Sebastian and All,
It is interesting that you point out the potential value of a Stack/Overflow
approach to a FAQ-like community communication channel with such a timely and
specific example.
Your insight and example bring up two points I'd like to contribute to the
conversation:
* No matter what is "under the hood" of the new cidoc-crm.org website, it
should have no public-facing user account system in support of any
community-interactive features that may be in the new site design or which may
be added to it in the future. And,
* All community outreach and support features of the new website should be
"outsourced" to the best and most popular appropriate "social communication"
channel available. For example, our obviously-needed Modeling FAQ is outsourced
to Stack/Overflow, within-page commenting to Disqus or Quora, event calendars
to Meetup or Eventbrite, and blog posts, articles, and/or whitepapers, etc. to
a #cidocCRM-topical Publications on Medium.com, etc.
I make this recommendation based on many years of responsibility for small,
interactive community websites. The complementary forces at work make this
recommendation compelling:
* Any public-facing user-account based feature on even a small, infrequently
visited website is under 24/7/365 attack with user account sign-ups and comment
spam, etc. We do not need to waste any SIG member time or SIG financial
resources beating back this flotsam. The "good kind" of outsourcing of website
community interactive features puts this responsibility in the "hands of the
professionals."
* While outsourcing community interactive website features to best-of-breed
third-party services makes site admin easier, we gain something that is of EVEN
GREATER VALUE: highly effective outreach and promotion via the HUGE existing
social networks of these free or low-cost services.
Third-party services -- like Stack/Overflow, Disqus, and Medium, etc. -- have
their own sophisticated service-wide community-building recommendation engines
and related user communication features. These sophisticated systems encourage
loyal user interest discovery that works as a "feeder system" bringing new
users to the websites of those using the outsourced service.
We all, at least intuitively, know that the "reach of interest" in the
#cidocCRM will continue to grow beyond its initial museum roots. On the one
hand, we are preparing for expanded interest and use within our own domain of
museum informatics. However, a good conceptual reference (meta)model with a
community of practitioners doing innovative exploration in the semantic web and
linked open data space is going to attract non-domain Kindred Spirits. Such
non-anticipated interest can lead to "innovation imports" as well as
"honeypots" of collaborative research project funding, etc.
Bottom line: "Smart" (low-impact) website design and Social Media Engagement go
hand-in-hand in today's web world. The #cidocCRM SIG will be well-served by
leveraging this relationship with coordinated new website and enhanced social
media engagement initiatives.
I hope we keep these ideas in mind as the SIG develops the new cidoc-crm.org
website.
Happy-Healthy Vibes,
-: Jim :-
Jim Salmons
Twitter: @Jim_Salmons, @FactMiners, @Softalk_Apple
Sites: www.FactMiners.org www.SoftalkApple.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Sebastian Rahtz [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2015 4:06 AM
To: Jim Salmons
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Crm-sig] #cidocCRM SIG New Business Item: Social Media Engagement
I’m all in favour of normalising the social media presence of the CRM.
The idea of a "StackOverflow account/section to provide community-based FAQ
support for modeling and software design questions”
is intriguing. That could be a good way to remove some of the mystique behind
the CRM (I was in a meeting yesterday of Oxford museum and library people who
_again_ dismissed the CRM as “just far too complicated”). We need more
practical documents like that at
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/34109569/Mapping%20Narrative4.pdf
Sebastian Rahtz
Chief Data Architect, IT Services
