[mb-devel] XML Web Service to support DELETE, POST and PUT?

[Oliver Charles]

Hi Rob - thanks for the reply!

Yea, there are definatly some considerations that need to be taken into 
account, but I do have a few thoughts about how we can ensure data 
quality from these external sources. Firstly, an authentication system 
must/could be used. I think must is the best choice here, because all 
our editors have to be users as well at the moment anyway. This will 
hopefully weed out the majority of spammers. However, you're inevitably 
going to get people who would be determined to spam the system by 
creating some fake user names to enter spammy data.

A solution to this (of probably many solutions that I have not yet 
considered) would be the suggested editor rating system [1]. Introducing 
a new rank (can submit edits of the same rank as normal through http and 
XML, for example) would mean that only trusted users have the capability 
of posting via XML. An even more extreme option would be that only 
auto-moderators can grant this status to other uses (much like the 
current auto-mod voting system). This way you're not even trusting 
algorithms to decide who can be trusted, you're using qualitative data 
(whether that's worse or better, however...)

Clearly, there are some problems with introducing XML POST etc, and they 
are going to need some deep thought as you said. I'll set out writing a 
feature page for this in the next few days, and keep thinking up ideas. 
In the mean time - if anyone else has any ideas, let's hear them!

--
Oliver Charles

[1] http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/EditorRating

>
> On Apr 22, 2007, at 4:40 PM, Oliver Charles wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> At the moment, from what I've seen, it appears that the new XML Web 
>> Service is only implementing a small portion of REST. I've briefly 
>> spoken with a few folks over on IRC (I'm acid2) and a few of us are 
>> interested in having an application editing application. It would 
>> have a few advantages - dial up users, or those without a connection 
>> when they need to edit won't be stopped from making edits (if a local 
>> db is created somehow) as they can push changes next time they have 
>> connectivity. It would also take the burden off the webinterface, and 
>> the servers in general.
>>
>> I wouldn't mind giving this project a go, but from my quick research 
>> into the XML Web Service, this doesn't seem possible yet.
>
> I would very much like to see this for:
>
> - Submitting votes via the WS.
> - Retrieving edits via the WS (in order to submit votes)
> - Submitting tags/ratings (planned for future releases this year)
>
> However, I am very much concerned about submitting edits via the WS. 
> I'm afraid that it will be too easy to submit a ton of edits. 
> Undoubtedly some of these edits will be quite excellent and very 
> useful, but others could use it as a tool for submitting tons of spam 
> edits. Or worse, actual spam.
>
> The web site, with edit notes and all the other features that go into 
> our peer review system, work fairly well all things considered. I 
> would be very hesitant to create new features that have the possible 
> outcome that could destroy a working system.
>
> -- 
>
> --ruaok      Somewhere in Texas a village is *still* missing its idiot.
>
> Robert Kaye     --     rob at eorbit.net     --    http://mayhem-chaos.net
>
>
>
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