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Drupal is aimed at making it easy to publish and manage a website right out of the box. Its main goal is getting content online, without providing many restrictions on who gets to see it (you can turn off guest access to all content, or for some specific content types, but there isn’t a native “audience” defined for content).

There are a whole bunch of really cool modules that add this additional functionality. Organig Groups lets users define their own groups on the fly, making it easy to discover content published to a group. Simple Access lets you define which roles get to see/edit/delete content. Taxonomy Access lets you define which roles get to see content tagged in a specified taxonomy/keyword. Etc… The list goes on and on. Lots of great access control modules, each doing different things to manage access to content according to various workflows and scenarios.

But, currently, they are all incompatible with each other. Want to use Organic Groups to let users post blog entries into their own little workgroups? Great. But don’t use Simple Access to define editing access to the “static” pages of the site. And don’t use Taxonomy Access either. Or vice versa.

Because the access control modules all seem to whitelist – if any of the installed/enabled modules says a user can see a piece of content, they can see it – no matter what the other modules say. It might be safer for modules to blacklist instead – if any module says “no!” then it’s not accessible.

Simple Access could be saying “only Admins can see it” – but if it’s also published into an Organic Group that someone belongs to, they get to see it even if they’re not an Admin.

And, if Organic Groups says “only peopie in the ‘my favorite workgroup’ group can see it (not public, audience = ‘my favorite workgroup’)”, then Simple Access can say “hey! But everyone’s allowed to read it according to my settings, so have at’er!”

It’s a little frustrating, having to say to a professor “yeah – we can make sure that only specified members can read your medical research progress pages, but that means all forums on the site are wide open to the public. Or, we could do the opposite, if you don’t mind your confidential medical research open to the public…”

There’s some hope, in the form of Node Access Arbitrator. It’s an “experimental” module, attempting to define/offer an API for these various access control modules to play nicely together, without tripping over each other.

But, not many access control modules have been made compatible with NA-Arbitrator. Perhaps because NA-Arbitrator isn’t a core module, nor is it flagged as a recommended one.

So – how about taking NA-Arbitrator either into Core, or marking it as being “supercool” – as Views and CCK have been – so people will have the impetus to update their access control modules to use a unified API?

If the API isn’t complete, or is off the mark, it makes sense to focus development on a single, sustainable central concept of node access arbitration, rather than just leaving the various modules to duke it out…

If there’s an “official” node access strategy in the works, I’d love to hear about it. Dries? Merlin?

Brian 's finally getting back to blogging, after being dragged to the other side of the planet and back. He knocks one out of the park with this one.

So I too use Wikipedia as a nexus for discussing all manner of digital effects. Sure, you have to acknowledge some shortcomings, but I'll stack the benefits against the liabilities any day. And when, as is almost inevitable, someone asks "what do you think of students citing Wikipedia in an academic essay?" I simply shout back "what do you think of someone citing Britannica? Huh? HUH?" and glare at them a bit. That usually shuts them up, and shutting people up is the hallmark of authoritative instruction.

No kidding. People seem to forget that just because something's online doesn't make it authoritative, trusted, nor appropriate for citation. Just the same as offline publications. You likely wouldn't cite People Magazine in an academic paper (unless, maybe, the paper was on the history of pop culture or something…)

Nor should you cite Wikipedia (or Brittanica, or Readers' Digest) as a primary source.

ps. welcome back, Brian! And with a healthy dose of “blamb’s ways to enrich your vocabulary” – using “synecdoche” casually in a post. I had to look that sucker up.

I’m trying out Zooomr – it’s a photo sharing site similar to Flickr, but with some cool new features like Lightboxes and Inspectors. It’s lacking all of the communities and contacts that keep me coming back to Flickr several times per day, but they’re doing some cool things at Zooomr.

Not only does Zooomr drop the “e” in “er”, they also throw in an extra “o” or two. These silly Web 2.0 names are getting to be a pain, but what are they going to do, with all “normal” domain names taken long ago?

The Zoooooomr interface feels clunky and awkward compared to Flickr’s simplicity. I’m sure part of that is familiarity, but things seem to be hidden/buried unnecessarily.

The geotagging feature is pretty cool. I might actually use that. I had to google to find out that I had to click “Lightmap” on the page. Intuitive. How about renaming that link “Geotag your images” or something. Also, I expected a utility on the photo details page to add location, not a generic map view where I can add images to locations. Seems kinda backwards, and could be kinda funky in a workflow with several images.

Here’s my first upload to Zoomr:

IBM developerWorks has started a series of articles detailing what’s involved with planning and implementing a fully featured community website – using Drupal.

It’s a pretty good read (so far) and touches on issues that aren’t unique to Drupal. But, it’s nice to see Drupal getting some Big Corporate Loving™

Much of the articles are spent describing necessary customization for making Drupal sites behave nicely. Dries Buytaert (the lead of the Drupal project) hints that good news is in the works…

The second article, “Design for an effective user experience” is a good overview of the process that every website should go through. Defining purpose, audience, roles, personas, etc… So many websites skip this, and result in PR-driven shovelware…

The stampede parade starts in a few minutes, so it's officially Stampede Season. The Canadian Forces just buzzed the UCalgary campus with what sounded like a CF-18 – I couldn't see it, but that's the only thing it could have been. They have one down on the grounds for display – having to drive it through city streets at 2am the other night to get it downtown. It would have been kind of surprising to look in your rear view mirror, and see a CF-18 pulling up behind you…

The fighter must be circling until the parade starts, because it just blew by again. That would be a fun ride. They fly them in from Cold Lake to buzz the parade.

I won't be at the parade. Too much project stuff to do, and too many peaple down there. And, my Dad's not in it this year. We will likely avoid going down to the grounds at all this year as well – way too many people to make that much fun with a 3-year-old.

Update: It may have been The Snowbirds, rather than a CF-18. Still pretty loud, though…

The Stampede Grounds, seen from the top of the Calgary Tower

I was thinking I'd start hitting the wall as the week progressed, but I'm still riding, and feeling better. I thought I'd be feeling pretty dead by Thursday, but this morning's ride was a new personal best, and I feel great.

The only thing I'm a bit concerned about is the weather. Supposed to get thunderstorms this afternoon. That would suck if it hit while riding. Not the end of the world. I've been wet before. Better to get soaked on the way home, than on the morning commute…

A little saddle sore, but that's TMI. Getting better though.

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