FirmSecurity

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FirmSecurity is somewhere between HardSecurity and SoftSecurity.

Discussion

A brief idea is to limit the AnonymousUser? to small changes until they gain community acceptance. -- PatrickAnderson

How do you recognize the users who gained the acceptance of community? You need to introduce explicit logins (which can be stolen) and some mechanism or process for approving the users, which can be gamed against and exploited and requires additional attention and work from the community members. And what do you really get for that that SoftSecurity doesn't already provide? -- RadomirDopieralski

I sometimes think of this in terms of trying to share physical resources in a 'communal' or 'community' way.

Some of your points are true, and very well discussed already, but I wonder about the "can be stolen" idea. Do you avoid using locks on your house or car because the keys might be stolen?

Let's say we tried to make a sort of "community center" where people could come to use the facilities for their own enjoyment. There might be big-screen TV, a pizza oven, a popcorn maker, some computer terminals, a extra-large washing machine, a welder, automotive repair tools, etc.

Assuming we want as many people to participate as possible, we would want to make the situation 'open' or 'free' (as in Freedom) which seems similar in intent with SoftSecurity. I read once that RichardStallman disliked physical locks on doors and the computer login passwords when working/living at the MIT AI lab, and would subvert them in various ways.

That is all fine and dandy until some jackass comes in when nobody is around and starts smashing things. Or, in the case of a wiki, begins causing trouble that can be 'reverted', but is still annoying - such as turning furniture over or shutting off the computers etc.

With that in mind, I wonder if SoftSecurity is really sufficient, or if we might want just a little more. -- PatrickAnderson

Oh no, locks have value. And HardSecurity is useful too, in many, many use cases. Just not everywhere. Most people have locks on the front door of their apartments (in Poland it's required by law), although usually home locks are trivial to pick and people leave a spare key under the pot anyways, so it's mostly a social cue. But it makes less sense to lock every door in your home, or to lock the public spaces like playgrounds and hand keys to all children from the neighborhood. This wiki is a public space. The vandals will leave eventually. You can give them entertainment and clean things up while they keep breaking them, which will make them stay longer, or you can just clean up when they leave, both methods work, because a wiki is a "constant work in progress" anyways and it doesn't have to be clean and tidy at all times. -- RadomirDopieralski

Interestingly enough, the attacks of JohnPhilip made the community more friendly and coherent and additionally gave us the chance to read and restore pages, we had missed otherwise. -- FridemarPache

It's a good feeling if you know that you have HardSecurity as a last resort. Then it is nice to use SoftSecurity as a more humane way, as long as you can stand it. It's not good if the system forces you to rely on SoftSecurity. BTW I miss at MeatBall the complete archive that ProWiki offers. -- HelmutLeitner

Helmut, that's right. Therefore MeatballServer needs a provider with more storage. However, I don't know if the Meatball WikiEngine supports a complete backup history as ProWiki. -- FridemarPache

As far as I know you just need to set the "expiration date" to some very larg value, like 1000 years or so. But there are reasons to not do that other than storage limits: ForgiveAndForget. I have used both kinds of wikis, those with complete history and those that can forget about old conflicts, and I must admit I appreciate the latter and that they make me much less nervous when editing -- I know that my mistakes and slip ups won't live forever, at least if someone notices and corrects them. -- RadomirDopieralski

Hey Radomir, this is a good point. Forgiving is a core value. The early Christians certainly forgave Paulus, without forgetting, that he was a Saulus before that. On the contrary, they all (including Paulus) were proud about that transformation. We all are permanently in a "Saulus Paulus Transformation" (hopefully) ;-) -- FridemarPache