[Fedora-infrastructure-list] Account system updates

[Elliot Lee]

Hey Tom! Thanks for keeping us on task here :)

Here are some of the things I have been thinking of for the new  
account system:

For users:
	- Allow listing more than one e-mail address per account  
(linkedin.com is the site I remember doing this right)
	- Clean up the interface
		- Have a top-level menu that is shown on all pages, with quick  
links to different pieces of the account system
		- Allow doing the sign-up process as a wizard-style step-by-step  
interface, instead of a bunch of random links to
		- Make documentation a part of the interface
			- In particular, there is a lot of concern that getting a GPG key  
is too complicated for a lot of people such as translators, who are  
not technical types. We need to make that process as clear and simple  
and documented as possible
	- The user info screen might want to evolve from just an "edit my  
information" screen

For administrators:
	- Clean up the interface
		- With hundreds of users and 10s of groups, we definitely need a  
nicer way to find specific users or groups than paging through them 1  
by 1...
		- The part of the interface where you add users to or remove users  
from a group is clunky. In particular, it's currently possible to add  
a user to a group more than once, and if a user is rejected from a  
group, there is no way to let them come back at a later date and  
reapply...
	- Make the e-mail reminders a bit smarter and nicer to read
		- Allowing administrators to mark membership applications as  
"acknowledged" would be nice for administrators, especially for Extras
		- Allow setting a per-group e-mail message to be sent to people  
when their membership in a group reaches different stages...
	- Allow groups to be members of other groups (i.e. you are a member  
in group B because you are a member in group A, and A is a member of  
B). Can't do this nicely with the current SQL schema. I did it nicely  
with the old Red Hat build system, but it requires using text fields  
instead of numeric IDs to specify the names of the group members...

For everyone:
	- Need more free-form text fields everywhere (e.g. comments that are  
visible only to admins, or whatever). Maybe it should just be  
something that holds XML that is processed by the apps...
	- Privacy issues need to be thought out more clearly and addressed.  
In particular, this relates to what information we store
	- Need to make iron-clad sure that the rewrite does NOT muck with  
the legal issues surrounding the CLA (i.e. we have to continue to  
guarantee that people have submitted the CLA form by a GPG signature  
with a key that is tied to a verified e-mail address)
		- Account System 2.0 should get run by Red Hat's legal department  
to just make them feel comfortable with the change
	- On a related note, we need to add proper support for the corporate  
CLA. If we had 'groups being members of other groups' implemented, it  
would be fairly easy to create a group for each corporation that  
signed the CCLA, have each of those groups be a member of the  
cla_done group, and having access to the corporate CLA groups  
administered by a designated contact...

Behind the scenes:
	- Rewrite the code to be cleaner (maybe use turbogears, or maybe  
that is too heavyweight)
	- Make it easier to embed into other apps, especially the signup  
process (so that Extras can have a custom "sign up as an extras  
contributor" wizard that can easily do the basic account system steps  
as part of its workflow
	- Figure out the whole LDAP vs SQL thing
	- At the end, port the application interface parts (get_auth,  
have_auth, have_group, etc.) to perl and php so that we can use them  
from all our applications

Hope this helps,
-- Elliot

On Jul 5, 2006, at 19:34, Tom Lynema wrote:

> I started up the wiki page for the requirements on the new account
> system.  It is at
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/AccountSystem2 .  There
> isn't that much there now.
> The last time I sent the list of enhancements request out, I really
> didn't get many enhancements back.  There was just a discussion on  
> what
> the backend technology should be.  I did pull out one feature.
>
> Give more information about a user when deciding to sponsor a person.
> EG. bugzilla enteries
>
> This time around I would like you all to just give me a list of
> enhancements and not worry about the implementation details as
> much :) .
> I really want to have some good stuff to report in tomorrow's meeting.
> Please help me out :).
>
> ~lyz
> _______________________________________________
> Fedora-infrastructure-list mailing list
> Fedora-infrastructure-list at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-infrastructure-list