Kirk Zurell wrote today to tell me about Suffr, a module that allows, in effect, collaborative system administration using a wiki. Here's how he describes it:
Users can compose recipes of changes to system configuration, and then sign off on them; when enough users approve, the wiki (through this module) implements the changes. Wiki users could democratically accomplish potentially any sysadmin tasks, including administering their own web server or applications, mail/news server, VOIP PBX, or peripherals. They can (and may have to!) even restart or shutdown the machine by majority vote.
I've wanted to introduce more people to wiki but always hit my head on the "what happens when someone posts something objectionable" type of questions. I knew the stock answers wouldn't be enough for some audiences. Suffr lets me give a better answer: groups can decide for themselves what needs to happen, and can implement it right down to the hardware.
It's a pretty interesting idea, but I see some issues. For example, how would you prevent someone from using this to take down a website? I think it's not really meant for a public wiki, and may be most useful in a secure environment with a known group of people. For example, I could imagine the system administrator in charge of maintaining a wiki using Suffr to determine which plugins to enable based on popularity. People could vote on the plugins they'd like to use, and those with the most demand would be enabled automatically as need arises.
What do you think? Would it be useful for your wiki?
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