[Fwd: Re: [Lopsa-tools] Ok, now what?]

[Doug Hughes]

David Nolan wrote:
> 
> 
> --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.
> 

there is wiki markup available on the site for any created content so
that new content can be linked automatically. Also we have totally
separate mediawiki stuff where things could be put as well.

> 
>> 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
> 
Most of these we could do out of the box with drupal. (not sure about
voting, but tags, submission, voting, comments, categories, structure,
subscriptions for sure)

> 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.)
> 
hm. interesting. THere are several different voting modules. It will be
interesting to see if they can be extended that way. (or if they do it
out of the box)

> 
> 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?

Yup. we *want* to host it.

The grand idea is that all categories for things should be interrelated.
Thus, with the standards project, we have categories for the different
standards (I just put some together last night), and tools should/can
interlink into the sames sorts of categories to provide some really
useful cross-referencing capability.