how do i stop my users sharing the wiki?

Thank you for providing this feedback. I'm sorry we didn't answer sooner, but we've actually been bouncing emails back and forth on our end trying to figure this out, and right now, we don't have a good solution.

For starters though, it's in human nature to figure out ways of doing things they shouldn't. So if your readers, no matter how many guards you put around them, *really* want to share what's in the wiki, whether it's by sending the URL, copying and pasting the content, or having people look over their shoulders when they're on the wiki, they will find a way.

However, some things you can do:

1. Communicate with your users. Help them understand how important it is to keep this information private. You know they're excited about what they do, but some secrets are better staying secrets. Be open about what they can and can't share, and they'll be better able to do their jobs, because they'll know where they stand.

2. Make sure they have PBwiki Accounts and don't use the invite keys, so you can adjust their levels of access to your wiki, and if they leave, you can close that hole in security by just removing their access altogether.

If you really want to step things up a level, and the sensitivity of your information is so high you need all the security you can get, you also have the following options to exercise:

-Sign up for a premium plan that lets you use IP whitelisting, so your users can only log in from certain IPs. There are even more security benefits to having a premium plan, and I encourage you to look into those as well.

-Have them sign Non-Disclosure Agreements so that you have the option of legal recourse should they divulge information.

However, these two things fall on the side of you not being able to trust your users, and that's not a good situation to be in ever. So personally, I recommend trying the first two things before the second. A culture of fear and restriction is hard to live in, work in, and be productive and creative in.

Thanks for asking this question, we've been discussing it internally and we'd love to hear what you think might be the best way to implement this feature.

Terry makes some good suggestions. I would go along with these.

We already use white listing so only people within the building can see the wiki but we want stricter controls on all the users so we know only the users who the administrator invites are active.

Things involving security (like this does) should take highest priority in order to help your private and business users feel more secure about their information.

Whitelisting is a nice feature but not particularly useful in tertiary education settings (such as ours) where students are increasingly working online but off-campus.

Terry...

To me, the act of making a wiki "private" should automatically disable the "share this wiki" link. Not everyone in my company is as sensible as they should be...

If you want to make sure only approved users are accessing your wiki, have them all create PBwiki accounts, change the Invite key so no one can use that as a back door, and by going to Settings | Users as the Administrator, manually add each person via the email they used with their PBwiki Account to the wiki. That way, you can control their level of access to the wiki, and remove them entirely if they leave the company. Also, it makes adding new people to the wiki that much easier.

As an added bonus, you can see who made each edit on the page because they will have had to log in with their account - no more "anonymous" edits.

By the way, thank you for your feedback, really. This is something we're taking very seriously, and we appreciate you telling us about the situation you're in, because it will only help us make PBwiki better for you.

Casey - thanks for the suggested workaround, unfortunately with over 1000 potential users it's just not practicable in our case.

Terry...