Online Content Editing

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Editing Philosophy (WIP)

For now, users must be registered with Metadcademy to contribute content. We might relax this constraint in the future (a la a Wikipedia philosophy) once we have better spam prevention methods in place.

Roadmaps

• Registered users can create roadmaps
• Registered users can edit roadmaps where they are on the editors list
  • CJR: I think we should open up roadmap edits to all registered users. We have version control, let's use it =). We can readdress if spam/vandalism becomes a serious problem.
  • RBG: It should definitely be an option to make a roadmap editable by everybody. I think we still want the option of limiting the editors, though: if a roadmap has your name attached to it, you take a certain amount of responsibility for what's there, and you might not want random people editing it in your name.
  • CJR: Good point. We can make global editing an option for now.

Concepts

Forewarning: editing concepts is tricky since changes to the graph structure (e.g. prerequisites) can propagate throughout the entire graph.

A first-pass proposal

This is an initial proposal that should give us an opportunity to test graph creation and integration on the server. It is more conservative than I (CJR) think would be optimal in the long run.

• Registered users can create new graphs and concepts, which are marked as "provisional" until a moderator approves them. Once approved, they are shown on the main Metacademy site. During the approval process, each concept is assigned an url tag.

• Registered users can alter any provisional concepts, even if they are not the creator

• For now, non-provisional concepts can be edited by moderators and the original creators.

  • RBG: do we actually want the creator of a concept to have a special role? If I happen to be the first person to add a "public key cryptography" node, why should that give me special permissions for all time?
  • CJR: For the first pass, I imagine that the creator of the concept will be the most likely non-mod to make changes. Other options include: (1) all registered users, (2) all users that edited the concept while it was in its provisional stage

• Mods can remove content

A second-pass proposal

• Unregistered users can create new concepts and edit provisional concepts without any approval process (we'll have to implement some spam prevention mechanisms). Unregistered users can propose changes to non-provisional concepts, which must be approved by a mod or the original creator.

• Registered users can create new concepts and edit both provisional and non-provisional existing concepts (except they cannot add/remove prereqs on non-provis concepts) without any type of approval process. Permission to add/remove non-provis prereqs will be granted after a certain reputation is achieved.

  • RBG: seems like we would need a very substantial contributor base before a reputation system makes sense
  • Not necessarily. A reputation system is one type of 'incentive scheme' we can experiment with during the early stages of user contribution. e.g. taking a StackOverflow approach, one facet of a reputation system would be to grant various editing capabilities at higher reputation levels.

• Content removal (e.g. deleting approved concepts) can be done by mods or a community vote. Concepts are never actually removed from the database, but rather, we'll use a "deleted" flag to allow easy changes