[Theforum] Re: An Idea ...

[Warden, Matt]

Michele asked:
>I'm curious, and you've probably outlined this before .. but could you
>refresh my memory on what kind of CMS changes you are thinking
>about?  Does this relate to my asking if we can add a feature that
>prevents two users from editting the same article?  

Not really, but that would help things.

>Not that I doubt ya,
>just trying to get a handle on what can be done with the CMS which will
>easily allow for rolling back a transaction, if that is indeed what you
>mean.  

Yeah, that's pretty much what i mean.

>General explanation good enough, I'm not asking for a complete
>technical assessment.  ;)

General explanation? All submissions and changes to those submissions are
archived.

Not enough, eh?

Well, there are a lot of ways to do this. Let me give my easiest/quickest
idea:

We set up a list at thearticlearchive at lists.evolt.org. No one's subscribed
(unless it has to have at least one person subbed to exist). It's sole
purpose is to archive in its list archive.

Every time we get a submission, we send an email, similar to the one sent
to admin, with *all* the article's data.

Every time we edit a submission, same thing. Each change is archived.

Joe Newbie messes up? Someone goes into thearticlearchive's archives,
copies the last article version, pastes it into the article edit screen.

Joe Haxor deletes the contents of an article? Someone goes into
thearticlesarchive's archives, copies the last article version, pastes it
into the article edit screen.

There could also be a godmin feature to lock an article from edits by
anyone except the article's author. That would protect old articles
which don't have archived versions (we could run some update sql to set
all old articles to this status) and new articles which are being messed
with too much (like an anti-MS article which keeps getting deleted by MS
employees that somehow get priv=3  ;-).

Like I said, these are just ideas -- the simplest and easiest-to-implement 
of the them.

If we want to get into debate of the actual implemantation, this might
need to be moved to thesite.

Helps?


--
mattwarden
mattwarden.com