Thinking about the MetaDean element of this project, I'm realizing that I don't have a lot of time in the next few days/week to get my hands dirty with the code. However, there are other people who've signed on to do some work on this, and who knows who else might be excited by the project. While I don't have time to get in there and code, I do have some time to help facilitate others. Below you'll find my assessments and recommendations as to how to proceed.
This is my no means a difinitive list of TODOs or even anything anyone should feel obliged to do. There may be a better way around all of this, but these are my suggestions as to how we might get started. If there's interest, email back and ask questions on the developers list. We can have an IRC session if need be to work out all the concepts. Everyone who wants to work on this should read the MetaDean page in the wiki.
http://www.hack4dean.org/phpwiki/index.php?MetaDean
Also, if you're not already, you should sign up for the developers list. There are instructions on how to do this on the hack4dean.org homepage.
# What we have:
1) An sql database scehma 2) Some data for nodes table 3) A basic web form for loading more data into the notes tables
All of these are attached to this email as a tarball.
# What In think we want to do:
0) Review my SQL. I'm not a very advanced user. There may be improvements to be made.
1) Create some mechanism to start watching the known DeanSpace
- A script that loads all Node Feed urls from metadean_nodes, spiders them, and stores the results in another table (e.g. metadean_feeds, which needs to be created).
- A script that can spider a big list of existing dean sites and see which are currently producing RSS and which are not. Those that are should have the RSS url's put into the metadean_nodes table and the feed cached. Those that shouldn't should be flagged so we can contact them and offer tools.
- Hack at drupal so that the "phone home" feature can also send updates to metadean
2) Start populating the metadean_talent table
- Hack at Drupal's registration form to add fields and an opt-in box which will also send user data into metadean.
- Create a non-drupal form to do the same.
- Hack at Drupal to built a module which will list all registered users and syndicate this list (or rather a list of those who've opted in) as RSS in such a way that metadean can periodically spiter Drupal Dean Sites for more talent.
3) Start trying to do things with cached RSS and known sites/talent.
- Experimentation is probably good for starters.
- Find a way to see what news items, similar links, or keywords are popping up in numerous places.
- Start mapping the Dean Network
Make sense to anyone? Let me know! -josh
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metadean.tgz
Description: GNU Zip compressed data
