When Google Wave was first announced, there was one major complaint. In a Wave, anyone can do anything. There was no system of permission based controls to keep the Wave from getting out of hand. This could result in people completely destroying conversations and collaborations, leaving the Wave's author, understandably, annoyed. This week, Google will finally do something about it.
On the Offical Google Wave Blog, Google has announced the launch of two new features that will be rolling out this week: Read-Only Participants and Restore from Playback.
- Read-Only Participants - This will allow the creator of a Wave to set users as either read-only, or full access, depending on what's needed. A read-only user will not be able to edit anything, nor be able to add new participants. These permissions can be applied at the group level as well. However, individual permissions overwrite group permissions.
- Restore from Playback - If a user has full access to a Wave, he or she can restore it to any previosly saved state that can be seen in the playback feature. This does not delete any changes made aftet that point. Instead, it copies the saved point to the end of the Wave's history, making it the most recent change. Due to the way it's implemented, you can even restore from an accidental restore.
Google also mentions that more features, such as Reply-Only, are in the works. This setting will allow a user to add blips to a Wave, but not edit other people's blips. Some interface re-designs are in the works as well.
If you haven't tried Google Wave yet, you can sign up for an invite at the Google Wave site.
Images courtesy of Official Google Wave Blog.
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