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PBwiki 2.0 password?
Where can I find the wiki wide password / invite key of my wiki I just created using the beta version of wiki 2.0?
I’m just kinda lost
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Well, yes, I think eventually, you can expect PBwiki 2.0 to be the only option. However, remember that PBwiki 2.0 isn't going to be a static object, and our plans are being modified to address specifically these concerns.
PBwiki definitely realizes now the importance of something like an invite key to educators, and we're just trying to find out the best way to implement it, while NOT confusing you with two separate login systems.
3 people say
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Inappropriate?by the way I am the admin -
Inappropriate?One of the features of PBwiki Version 2.0 (that we're still working on, this is not final yet, but the current situation) is that we aren't going to use Invite Keys for the time being. But before it becomes the end of the world, let me explain to you, as far as I know it, WHY this is.
We think that businesses would find their wikis least secure if they used invite keys. We think their users should create PBwiki Accounts, so the administrators of the wiki can control who has access to the wiki, and what kind.
We are looking into the best way to make Accounts/Invite Keys work for educators. Many of the teachers using PBwiki teach very young kids, and having them use email addresses might not be the best solution, and while there are workarounds, we may decide that Educational Wikis will have Invite Keys so that users of all ages can work with our wikis, in a way that fits their learning environment. Again, also not set in stone, to be decided.
We also recognize that Individual wikis may have aspects of both the Business and Educational situations. This makes it a rough middle ground. Do we offer two types of Individual wikis, one with Invite keys, one without? Right now, we don't know. Feedback like yours can give us a better idea of what the wiki landscape looks like, but in the meantime, we've disabled wiki Invite keys while we figure out the best solution.
We can't please everyone all the time, but we will try to please as many people as possible. After all, if no one used PBwiki, that would be a pretty big failure for us.
So keep the feedback coming, and know that I'm keeping an eye on this topic.
I’m not sure what's going to happen.
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Inappropriate?I just set up a great education wiki -- but frankly, our school does not provide email addresses for our students that they can access past our ridiculous school district firewall, and the only other email address available is MINE. Consequently, my terrific pbwiki 2.0 on "To Kill a Mockingbird," which took me hours to set up, is now entirely worthless -- since my students cannot sign on.
The ONLY way my students can sign on is with an "invite key." This works well with other programs, such as Nicenet. Without one, my wiki makes a great demonstration project on how to pour your efforts into something futile -- like a lot of promising things in education.
I’m completely irritated and frustrated.
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Inappropriate?This is definitely one of the things we are thinking about as we figure out the best way to deal with Invite Keys.
If it's possible, you could have your students complete the account sign up process from home or a public library computer - to log into the wiki, they don't need to be able to log into their email, they just need to have it registered.
I'm sorry that your school's firewall is so harsh, I think it's pretty ridiculous in this day and age to restrict access to so much of the internet. Have you talked to the people in charge of it for your school, see if they can help you present a case to your district about the necessities of access? I can understand blocking MySpace, but email is used for so much more than parties and lolcats, and many educational resources like journals require you to use an email address to get access (think The Lancet or even most newspapers).
If nothing else, I think many of the other teachers here would be on your side, and might be able to help you convince your district to lighten the controls. Check out http://educators.pbwiki.com for where a lot of our teachers go to exchange information and resources, and who knows? Maybe you'll start a movement :)
I’m grumpy about firewalls.
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Inappropriate?Would this work for the teacher? Could the teacher make up one dummy PBWiki account that all the students could share? Unless each student needs their own, that would allow the students to play around with it (a universal invite key at the writer level, so to speak, but the teacher could still control the architecture of the wiki. Of course, she wouldn't know WHICH student made which edit, and I could see why that could be important in many educational situations. I suppose it would be pretty tedious for the teacher to make separate PBWiki accounts for EACH student. Then again, it's not all that hard...I went ahead and just created an account for my "buddy" Joe Test. And it worked! (Just a wonderment.) I bet you could even use a fake email??? studentname@mrsclarkclass.com? Just even more wonderment???
Aren't wikis fun?!?
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Inappropriate?"If it's possible, you could have your students complete the account sign up process from home or a public library computer"
Our students are mostly impoverished -- almost all receive free meals, and the whole school receives Title I funding -- so they don't have computer access at home; most also are not permitted to go to the local public library own their own because the local environment is just plain unsafe. So no, unfortunately they cannot confirm elsewhere.
