elzr's dashboard

Who's idea was it to require that an administrator have an email address for every single person they want to be able to use his or her wiki... how do we invite people to use the wiki without putting their email address in that little box? – James, on May 16, 2008 20:26

Creating a SECURE way to use invite keys is something we're working on. We changed a LOT about how PBwiki works in 2.0, which means that the same security measures we took in 1.0 don't work as well in 2.0. That means we have to re-do the whole thing, in a way that satisfies as much of the feedback we've received as we can.

There's no way we can please all of the people all of the time. And I'm sorry that it's taking so long to do this, but we want to do it right. If someone finds a loophole into your classroom wiki and vandalizes it, or even worse, gets access to your login information, or anything like that AT ALL, we might as well pack up and go home. I, for one, don't want to be out a of job. I don't want you to be out of a wiki. I don't want you to feel like using PBwiki is a security risk.

So I'm going to hope that you can be patient for a little while longer while we make sure invite keys are up to our standards, security and usability wise. The people in the office are fond of the saying "eating your own dogfood" - if we won't do it, we don't expect you to, or that you would even want to.

Invite keys in 1.0 still work, although they do require an email address. We've already addressed several ways of going around this.

I'm sorry for all the inconvenience this has caused you.

Someone explain to me again, why "invite keys" are not a good idea for education wikis?

What was the problem? It worked before. Why is it a no-go NOW?!?!

"It seems that Casey is completely out of touch with real schools in real communities".

Hey, now, don't be hatin' on Casey. She doesn't make any of these decisions; she's a very new employee. She has the unenviable position of gathering community opinions, communicating those opinions to management, and then taking the heat when mgmt drags their feet doing anything about it. I think she does a very professional job of community relations (one I know I couldn't do).

Ditto. Time to switch to another wiki. Shame.

I am really concerned with this answer. It seems that Casey is completely out of touch with real schools in real communities. Yes, the nice schools in the nice suburbs will have ways around this but a poor rural or inner city school with 3rd graders is not going to be able to access their wiki. True, it would be nice if the government could provide everyone with a nice suburban home and school but that's not going to happen any time soon. In some areas the parents don't speak English and may not read or write. In a rural area there may not be a public library. Some areas of the country don't have any access to high speed internet because it just doesn't go there. But our kids will need this technology for their future. Please do what you can to make this accessible or I know, as a teacher of teachers, you will lose your K-12 educational base.

Mmm... 'invite keys' were pretty much the whole reason I was hooked on PBWiki. This kind of sucks.