bit in the archive:

"We rolled into town, behind enemy lines, at 40per.  I'd was supposed to be in the lead.  Intelligence never told us about the statue in the town square, but Carlile found out -- head first."

I want people to be able to drop in and maybe change that to:

"We rolled into town, behind enemy lines, at 40per.  I was in the lead.  Intelligence never told us about the statue in the town square, but I found out -- head first."


I need a platform that allows this editing capability, while restricting its breadth and frequency.

Can MediaWiki be hacked sufficiently to permit this?

Thanks,
Darcy

[lachek]

Can MediaWiki be hacked to permit this? Yes. The question is what "this" is.

When you say "breadth and frequency", can we quantify that to "at most 10% of the characters can be changed, at most once every 24 hours"? Or something similar?

And if so, are you okay with someone taking "We rolled into town, behind enemy lines, at 40per.  I was in the lead.  Intelligence never told us about the statue in the town square, but I found out -- head first." and changing it to "we rolled into teh town behind enemy lines at 40.  i was the leadre.  intelligence nevar told us about the statue in the townsquare but I found out with my head!"? And then nobody can change it again for 24 hours?

What about someone changing it to "The VCs rolled into town, behind enemy lines, at 40per.  Ino was in the lead.  Intelligence never told us about the turret in the town square, but I found out -- head first.", totally replacing the original meaning?

Sorry for playing devil's advocate, just trying to help with ironing out the actual specifications compared to the perceived requirements. As I'm trying to illustrate above, I'd hazard against trying to restrict the "wiki effect" - when you get a good number of users and a community forming, the wiki effect can provide incredible amounts of self-correction.

Or is there perhaps another aspect of your requirements I'm not catching on to?

Mikael