"you convince your district to lighten the controls"
Second largest school district in the country, currently cannot pull its act together for other important functions -- like paying the teachers and staff correctly! I'm definitely NOT taking on the IT folks ... I've got my limits!
"Could the teacher make up one dummy PBWiki account that all the students could share?"
This still creates problems with identifying who creates/writes/edits WHAT in the wiki, which is vitally important in a classroom. It is how students get credit for their work (and how "problem posters" are quickly identified and routed). Also, school populations are highly transient, so I would not be able to provide service for the student who simply arrived one day, without adding him in.
The "invite key" has been a great solution for people in email-free zones (like many, if not most, schools). It's been fantastic in ours, because it's an impoverished environment and we simply cannot get the kids INTO the wiki if they require a verifiable email addy. I certainly hope pbwiki finds a way to incorporate this into pbwiki 2.0 -- and I have trouble understanding why it is such a problem with educational wikis.
I’m sad and bewildered that this is a problem for educational wikis
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Inappropriate?I can see one big problem with this situation right off the bat: You can't be logged into the same PBwiki Account from more than one computer. So I'm going to guess no, this would not be a good solution, unless the teacher wants to rotate who is on the wiki, or put one group of students on the wiki at a time.
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Inappropriate?I am so sorry that this is the situation you are teaching in - I think it's awful that people still have to live and raise children in unsafe places, and that the government doesn't do enough to help those people who really need it.
Your feedback and situation will be mentioned next time we discuss the issues concerning Invite Keys in PBwiki 2.0, and I know you're not alone in your feelings on this matter. I am not promising you that all you ask will be done, and the official decision on Invite keys will be announced publicly, probably by David, here and on the blog.
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Inappropriate?May I ask, when it rolls out, will pbwiki 2.0 be the only choice? In other words, will I be unable to revert to pbwiki 1.0 in order to continue using the blogs we've been working on that have invite keys; and/or will I be unable to EVER create a wiki using an invite key -- EVER -- once pbwiki 2.0 is on board?
I’m watching this space, with interest
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Inappropriate?Well, yes, I think eventually, you can expect PBwiki 2.0 to be the only option. However, remember that PBwiki 2.0 isn't going to be a static object, and our plans are being modified to address specifically these concerns.
PBwiki definitely realizes now the importance of something like an invite key to educators, and we're just trying to find out the best way to implement it, while NOT confusing you with two separate login systems.
3 people say
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Inappropriate?No, it won't work -- Normally, all the students in a class are in the computer lab or on laptops from a cart at the same time. This is the case in most schools.
Also, the beauty of wikis is in shared information on a shared format, both simultaneously and asynchroniously. If we all have separate wikis, then essentially the students have individual web pages -- Then why have wikis to begin with. The instructor may as well get the students separate web pages, which can be done anywhere.
I’m not throwing in the towel, but still waiting.
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Inappropriate?Hi charming, thanks for your feedback. PBwiki 2.0 is in beta right now, and that probably means it shouldn't be used for important stuff. Maybe we should make that more clear? You can still create a 1.0 wiki by skipping the beta section in the signup form.
During the 2.0 testing period, invite keys are disabled. We've found that logging in is one of the more difficult aspects of PBwiki, and for the time being, we've simplified things to just use accounts. Of course, we realize that this is less than ideal for educators whose students don't have or can't use email addresses, and finding a system that works for those wikis is a high priority.
I’m working on pbwiki 2.0
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Inappropriate?I, too, just made a great wiki under 2.0 for international collaboration between students on Harry Potter - an offshoot of a social network I monitor. I was extremely sorry to not have an invite key option. I am trying to figure out what to do next.
If people make an account, I assume I will get an email that they want to join?
I’m sorry this option is being dropped
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Inappropriate?One suggestion I have is to make a link in a highly visible location to the "Contact the Owner" form, which you can do by creating a link to: http://YOURWIKI.pbwiki.com/contact.php
Once you have their address, you can either go to the "Share this wiki" tab or the associated User Admin section in the settings and invite the person to your wiki.
