Read Only Wiki

Here we look at progress towards a version of wiki that is clean, and easy to read - a read-only wiki.

Here are some notes from Pam regarding her expereince of writing and seeking to engage other people in wiki:

I can't bring any readers here until they are able to read content without causing it to unexpectedly look different to how it was.
Early in my wiki experience I did write some words to warn readers - but that's only an attempt at a temporary fix. It's something I'd need to point people to early on, before they started to be surprised and alienated. I'd only do it for individuals who I really need to see something that is here. I probably won't write any of that kind of content now, not until the read only is implemented."
If people are "safe" to read content (i.e. they are in read only mode) then in theory I could invite them in. But I don't want to waste their time by directing them to pages that are not "reader-ready".

This is an issue I have come across multiple times - it removes the incentive for a substantial sector of candidates attracted to writing in wiki - they experiment but then when they learn that they are unable to show there work to their peers they quietly drop the experiment. This is true for even technical users.

# The Fix

While the fix is not technically very complex, currently there are the following issues that make progress towards this goal slower than it might be hoped: - events in multiple locations - lack of front end coding expertise - insiders lack the incentive

The technical requirement is to locate all the places in the current client interface that expose editing events (drag-move and double-click-to-edit) and then warp these in a conditional that depends on the capability of authenticated user - turning off these events when a user is not logged in.

The issue here is that experienced users are focussed mainly on their own writing and research requirements and with interacting with other writers in wiki. As such they have little incentive to make wiki simpler to read for casual users - the focus has been on Collaborative Writing Research.