Re: [Bug-gnupedia] Submissions

[Imran Ghory]

On 24 Jan 2001, at 14:35, Tom Chance wrote:

> > I think that the initial parts of my moderation idea
> > 
> > (http://redrival.com/btifaq/mod.htm) should be the
> > way to go.
> Having read it before, I would say your idea is good,
> and as "stringent" as I think we should get at the
> moment. Perhaps even have no "reject" vote as in mine
> and Rob's article at 
> http://www.state-embers.co.uk/alexandria/index.html
(Incidentally the above is a typo, it should be index.htm)

I'm not suggesting that there should be a no vote, I think a rejecting 
vote should only be allowed if the article is spam. I'm not 
advocating rejecting based upon content by any means.

I was just saying that the review body should give it a classification 
indicating what the review body thought of the controversiality of the 
article

> What is the use of the GPG public key?

I'll start with a basic explaiation of Public Key signing for those who 
aren't aware of it.

(GPG is a GPLed Public key cryptography system, like the 
commercial PGP)

With Public Key signing you have a program like GPG which uses 
random data from your computer and a password to generate two 
"keys" a Private key and a Public key

You distribute the Public key to anyone who you want to be able to 
check that you wrote a document.

When you write an article you use a program like GPG with your  
Private key to "sign" your article.

Now when you distribute your article anyone can check by using 
your Public key to verify that the signatue is yours.
 
(Sorry the explaination is a bit poor but I'm trying to avoid the 
mathematics involved to keep it simple)

What I suggest is that authors can submit their public keys to an 
author veification server and sign all their articles themselves, or 
alternatively the authors could submit to a proxy group and the 
proxy group would sign the article if the author didn't want to do it.

> The proxy group (or Edit Mode and Rob and I called it)

What I meant by proxy group is different to what you mean by edit 
mode. What you call edit mode in your page is what I call editorial 
system.

The proxy system would be a group which you could submit to and 
the proxy group could sign it and pass it into the system.

I propose that we could have many proxy groups which have their 
own standards regarding which articles they are willing to act as 
proxy for.

For instance we could have a "biographies" proxy group which 
specializes in biographies and only acts as proxy for biographies 
which it approves of, this will allow for a different style of 
moderation, and for example an index could automatically accept 
articles signed by the "biographies" proxy group.

> > 3) Then compress the file(s) (using pkzip/gzip, this
> > would make it 
> > easier to handle multiple files)
> 
> This should be an option, not a necessity. People who
> don't know how to compress files could just fill in
> the web submission form several times. Those who
> could, could save time by making a zip file.

I think virtually everyone has some zip software which is easy to 
use, for instance with WinZip you can just select a group of files 
right click and pick add to zip.

But, I think it is a minor matter and we should accept either way.

Imran Ghory