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Inappropriate?OK, I will set a link to contact owner. However, why does the box appear asking for an invite key if the owner is unable to set one? It is quite confusing for students.
I’m just wondering
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Inappropriate?This is really confusing. I just set up a PBwiki 2.0 - to test it as suggested. and used it to create an event sign up.. so I can avoid emailing to people and so that the page reaches others whose email I don't have.
Now I did that and people are coming back asking for an invite key. So either there is an invitekey needed or there isn't. Also, I just want anyone who has the link to the private wiki to be able to amend it. Now I have lots of people with a link to useless wiki. Thanks so much!
This is very bad thinking both in UI terms and the usage logic. I was a happy user of PB wiki, not so sure now. I use the wiki for event organisation and I need the ability for people whose emails I don't have and who have no interest in registering anywhere to be able to amend the wiki.
I see from this thread that there are attempts to make some changes.. how do I get the invite key to put it on the wiki so anyone who has the link can amend it.. which is the original purpose behind the wiki.
A swift reply will be appreciated, so I know whether I have to quickly set up another wiki.
I’m confused frustrated and annoyed
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Inappropriate?I agree, and engineering's trying to iron out some of those weird user-interface bugs, such as asking for invite-keys when none exist. Thanks for your feedback!
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Inappropriate?The thing is, we're trying to make PBwiki the best thing we can, for as many users as we can.
So many people have raised some very, very valid security concerns about invite keys, and many others have raised very, very valid usability and collaboration concerns about invite keys.
This isn't an issue we're going to take lightly, and we want to make sure that the way we go about implementing Invite keys is simple and comprehensible.
In the meantime, creating a 1.0 wiki and setting an invite key would probably be your best bet, since your event is probably time-sensitive. However, 2.0 is still in Beta. This means it's not formally released, it's for test purposes only, and it's going to change a lot up to the time we actually do release it.
Changes and improvements are being made literally, every day. Invite keys are an important enough component of PBwiki that we want to make sure we do them right, even if that means for the time being not having them.
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Inappropriate?PBwiki 2.0 beta in its current state does not have invite keys, and so the only way to get into a 2.0 wiki is with a PBwiki Account.
While we are exploring something like invite keys for use cases like your's (or in the cases of classroom wikis where students don't have email addresses), there is no time table for that feature, and there's no guarantee that it would be anything like the old invite keys from PBwiki 1.0.
The reason we're requiring accounts now is to ultimately make it easier to manage a wiki. The problem many users ran into with the old system included situations like when somebody left a company, the company would have to change the password and tell everybody. A single password was also easier to disseminate, which can be a security risk.
Like I said, that does leave out a few use cases like your's, which we're trying to work out as fast as we can!
Thanks for your patience!
Vu
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Inappropriate?Thanks for the replies! I understand the issues - one of the beauty of web tools that there are almost as many uses as there are users, which makes it a design nightmare for the product techies. :)
I have now set up another event wiki with the old version. I just wish I haven't used the beta version for this specific event as it involved sending a lot of uber-geeks at Sun to a non-editable wiki page. Not good.
In the long run, I would like something like a private link with or without an invite key or public link with an invite key. The only reason I wouldn't want a completely free access to most of my wikis is spam, not other users. So my security concerns are not the same as many teachers, educators and businesses.
So why not have several options for access management, from the less to more secure versions?
I’m hopeful
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Inappropriate?This--unfortunately--is going to make pbwiki COMPLETELY unusable in my building. No free e-mail accounts are accessible through are filter, and even if they were, I teach in a preK-3 building. 4-9 year-olds don't have their own e-mails, and I wouldn't encourage them to have them, COPPA issues aside. 2.0 was supposed to give us page-level access, but having no way to do this, we might as well be using 1.0. I just got off the phone with a very upset colleague, who specifically asked PBwiki whether a 1.0 or 2.0 wiki would give her the features she needed, among them being student log-ins. She has spent hours setting up the wiki with a colleague and now they find it's useless.
I'm a school librarian with 566 kids in my building. Even if I wanted to, there's not enough time in the world to make PBWiki accounts for them all!
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?It only gets worse. We have official confirmation that PBwiki is going to stop allowing you to create 1.0 wikis in the next few weeks, so if you want one, you'd better grab one now, before they lock you out.
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