[wp-hackers] User roles - GSOC proposal

[Mike Schinkel]

On Mar 30, 2010, at 7:20 PM, Andrew Nacin wrote:
> Thus, this would only affect sites that use capability/role management
> plugins. I would imagine that most plugins handle role management, not user
> management, or at the very least, most administrators utilize role
> management, as administering user-specific capabilities is much more
> difficult and time-consuming. If you have enough user-specific caps to make
> this nightmarish, then you probably don't have that many users, for that
> reason.

I guess I'm more concerned about newer sites that will have more CMS related functionality and not so much about the majority of the blog-oriented sites of today because, as you say, they aren't that many it will affect currently.

> So, I would propose two things:
> 2. That, for diligence purposes, we explore an option that eliminates
> user-specific capabilities but keeps multiple role support. I can think of
> an effective schema that keeps support for multiple roles that simply merge
> the allowed capabilities, and still allow easy querying for, say, all users
> with capability X. This could prevent us from oversimplification, which is
> also something we wouldn't want.
> 
> The idea outlined in #10201 is controversial, which explains its
> postponement for multiple releases, but appears to be gaining traction for
> 3.1. I had hinted earlier that I would expect a compromise of some sort. If
> multiple roles can be implemented sanely in the new schema, that may very
> well be a good thing to keep, for the CMS benefits.

#2 and the summary sounds good to me.  Thanks for detailing it out.

-Mike