For the last few years at PBworks, while building an amazing set of new technologies we’ve tried to stay true to four consistent set of tiers for access:
- Readers cannot modify the content of a workspace in any way (though they can optionally be allowed to comment).
- Writers can perform reversible / non-destructive operations that don’t affect workspace-wide settings or security.
- Editors can modify and delete things on a workspace in an irreversible way but they cannot affect workspace-wide settings or security.
- Admins can perform any operation on a workspace.
It’s become clear that when we rolled out folder manipulation that we left writers out of the party, so to speak, by not letting writers create folders. Some Administrators worked around this by making everyone Editors but were then worried about people accidentally deleting information. Madness. And since folder creation is a reversible and non-destructive operation, we realized that we ought to fix that to let writers better structure their contributions to a workspace.
So on October 26, 2010 we’ll be flipping the switch to allow writers to create folders. (It’s also my birthday that day!)
Check out our fabulous Permission Levels page for a refresher on exactly what each role can do.
