a note to pbworks development team

[gordong]

Hi All!

am I the only person doing any kind of development with the pbworks
API? I sure am lucky to have found this forum!

I want to extend a message to the people who develop pbworks, because
of a difficulty we discovered using the classroom addition accounts we
are setting up, and now using, for our engineering courses at the U.
of Missouri:

Users who are given Editor permissions to folders, and who
subsequently create child folders within those folders - which they
will by default have also editor permissions - do not have permissions
to move pages, files, or folder, between folders within that
"hierarchy." Nor do that have permissions to move pages or files to
any other folders which they also have the same editor permissions.

This seemed to defy logic enough that, after checking the condition up
and down to make sure I wasn't imaging it, I emailed pbworks support
to verify that this is a feature of pbworks "wiki page file system".
(I put that in quotes because I understand, from my experience, that
the file system is a representation who's underlying structure is a
bit different - e.g. by discovering that you can't have two files with
the same name in different folders, for one).

I got a response back perked my attention and wanted relay an idea
about it, because it seems to me that an editor, who can create and
delete files in folders they have permissions to, should also be able
move pages files between those same folders.

The explanation of this behavior that was sent to me by pbworks
support, was that the underlying pbworks system was designed this
way, and changing it to allow editors the ability to copy between
folders would require a reworking of the system.

That can't be right: I can, in an hour, work up a javascript utility
using the pbworks API, that I can drop on a wiki page, that will allow
users to do exactly that:

1. check if the user has editor perms on the page / file/ folder to be
moved.
2. check if the user has editor perms on the destination folder.
3. If 1 & 2 are satisfied, set the page / file / folders's parent to
the destination folder.

(I would not do this, due to the security issues with javascript, but
it is eminently doable.)

I wasn't sure where to respond to the support persons explanation, so
I post it here. I definitely do not wish to detract from just
outstanding support I have always received from pbworks help (and
this forum). I am not sure of people's roles at pbworks.com, but I
hope someone can relay this to the development team, and maybe they
could put this on their list of future enhancement.

Cheers!