[Lopsa-tools] Ok, now what?

[David Nolan]

--On Sunday, March 26, 2006 17:39:27 -0700 Scott 
<scott at thereisnoarizona.org> wrote:

>> From my understanding, there was to be a wiki setup. I apologize for not
> following through on this. I have some ideas of what I see in a tools
> catalog also, and I think that this list would be an appropriate place
> for it (and perhaps a link to the list on the projects page and the
> ToolCatalog page?).
>

Well it looks like the entire lopsa.org side is running on a wiki like CMS 
of some kind.  I see an edit button on the Tools Catalog page for example, 
and on the edit page there is description of the wiki syntax options 
available.


> So, first I put forth using a wiki for this project. I can't offhand
> think of anything existing that would work. I nominate a Mediawiki
> setup, not being a TWiki fan. Another thing I would like to see is a
> tips-n-tricks for each tool. Perhaps some mechanism to rate tools in
> their usefulness for each category they belong to.

I've been thinking about this off and on since LISA, and I think we need 
something more then just a wiki.  I'm a huge fan of wikis, heck my first 
response to just about any question from a coworker is "Have you checked 
the wiki?", but I just don't think they'll provide the flexibility we need 
for a tools catalog.

I think the system I'm envisioning would combine the best features of 
freshmeat.net, digg.com and del.icio.us, and add a few more.

The features that other systems have that I would want are:
- Software Categories
- User Submission
- User Tags
- User Voting
- User Comments
- Software ownership/maintainer roles
- Release Notices
- Subscriptions/Bookmarks

The new features I'd like are:
- Additional roles ("I use this", "I tried this", etc.)
- Multi Axis Voting (usefulness, ease of use, documentation, update 
frequency, community support, etc.)


Any suggestions for a good starting point on building such a system?  And 
beyond the software issue, where will we host that system?  Will LOPSA 
provide the hosting, and if so what limitations will they impose on the 
tools they will host?


-David