Tom,
I am sure we are going to get some flak for this but I am 110% with you.

If we had to switch to an alternate wiki engine (not that I want to, I kinda 
like this OpenWiki tool), what options do we have?  Do you own your own 
server?  Can you install arbitrary packages?

Neil

"Tom Galvin" <tom### [at] impnospamorg> wrote in message 
news:42092160$1@news.povray.org...
> ingo wrote:
>> Loggin in with the current wikiware does not seem to be possible, it's a 
>> rather old and unsopported version. Development was stopped in 2002, but 
>> in 2004 somebody picked it up again. The current versions options can be 
>> found at http://www.openwiki.info/ow.asp?OpenwikiVersusOpenwiki2004 It 
>> seems to have some spam plug-in.
>> Another wikiware, loaded with features is MoinMoin.
>>
>> Ingo
>
> I have added a password to the edit feature.  It is "povray".  This should 
> cut down on a good bit of the spam, until the next version of OpenWiki 
> reaches a stable release.

Post a reply to this message

Neil Kolban wrote:
> 
> If we had to switch to an alternate wiki engine (not that I want to, I kinda 
> like this OpenWiki tool), 

Me too, but I am not wedded to it.


>what options do we have?  

Like what?


>Do you own your own server? 
Yes

> Can you install arbitrary packages?
> 
Yes

Post a reply to this message

Tom,
Assuming that OpenWiki can not be secured (I don't know that to be true or 
not), what alternate Wiki software products *could* be securable?  Let us 
not exclude a package just because it is fee and not free... if needed, we 
can have a "whip around" and maybe get enough to pay for the service.

Neil

"Tom Galvin" <tom### [at] impnospamorg> wrote in message 
news:420b5c5c$1@news.povray.org...
> Neil Kolban wrote:
>>
>> If we had to switch to an alternate wiki engine (not that I want to, I 
>> kinda like this OpenWiki tool),
>
> Me too, but I am not wedded to it.
>
>
>>what options do we have?
>
> Like what?
>
>
>>Do you own your own server?
> Yes
>
>> Can you install arbitrary packages?
>>
> Yes

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 20:10:08 -0600, Neil Kolban wrote:

> what alternate Wiki software products *could* be securable?

Mediawiki looks to me like it's potentially securable - at a minimum, it
can require authentication to make any changes at all.

It's the software used by Wikipedia and other projects like that - seems
pretty decent.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Thanks Jim, that does indeed look promising.

Tom,
Are you able to host a "Unix" based Wiki?

Neil

"Jim Henderson" <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote in message 
news:pan### [at] nospamcom...
> On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 20:10:08 -0600, Neil Kolban wrote:
>
>> what alternate Wiki software products *could* be securable?
>
> Mediawiki looks to me like it's potentially securable - at a minimum, it
> can require authentication to make any changes at all.
>
> It's the software used by Wikipedia and other projects like that - seems
> pretty decent.
>
> Jim
>

Post a reply to this message

Glad to be able to provide a contribution. :-)

For what it's worth as well, if running on Windows is a requirement,
there's a page at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Running_MediaWiki_on_Windows that describes
how to set it up.  MySQL has to be used for the database, but there are
Windows versions of that package; it can also use either Apache or IIS and
requires PHP support.

There are a few other requirements, but I've found in my look at it
(installed on Linux to play around with) that the documentation is quite
good - and of course provided in a Wiki format itself. :-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Tom Galvin wrote:
> I have added a password to the edit feature.  It is "povray".  This 
> should cut down on a good bit of the spam, until the next version of 
> OpenWiki reaches a stable release.

The password is a good idea, however, right on the home page you tell 
what it is:  "...There is a password to edit this wiki, in order to keep 
the spam down. It is the name of this raytracer without the hyphen in 
all lowercase letters..."

Kinda defeats the purpose of using a password, doesn't it?

I don't have any realistic suggestions on how one could be distributed 
either.  Giving it out here in the newsgroups is okay, but also rather 
limiting.  I certainly would never suggest that the use of the Wiki 
should be limited to *only* those who peruse these groups.

Just my (not very helpful) thoughts...

       -=- Larry -=-

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Larry Hudson wrote:
> Tom Galvin wrote:
> 
>> I have added a password to the edit feature.  It is "povray".  This 
>> should cut down on a good bit of the spam, until the next version of 
>> OpenWiki reaches a stable release.
> 
> 
> The password is a good idea, however, right on the home page you tell 
> what it is:  "...There is a password to edit this wiki, in order to keep 
> the spam down. It is the name of this raytracer without the hyphen in 
> all lowercase letters..."
> 
> Kinda defeats the purpose of using a password, doesn't it?

It does defeat the scripts.

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 08:18:56 +0100, Maurice wrote:

> It does defeat the scripts.

Arguably only until someone figures out how to script the authentication. 
Having a username/password combination also doesn't defeat the scripts,
but it does require that an account be created, and an account that's been
created could be disabled.

Password-only solutions tend to be very short term stopgap solutions
because there's only one factor in the authentication mechanism, and
that's easy to spoof.  (This is actually an area I can claim a fair degree
of expertise in)

If someone's figured out how to stuff vandalism into a form, then
presumably they can feed a password string into another form in advance of
the vandalism, and such a move would, by its very nature, be a trivial
modification to the script when the password is something that's
publicly available.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Larry Hudson wrote:

> 
> The password is a good idea, however, right on the home page you tell 
> what it is:  "...There is a password to edit this wiki, in order to keep 
> the spam down. It is the name of this raytracer without the hyphen in 
> all lowercase letters..."
> 
> Kinda defeats the purpose of using a password, doesn't it?
> 

Well it has been a week, and it seems our vandals were not that bright. 
  Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but it seems there has not 
been  any defacing since I made that simple change.  If that is the 
case, then I think I shall adhere to the KISS principle, and leave 
things as they are.

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