Webcrossing Quirks

We've talked about WCTL before, about how it is a fast, easy language which is great for UI, but that it's a little, well, quirky.

There are a few quirks in Webcrossing itself, just kind of goofy "what were they thinking" settings. Quirky, but a little cute, like a slightly cross-eyed Siamese kitten is quirky.  The answer, of course, to what they were thinking is that in most cases some customer way back when paid to have that setting added.  It made sense then, to them, but not to anybody since then.

I want to emphasize to anyone reading this that except for #1, these are all OPTIONS.  They are not turned on by default and an administrator has to explicitly turn them on before the server will function that way.  Just to be clear that Webcrossing is not totally whacko.

Here are some staff favorites:

1. Shut down server link.  Remember, you need shell access to a terminal to start Webcrossing.  So why would you want a "Shut down server" link in the control panel?  Once you shut it down that way, you can't start it up again that way.  Right now, it is two or three links from the bottom of the page so is more difficult to click accidentally. But I am old enough to remember it being right above the "Return to site" button, and I have clicked it accidentally more than once.
   
   
   
   
   
2. Provisional users have full access before their email addresses are validated. You can set the site to require that people respond to an email validation challenge.  Before they respond, you can give them read-only access, moderated access, or full (participant) access.  Why would you turn on provisional users and give them full access before you were sure their email address was valid?  What's the point?
   
   
   
   
   
3. Registered users can edit or delete anyone's posts, not just their own.  Excuse me?  Edit someone else's post if I'm not an administrator?  DELETE someone else's post?  I guess if you were building a wiki this might be useful, but in the ordinary course of forum management I can just imagine the havoc this could wreak :)
   
   
   
   
   
4. And, the more bizarre sibling of #3, Guest users can edit or delete anyone's posts, not just their own.  You don't believe me?  Here it is, right next to all the more reasonable settings like "guests can post messages" and "guests can add discussions."  I dare you to turn this one on on your forum. ;-)