[wp-testers] User Level revisited (after a year)

[Abhay Kumar]

Since Wordpress is supposed to be a  'publishing platform' it would
make some sense that one would try and go with the idea of other
published works (i.e. a newspaper) but we should really remember what
the final product is: a web log. In the spirit of K.I.S.S., I think we
should really forget about the whole idea of Editors-in-Cheif,
Managing Editors, etc. and think about what should be the simplest and
most basic form that wordpress should have while allowing for
variations that others may need for their own personal sites.

So based on that, what are the roles that should be present? To
determine that, you'd need to really define some terms. When you talk
about 'roles' rather than 'ranks', you are really considering a
different mindset, maybe something that the person who thought of the
idea hadn't envisoned but unfortunately (maybe) for them, we really
need to think about it.

A role is a position that is given to a user that has certain
capabilities. This is the idea that we try to abstract when we say
that the role of a Copy Editor is to edit the posts of everyone else.
In that sense, a Copy Editor doesn't write any posts at all. He
(he/she, whatever, I'm not going to be P.C. for the sake of
simplicity) is purely responsible for making sure whatever the Authors
have produced isn't written poorly and also will fit the 'dimensions'
(loosely defined here) and the syntax (may it be grammar or actual
content) of the publication. The same way, the Editor-in-Cheif has
certain capabilities (and here's where I use another word which seems
to fit it more: jobs). His job isn't to edit for 'syntax' (loosely
defined) but rather for content. See what a role is?

Then what's a rank? A rank is a hierarchial position that's given to a
user. that *contains* roles. Since I already defined roles, that
should be enough of my useless banter about that. The rank is the idea
that we used to follow with WP1.x and was great for what it was.

My personal opinion is that the rank system is really just too
repetitive. By saying you're a rank 10, that means you're a rank 0, 1,
2, ... , 8, 9, and 10. I think the current Roles system is something
that's in between a pure role system and a pure rank system. If that's
what everyone wants, so be it. I'll go back to my corner and sulk,
heh.

But what I envision would be a pure roles system.

So what roles you ask? Well here's a very very basic list. I think
this would be a required list for the base installation.

Administrator: purist definition. Really just the person who has all
rights to all the backend. This means anything that involves actual
code and/or configuration but is exclusive of themes, certain visual
plugins, etc. This role can also create/modify/remove roles (except of
course his own which would be just silly).

Author: Writes entries and can edit their own entries. (The latter
part just for the fact that Murphy is always around and you always
want to be able to go back and tweak.)

Subscriber: Reads all.

Anything else like a section editor, editor-in-chief, copy editor, art
& layout editor or whatever your brilliant minds can think of would be
things you would have to define with a pretty little interface.

(Apologies in advance for random typos)

Cheers,

Abhay