[Web4lib] Access Control: Wiki vs. CMS

[Keith D. Engwall]

I can only speak for myself.

I'm not trying to put up a wiki for its own sake.  I'm trying to create a staff intranet for policies, procedures, and other material not meant for public consumption.  I just happen to be using a wiki as the tool
to do that.  In that context, access control is very appropriate.

In fact, I think it's only natural for libraries to start with an internal wiki until they comfortable with them.  Part of the goal of our internal wiki is to train the staff so that later we can have one (or more) public wikis.

The notion that wiki's imply open access is based on the assumption that wiki's are only good for completely open collaboration, and that's just not true.  A wiki is a tool, and has applications in many contexts... some of those contexts happen to require varying degrees of access control.

A nice in-between example is a library building project.  It's a great idea to put information about a building project on a wiki.  It's persistent (these projects can take years), searchable, and you want to solicit feedback and discussion.  However, it's a really *bad* idea to leave the content of the library building plan open for editing.  Thus, some access control is needed.

Also, part of the reason you keep hearing about wikis and access control is that setting up a wiki *without* access control is pretty darn easy and doesn't require asking questions on web4lib. *grin*

Keith Engwall
Head of Library Systems and Technology
Catawba College Library
kengwall at catawba.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org [mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] 
Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2006 4:28 PM
To: web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: [Web4lib] Access Control: Wiki vs. CMS

I am repeatedly impressed by how often, when librarians consider wikis, their first thought seems to be of access control.  The idea of "just anybody being able to edit our Web pages" seems somehow innately abhorrent.  It leads me to wonder if they "get" the very idea of a wiki. 
The first wiki (The Portland Pattern Repository Wiki
<http://c2.com/cgi/wiki>) has always allowed anyone to edit any page and is a very successful project.  There are many others, Wikipedia not least among them.

Access control is part of the definition of a Content Management System, which comes to the Web via the corporate world.  A Wiki is a different beast entirely.

Chris Gray
Systems Analyst
University of Waterloo Library

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