Permissions

Apologies to anyone who tried to post an OP or send a PM over night and couldn’t.  Permissions are restored.

I was trying to set up a means for the admins to confer together on site rather than singly by PM  or by email, as a result, set the cat among the pigeon (skua among the penguins?) by first of all making a “password protected” page for the admins, new comments to which appeared in the “new comments” list, arousing great alarm, and in any case turned out to be visible from the dashboard.  So I tried another WP option which was to make it a “private” page, but people could still see it from the dashboard.  So I switched off that.  But then people couldn’r post OPs or receive PMs.  So I’ve restored it again.  We will keep the “private” admin page, but for those curious about it, you will find you can access its comments via the dashboard.   Which is fine by me – it wasn’t like we wanted to plot anything anyway, just have a means of conferring about stuff (security issues, strategies, plug-ins, rules etc) between our selves.  So this seems a good solution.  Nobody need get paranoid because they can always check the record, but it won’t be a prominent feature of the site.

16 thoughts on “Permissions

  1. Yes, I think so. As keiths says, I am inherently squeamish about secrecy; on the other hand I do see a value in conferring before taking action. If the other admins are happy to do this in a place that is on-the-record, that fits my bill entirely.

  2. Now you know why ID’ers think a theory of random changes to organisms that are working just fine might not be the best explanation for their existence. 🙂

    If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. The law of unintended consequences.

    Thanks Lizzie.

  3. Lizzie,

    We will keep the “private” admin page, but for those curious about it, you will find you can access its comments via the dashboard. Which is fine by me – it wasn’t like we wanted to plot anything anyway, just have a means of conferring about stuff (security issues, strategies, plug-ins, rules etc) between our selves. So this seems a good solution. Nobody need get paranoid because they can always check the record, but it won’t be a prominent feature of the site.

    For the record, no one actually expressed paranoia about what goes on in admin discussions (except walto, jokingly). Rich and I were just trying to figure out why you were insisting on secrecy when one of TSZ’s best features is the culture of openness.

    Making the comments visible via the dashboard is a good thing, and it’s consistent with the theme of openness and transparency at TSZ.

    I’m not asking for changes, but I would still like to know why you want the thread to be invisible everywhere except within the dashboard. What specifically would be lost if the thread were handled like the Moderation Issues thread, with a link on the front page and notification of new comments?

    Again, I am not asking for changes. I just want to understand the rationale behind making the thread (and newly submitted comments on it) invisible to everyone except those who already know about it and are willing to scan the dashboard periodically for new comments.

    Thanks.

  4. Lizzie,

    …for those curious about it, you will find you can access its comments via the dashboard.

    I gave that a try, but it doesn’t seem to be working. I see only the last five comments posted to the entire blog, and if I click on ‘All’ or ‘Approved’, I get a message saying

    You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page.

  5. Lizzie,

    It’s clear that you don’t want to answer my question, but why?

    Do you think the question is illegitimate? If so, could you say why? If not, then why are you refusing to answer it?

    It strikes me as a perfectly reasonable question:

    I’m not asking for changes, but I would still like to know why you want the thread to be invisible everywhere except within the dashboard. What specifically would be lost if the thread were handled like the Moderation Issues thread, with a link on the front page and notification of new comments?

    Again, I am not asking for changes. I just want to understand the rationale behind making the thread (and newly submitted comments on it) invisible to everyone except those who already know about it and are willing to scan the dashboard periodically for new comments.

    Thanks.

    You’re scolding Gregory on another thread for evading questions and refusing to engage arguments, and rightly so; yet that seems to be exactly what you have been doing here and in the Moderation Issues thread.

  6. I switched off that. But then people couldn’r post OPs or receive PMs. So I’ve restored it again. We will keep the “private” admin page, but for those curious about it, you will find you can access its comments via the dashboard.

    Again, I don’t really have a turtle in this race, but is this actually what you did? I don’t see that anything much is accessible via the dashboard anymore. Not a huge deal for me, but if the idea was to restore it, I’m not sure that actually happened.

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