launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Barry Warsaw <barry@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jan 6, 2010, at 9:48 PM, Martin Pool wrote:

> However I was wondering if we could do something systematic that would
> fix this for many cases.  Launchpad has a systematic definition of
> security permissions.  As a thought experiment, suppose when a person
> doesn't have permission to use a particular control or page, we showed
> the repr of the security interface that controls it, rather than just
> hiding it.  Then if that said for instance
> "EditTeamByTeamOwnerOrTeamAdminsOrAdmins" (omg what a mouthful) it
> would at least give a clue, and that could eventually evolve to show
> you who the team owner and admins and system admins are, and how you
> might change this.  Perhaps this could visually just be a little lock
> with the tooltip showing the explanation.  Perhaps some discretion is
> needed to do this only on particularly relevant controls, not
> everything.

This would make for a very interesting experiment.  I like it because it both tells you what the system is expecting, and it gives you a clue about what you The User can do to fix the problem. One of my gripes with any system (and Launchpad permissions is no exception) is that when you can't do what you normally expect to be able to do, you often aren't given any clue at how to resolve it yourself.  By showing something like the security interface, you're not only explaining things to The User, but you're also empowering them.  "Oh, let me go talk to the Team Admin to get this thing done".

-Barry