[wp-hackers] More on WordPress user permissions overhaul

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi folks,

I'm a relative newcomer as a WordPress user, and definitely a newcomer
when it comes to hacking around the wp code.  I'm really happy with
WordPress as a user, and hence why I'm signing up for this list.

The timing of the "User Permissions system overhaul" thread couldn't be
better from my perspective, since I'm currently working on studying the
authorization models of various popular web applications, and publishing
the results on a wiki that I've set up for this purpose:
http://spectaclar.org  .  I've already received a couple outside
contributions (Nagios and RequestTracker) and would appreciate others.
I've cc'd the discuss at spectaclar.org mailing list, since this is a very
appropriate topic for that mailing list.

I'd like to help with the WordPress permissions overhaul in any way that
I can.  From my perspective, the ideal solution could be shared among
many common applications, such as MediaWiki, Mailman, Bugzilla, etc.
Certainly, it's much easier to share systems among PHP-based systems,
and there already seems to be strong interest in MediaWiki/WordPress
intergration, so perhaps that's a good starting point.

The new user rights system in MediaWiki 1.5 is documented here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:User_rights

It's a very simple system, but I think gets the essentials correct.  To
the extent that any permissions management code can be shared between
the systems, I think it should be attempted.

Anyway, I've been lurking on IRC for a while (robla) and am kicking
myself for not getting on this list sooner.  Let me know how I can help.

Thanks
Rob