[Zope-PTK] Discussions in PTK

[Michael Bernstein]

Tres Seaver wrote:
> 
> Mike Pelletier wrote:
> >
> >     Where do these objects go?  I would like to keep everything owned by a
> > Member somewhere within their personal space (which is their Member
> > folder).  Whether it's in the folder directly or in some 'Discussions'
> > sub-folder, I'm not sure, but this highlights a general Zope problem.
> > Once users can start creating discussion items, they are much more likely
> > to produce a LOT of objects than they were before.  It is quite difficult
> > for a user to manage a large number of objects in Zope.  I am actually
> > inclined to hide a user's discussion items in the 'My Stuff' interface.
> 
> I don't think this scales -- "replies" need context (which is why I am quoting
> the paragraph you wrote, after all) and don't really stand alone.  I think
> replies should be stored "with" their discussions;  after all, a member who
> wants to "reply" to a discussion with a document or a link can create one, and
> then reference it in a reply.
> 
> In another sense, replies (and even discussions) don't really "belong" to the
> poster, once they are "released" to the community;  they ought to become
> more-or-less permanent parts of the community's lore.  I think the model of a
> non-expiring NNTP server (Jon Udell's book has excellent examples of integrating
> such servers with web and mail) is the right one for most "discussions".  For
> those which are "talkbacks" to a member-owned document, the replies really
> "belong" to that document.

I think that Mike covered these objections rather neatly by stating that
none of these decisions should be hard-wired into the system. Instead,
policy hooks would allow you to move a 'reply' to a common area upon
approval by a reviewer if you wish, or leave them in the users folder
but make sure that they do not have adequate permissions to delete them.

It is useful to remember, though, that some communities (most notably
the WELL) have always had a 'you own your own words' policy, where users
were explicitly given permission to delete their own postings if they so
chose. The PTK should come with certain default policies, certainly, but
everything should be 'instrumented' to allow any conceivable sort of
policy, even those that seem to be completely boneheaded to some.

You never know what sort of bizarre social experiment someone might come
up with, for example like giving your source code away, or something ;)

Michael Bernstein.