Some very interesting perspectives from the webmaster at indianafordean.
Worth a read.
He's invited any of us that want to discuss further to join him in IRC.
irc.openirc.net #deanchat
cheers -josh
From: IFD Webmaster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sat Jul 26, 2003 3:42:56 PM US/Pacific To: Joshua Koenig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: Zack Rosen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: User account details for joshk at Indiana for Dean
So, do you intend to take a stock Drupal source tree, hack it up, and then
release that as your kit? I would prefer to see the tools you're building
be drop-in modules, and any core Drupal code modifications rolled into the
main source tree. Hopefully this is the approach you're taking.
Looking at the design goals again, here are a few concerns to think about:
Calendar:
The tool doesn't send E-mail reminders prior to the event. The Dean
groups in our state are hooked on Yahoo Groups, and their calendar does
this. The existing Drupal calendar needs to be modified to support this.
Mailing List/Message Forums:
The majority of Dean groups across the country are using Yahoo
Groups/Lists. How do you intend to convince all of these folks to move
away from those and sign-up to local site lists? Frankily, there are just
too many mailing lists already.. look at our site.. Indiana has five!
I think the logic of "mailing lists for small groups, forums for big ones"
is backward. A web-based forum is not a good medium by itself for large
groups where there will be many postings. Even with threading and searching,
it becomes hard for people to dig out the information they're looking for.
If you really want forums, get every "state for Dean" site setup with one
mailing list each by consolidating the existing lists, and then tie this
in with a web-based forum and an NNTP news feed. See http://papercut.org/
which is written by a friend of mine. The mailing list would then populate
the forums and the news feeds. All the information is now the same for
multiple tools (which lets people use the ones they're most comfortable
with)... syndicate the results.
Getting existing mailing lists consolidated would allow more thoughts and
ideas to reach everyone involved, instead of having isolated pockets of
information, and requiring everyone to subscribe to multiple groups or
look at multiple places/tools. Social engineering plays a role in this as
much, if not more so, than technical prowess.
News/Blogger Tools:
Many folks have their own blogs on other blog sites. Is it really
necessary to have even more? I would encourage these tools to be disabled
locally as we have done, and just have folks use existing blog resources.
As long as those provide RSS ability, it's trivial to syndicate them on
the local site.
General concerns:
It's a lot of effort for little gain in terms of practical usability to
end-users. All of this relies on the assumption that the consumers of
these services check websites more frequently than they check E-mail. It
also assumes that existing sites not using Drupal will be compelled to
switch because of the new tools, and that these folks have the necessary
technical expertise to set it up. I'm not sure who these 40 groups are,
but I assume some of them are existing "state for Dean" sites. If you've
noticed, a lot of those use the http://www.fordean.org/ tools, which is a
pretty good indicator of their abilities. The majority of existing sites
are not dynamic or DB driven.
Our philosophy is not based on flooding the web with more Dean sites, but rather enabling Dean-supporters to easily set up locally-relevant nodes which are used by campaign participants to coordinate,to get information that's specific and relevant to them, and to express their own voice in a way that the entire campaign can potentially hear.
While this sounds like a noble goal, the "to easily set up" part
assumes a lot. Setting up Apache/PHP/MySQL and installing
Drupal+Hack4Dean kit isn't trivial for my interpretation of the target
audience. Look at those 40 groups you mentioned. Is it safe to say they
have the ability to do this?
Most people don't have the first set of requirements. They would have to
pay to host their sites on an ISP that does, which usually isn't cheap.
This isn't meant to sound negative again, but I'm just curious if you've
done a reality check lately. :)
Maybe my assumption regarding the target audience is wrong. In any case,
it may be a good idea to provide resources for those interested,
such as a listing of ISPs that would be suitable for hosting Drupal sites.
What about hack4dean.org and americansfordean.org? Where are you hosting
your sites? I am only running indianafordean.org because I don't pay for
my bandwidth, and had existing server resources in place for my other
projects. It shouldn't cost people too much to do this sort of thing.
We then want to implement a "mothership" node which can track all the multivariate RSS feeds which are produced and be a go-to source for people looking for information on Dean, or who want to get a birds-eye view of what's going on in the Dean online universe. Think Technorati, but specifically tailored for the Dean web. We also want to implement (in close coordination with the campaign) a centralized site to organize active volunteers in a social network ala Friendster or Ryze.
I have never seen or heard of technorati.com prior to today. I've heard
of Friendster (which is lame, IMO), but not Ryze. These are all
sites that cator to the younger and/or technically savy generation.
They're not places that middle-age and up tend to visit/use, and there are
obvious reasons for that. So, if your target audience is the first
group, I guess you're on the right track. If you want to appeal to a
broader audience, you might consider the difficulty that some of these
tools will pose for different groups. Granted, they don't have to use
them.. just make sure there are other, more simple means of getting the
information.
http://www.fordean.org/ is pretty concise. It's a single webpage that
lists all the "state for Dean" sites, and/or mailing lists. The Yahoo
Group mailing lists offer tools that a lot of people seem to understand,
and it seems to be enough for many of them. Otherwise, why would there
be so many now? I don't think it's because better tools don't exist.
Anyway, now that I have your email address I'll probably shoot you some
far more specific questions at some point soon. Hopefully this has
given you a better sense of our hopes and dreams; I'd be most
interested to hear you comments on any of this, but I also understand
your time constraints.
We and other existing Drupal sites may benefit in some way from the tools
this project will be creating. But I hope it's made clear to those
other 40+ groups what the requirements are, and what it will take for them
to use these tools.
Hopefully I've provided you with some things to think about. Let us know
when the tools mature to a point where we could beta test them.. I'd be
happy to do so and provide feedback. And yes, if you have more specific
questions, feel free to ask.
-phillip
------------------------ Politics is the art of controlling your environment. Participate! Elect Howard Dean President in 2004! http://www.outlandishjosh.com/politics/dean/
