Hi Adam, I have to second Tobias' remark below; for long-term sustainability, rolling your own site presents a problem. I'm sure it's easiest for your developers to work on the way it is now, but it also means that TIG must commit to the ongoing maintenance and development of the site. Since the topic of DDN's sustainability is being raised, I'm guessing this is causing significant overhead on your end.
It also presents a barrier to entry for other folks who might want to help out, and means that any new functionality can't be contributed by the open source ecology, but happens when a. TIG writes the code and b. TIG ports the code to the DDN instance. My understanding is that open platforms like Drupal are growing faster than TIG, so this can be frustrating. I think TIG's done an awesome job shepherding DDN these past few years (with no budget!), but I worry about the limitations of a proprietary platform for a movement with little financial resources. I can volunteer to help with the email queue, if you have a system set up for volunteer moderators. Thanks! Dave. On Oct 29, 2008, at 8:53 AM, Tobias Eigen wrote: > Thanks Adam - this is all very interesting. > > I think the biggest problem I am seeing is that emails get stacked > up for > approval - this really limits any real discussion that might take > place here > on this list. I'd propose either opening it up or recruiting some > volunteers > to help manage the approval queue on a daily if not more regular > basis. > > The ning idea is a good one, especially since it's a free (advertising > driven) platform. I believe educators can get advertising-free spaces. > Another platform well suited for email-empowered online communities is > golightly, used at http://groups.nten.org > > If you are really concerned about costs for DDN into the future, then > rolling your own site might not be a great idea. > > Cheers, > > Tobias > > On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 9:07 AM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> Thanks for the responses to our idea of what to do with DDN :) >> >> To clear somethings up: >> >> -Tobias asked if the donation for membership is voluntary or not. >> We have >> no intention of charging people to access DDN. What we do want to >> do is >> identify people who are financial supporters of DDN. We don't have a >> donation system set up yet because we wanted to make sure that it >> was a >> good idea first. >> >> -The wiki issue is being looked into. The system should be able to >> handle >> your existing DDN login information so you don't have to create two >> accounts and login to both all the time. >> >> -Taran's idea of GoogleAds is interesting and we'll have our tech >> team see >> how easy it is to implement. Which should be very easy. The hard >> part will >> be finding a space for them as we don't want GoogleAds on the front >> page >> of DDN has it may make the site look less credible. Any thoughts on >> that >> note? >> >> -Many people have suggested moving DDN to a new system. This is >> just as >> hard (or even harder) than keeping our current system running. We've >> though about this at TIG and were moving ahead with our system >> because it >> is the easiest for our developers to work on. >> >> Adam Clare >> _______________________________________________ >> DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list >> DIGITALDIVIDE@digitaldivide.net >> http://digitaldivide.net/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide >> To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. >> > > > > -- > Tobias Eigen > > Senior Steward - IT > Global Action Networks-Net (GAN-Net) > http://www.gan-net.net > > Executive Director > Kabissa - Space for Change in Africa > http://www.kabissa.org > _______________________________________________ > DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list > DIGITALDIVIDE@digitaldivide.net > http://digitaldivide.net/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide > To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@digitaldivide.net http://digitaldivide.net/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
