Hi Folks,

first of all: Sorry I think this Post will get a little bit longer than normal - maybe you should start with a coffee

I`m trying to set-up a new consumer-information page around Internet-Fraud / Subscription Traps in Germany as one very useful site (verbraucherabzocke.info) which has warned by telling names of the companys and their staff, telling bank-accounts, etc. recently has to close because there webmasters (even old webmaster which actualy has nothing to do with the site any longer!) were heavyly sued by the fraud-companies for different reasons (e.g. "Competition Protection Act [= Wettbewerbsrecht], damage to someones reputation, etc.).

Because the information about the fraudulent companys and their staff can change quickly and all sites and persons should be linked together but still should be easily to search for as well as an additional shield (alongside of: anonymous hosting on www.prq.se [Sweden-Host which also has hosted WikiLeaks and is well known for protecting the real webmaster], etc.) against law-suits claiming the webmaster I think the best solution is to use a Wiki-Software for hosting: Inter-Linking is easily done, information can be added quickly and last but not least (if for any case the anonymous webmaster will be found) the webmaster always can say "I did not post this information personally; I just provide a technical plattform" and maybe "Sorry, I can not tell anything about who has posted this entry as we did not log anything".

BUT I also discoverd at least 3 big problems / disadvantages for my project by using a Wiki:
1) For startup-phase and maybe even after that - depending on if there will build up a safety-community wich consist of enough people in a timely manner - if everybody is allowed to edit this will lead to changes from the fraud-companies to disinform people, delete entrys, change entrys, malform entrys, and so on! (Just that you get a glue: The old webmasters of verbraucherabzocke.info also received death threat against their persons and swiftboating about them, etc.)

As well for a second reason: I as the webmaster would like to follow the german "press-code" [= Pressekodex - see http://www.presserat.info/service/engli … code.html; a freely invented code by the german press association for which publisher can declare they will follow this freely rules]. So if some users (say a victim) will post - in the heat of the moment - information which is not really "lawful / ethical correct" this also leads to an unwanted situation as the opposit of fraud-companies which are deiting.

Therefore it would be necessary (or "nice to have"?) to avoid unseen/unchecked changes, edits, and so on which leads to the "feature" to have a possibility to approve the submissions I think (even in start-up-phase!)

Yes, I know that this "wish" does the opposite a Wiki stands for, but I don`t see a real alternative alongside? (If you see some just give me a hint please )

2) Normally - what I know from Wikipedia - Wiki Software will recently track IP-Adresses to track users and/or un-registered edits. For any "leaking"-plattform this is not ideal for reasons of protection of the source-persons. Mainly useful information will be known (and maybe as well as hopefully posted/shared) by insiders or maybe posted by persons who are not allowed to do so (e.g. banking-clerks sharing/posting new bank-account any of the fraud-companies has registered with their bank and maybe the status of the account, e.g. "cancelation planned", "already canceled", etc.

If the Wiki has some add-on or any other function to turn of IP-logging editing for everybody is not really possible anymore (see 1) as you then can not bann unwanted comments by IP-Address/IP-Range furthermore.

Am I right with this problem regarding logging/non-logging? - Any Ideas for a solution?

3) My Web-Host PRQ AB, Sweden (www.prq.se) uses a PHP-CGI-Wrapper (measns: PHP is running as CGI), as well as only enables 1 MySQL-Database per customer, so that I have to use any Wiki-Software which can deal with this issues.

As I have done a reasearch (mostly to get a solution for problem/disadvantage 1 "approve submission") and found TikiWiki and its approval-stageing function I have to see that I can not use TikiWiki properly as it wont run in a system-environment with PHP-CGI!

At least I can only hope and beg for your input as wiki-experts:
- Should/Can I use a Wiki for my project?
> If yes; which one and does it come close to a solution of 1-3?  Or do you have a workaround for a special recommended wiki for 1-3?
>> If no; do you have any other software/script you can recommend for my project?

PS: As this project is just a private non-commercial project (maybe just get some funds later on if I manage to find a sufficient anonymous way for fund-raising) all software should be open-source as well as free of charge.

Greetings,
verbraucherinfo.org-Administration aka. MacGyver

Last edited by verbraucherinfo.org (2011-05-01 06:39:35)