[Imc-alternatives] Summar of weekly check-in Aug 26/27 07

[strypey at riseup.net]

Kia ora koutou

Present at this week's irc chat were:
Jay, Strypes, Dave and Qopi

Topics:
Invite
Incorporating existing content
site design ideas
roadmap
Plone test site
Freebase

Invite:

People seem pretty happy with Jay's much briefer invite.

I proposed updating pages on the wiki for each aspect of the project we want
people to volunteer for and adding those links to the invite, so that people can
click for more information about what's needed in their skill area.

For example under:
"(2) Techies: Specifically those familiar with Drupal and do web site
development who are interested in building the next generation of Indymedia.
http://www.openplans.org/projects/imc-alternatives/tech"

Note: I think it's important to show how the project has been progressed by the
influx of volunteers and ideas from the last invite. We don't want people
thinking we are pulling more and more volunteer energy into a black hole ;)

Incorporating existing content

We also talked about building on what we started with the SocialForges page on
the wiki. Initially this was to help us define what kind of alternatives site
the world does and doesn't need, based on what's already out there. Later it was
used to help circulate the first participation invite to people working on
similar projects.

I proposed that we break the list of sites there into categories (eg blogs,
tools, forums, wikis etc). Each category could have its own page with some notes
about how that site, its structure and its content could be referenced from the
AltIMC site. For example we could have a blogwire with headlines from blog-style
sites like WorldChanging.com. We could attempt to link existing knowledge-bases
like Wikipedia, WikiHow etc into our knowledge-base somehow.

Dave pointed out that both Plone and Drupal support the facilities for such a
blogwire. Jay added that blog content is already used on PhillyIMC and they will
incorporate better support into their IndyDrupal.

Site Design

Dave pointed out that tagging/ taxonomy functions would make it easier to
associate feature/ article and knowledge-base parts of the site. Jay reiterated
his proposal to place the knowledge-base topics below the latest feature, in the
way the current PhillyIMC site displays older features in two columns below
their larger latest feature:
http://phillyimc.org/

Jay also commented on how the features and knowledge-base could be integrated:
"Maybe when you click on each of the categories in the knowledge base you'll get
to the main category page. At the top of each category page will be the most
recent feature from the newswire that has been put in that category. That way,
the news and the knowledge base will really be intertwined."

Roadmap

I put together a rough roadmap for development towards the full-fledged site.
This is just a starting point and I encourage criticisms, suggestions, proposed
changes etc:
http://www.openplans.org/projects/imc-alternatives/tech

Dave pointed out that once we have consensus on a general timeline for the
project as a whole, a more detailed roadmap for the techs could be created using
Trac:
http://svn.axxs.org/projects/alternatives

Getting up a bare bones, traditional IMC site (on Drupal or Plone) would force
us to settle on some basics; name, logo, aesthetic design (colours etc). It
would hopefully start to attract a group of users who could give us feedback on
what further functions would be useful. As Dave pointed out 'release early,
release often'.

Adding the knowledge-base would be the second priority. Then activist networking
and other advanced functions would be rolled out as quickly as practical. We
talked briefly about the various options for this, including using an existing
package like ActivismNetwork or Crabgrass, or coding something from scratch as a
Drupal module(s) or in Plone. Qopi pointed out that RiseUp now have a working
test implementation of Crabgrass if people want to try it out:
http://we.riseup.net

Plone test site

Dave is going to put up a Plone test site on the new Axxs server ASAP. Hopefully
the Drupal crew will do the same. Space is available on the new Axxs for these.

Freebase

Qopi also shared the link to Freebase:
http://www.freebase.com

Although their content is licensed under CreativeCommons Attribution, this site
doesn't seem to have released their source code. However I am quite interested
in the fact that they are using a graph data structure which is
non-heirarchical, unlike most databases which use heirarchical tree structures.
I wonder if we could incorporate this concept into the way we build our
knowledge-base?

So that's the summary for the chat. Jay might want to add his usual summary of
any other progress made on-list or realworld.

I really want to encourage people to practice editing the OpenPlans.org wiki and
help to tidy up, add to or otherwise improve our wikispace there so that new
volunteers coming into the project can see at a glance what our goals are, our
timeline and where we are at in our development. If you don't feel confident
making changes, feel free to bring up proposed changes on the list. These can
then become a basis for discussion which will help us make decisions and advance
the project.

Have a great week everyone!
RnB
Strypes