[sldev] Re: Requiring login on wiki.secondlife.com (Re: Open development of the Webmap API)

[Rob Lanphier]

On 1/18/08 4:43 AM, SignpostMarv Martin wrote:
> The mapapi.net wiki is licensed under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license, which 
> I'm guessing is compatible with the 2.5 license used on the SL Wiki, 
> so the point of "every single contributor maintains exclusive 
> ownership" doesn't apply.

Yes it does.  Under the default configuration for most wikis, each 
contributor still owns their contribution, and merely licenses it under 
the stated license (e.g. CC BY-SA 3.0).  If anyone wants to relicense 
those contributions under a different license, each contributor must 
agree to do so, and any contributor can unilaterally veto the move.  
Since organizations like IETF require submitters to license their 
contribution under a specific, non-CC license, it means that any 
contributor could block submission to most standards bodies.  See 
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3978.txt for more on the IETF as an example.  
Other bodies are similar.

>> We also require the login because we want to make sure you agree to 
>> the Second Life Terms of Service, and that we maintain a single user 
>> database rather than one for each individual thing we run (wiki, 
>> forums, jira, etc).  Spamming has been mercifully low on 
>> wiki.secondlife.com; much lower than a wiki that I run outside of 
>> work on which I seem to be in a spammer arms race.
>>
>> Since accounts are free to anyone, asking people to sign up doesn't 
>> seem like an insurmountable hurdle.
> However, it's not entirely open- if a Resident is banned for whatever 
> reason, or they don't access their account for a while they can 
> generally no longer log into Second Life with those credentials. In 
> the long run, this would affect how people are credited for their 
> contributions.

With respect to people losing access because we banned them, that's a 
feature, not a bug.  If someone is displaying anti-social behavior 
in-world, chances are they are also going to be anti-social on the 
wiki.  I'd prefer not to have to rediscover each griefer's anti-social 
tendencies on the wiki after we've already determined that they don't 
play nice with others in-world.

With respect to losing wiki access because of account activity: are you 
familiar with cases of this happening?  If you are, let me know, because 
we need to fix this.

> Using OpenID for the mapapi.net wiki means "not having to create 
> another account on another service just so you can contribute as 
> yourself"

OpenID only solves authentication.  On the back end, there still ends up 
being an account database, and we still need to establish whether that 
account holder agrees to the terms of service, and we still need much of 
the information associated with that account (such as contact 
information in case of copyright dispute).

Don't get me wrong; I like the idea of using OpenID in some way to 
reduce the number of passwords that people have to remember/maintain, 
but I think many people tend to overestimate the number of policy 
problems that a system like OpenID truly solves.

Rob


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