[Imc-alternatives] IRC meeting/ Project Direction

[strypes]

Kia ora koutou

There seem to be a number of interrelated things that need to be sorted
out in a more coordinated way. The exact wording of the editorial policy
will depend on the moderator functionality the site offers. The
application of the visual design will depend on certain back-end
functions being in place. What functions we need will need to be
separated out and clearly listed, although much of it is suggested by
the designs Nick has put together, with more detail on our wiki.

To move these things forward, I suggest having an irc chat session of
the implementation team. I will be flat out with exams and election
campaign for just over 2 weeks, but after that I can set aside some
time to work on this. Can we get some indications of who'd like to
participate in such an irc meeting, and when they are available after Nov 8?

Jay:
On the name AlternativesIMC. Yes, I think since we were fairly evenly
split between alternatives, and solutions (some us internally split ;),
it seems sensible to stay with the name that we've been using since the
start.

Robbt:
The project has very clear direction, it might help if you read the
documentation we've assembled on our wiki...
http://www.openplans.org/projects/imc-alternatives/

...and our networking site on Crabgrass:
https://we.riseup.net/imc-alt/

Are you aware of all the functions that an IMC newswire needs?
1) anonymous publishing of articles and comments, with no logging of IP
addresses or anything else that could identify users
2) moderators can move articles and comments off the newswire to a
'hidden files' area, linked from the front page

and some more that are useful:
4) moderators can promote particularly well-written, and well-researched
articles as features
5) moderators can rethread articles as comments (in case someone replies
on the newswire instead of commenting on the article)
6) ability for moderators hide articles from the web but keep them in
the database

There seems to be no way to do 1) on AltIMC.org yet. Can it do 2)? Can
it do any of 4), 5), and 6)?

Nick:
Would it be possible to begin applying your visual design to what we
have so far, even if just means starting with the front page, so we can
start to get an idea what the final product will look like.

If there is no Drupal module(s) that provide the Activist Networking
functions we want, what about linking to our Crabgrass site on
We.Riseup.Net, and applying Nick's visual design to it? That would mean
we don't need to figure out how to migrate that data if we change
codebases. We just link the new site to the same Crabgrass site.

BTW It's really promising to see projects like open source social
networking tools like Crabgrass, and Elgg emerging. I'm particularly
interested in the Open Data Definition that Elgg are proposing, and the
Open Social standard that Google have been working on with a number of
the mainstream social networking sites. Would email have taken off as a
tool to the degree it has if you could only email people on the same
server as you? I think it's an important medium/ long term goal that our
networking system interoperates as easily as possible with others'.

RnB
Strypes


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