RE: [hackers] Fwd: User account details for joshk at Indiana for Dean
And Ryze... Who else is on Ryze? I'm ahynes1 there. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Joshua Koenig Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2003 7:02 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [hackers] Fwd: User account details for joshk at Indiana for Dean >> 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.
Re: [hackers] Fwd: User account details for joshk at Indiana for Dean
On Sun, Jul 27, 2003 at 09:32:01PM -0700, Ka-Ping Yee wrote: > On Sun, 27 Jul 2003, Jay R. Ashworth wrote: > > NNTP. > > You do realize that what we are doing is rebuilding much of > what NNTP is supposed to do, don't you? Of course I do. That's precisely why I recommended you use the infrastructure and tools already extant. > That's slightly tongue-in-cheek -- but only slightly. Multiple > sites aggregating articles, sharing articles with each other, > updating each other on new posts: it's been done, and it's called > Usenet. Of course we're adding user authentication, nice graphics, > and more structured data -- but it's worth noting that Usenet > didn't work by having every site poll every other site for updates. > > Just something to think about. And it's *also* worth noting that it's *miserable* -- I mean *REALLY REALLY* painful, to follow more than about 4 web forums, run on different sites, hosted by different software packages, with different command structures, and different signons. Stipulated, some percentage of the crowd will *only* ever go here... but I'm inclined to think that's a smaller percentage than might seem obvious... and that the proper solution is to build a web-based NNTP client front end and use the already existant infrastructure which is tuned for that, instead of rebuilding the wheel. MIME is not real popular on traditional Usenet, but no reason you can't use it in a custom implementation on top... Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth[EMAIL PROTECTED] Member of the Technical Staff Baylink RFC 2100 The Suncoast Freenet The Things I Think Tampa Bay, Floridahttp://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 OS X: Because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows -- Simon Slavin, on a.f.c
Re: [hackers] Fwd: User account details for joshk at Indiana for Dean
NNTP. Well, and why the hell not! :) Lynn S. - Lynn Siprelle * Writer, Mother, Programmer, Fiber Artisan The New Homemaker: http://www.newhomemaker.com/ Siprelle & Associates: http://www.siprelle.com/ People-Powered Howard! http://www.deanforamerica.com/
RE: [hackers] Fwd: User account details for joshk at Indiana for Dean
I've performed a final update on the source dateBook schema And have posted an XSD for the document at http://www.hack4dean.org/phpwiki/index.php?EnhancedRSSSchema Changes include the following: I've created a new element called an that can be used when announcing a simple event with no need for highly structured scheduling information. An can be a top-level element, but when you have a collection of events together that are at least somewhat related, you should generally place them within a wrapper. A can in turn handle zero or more events and zero or more schedules. A schedule is divided into tracks, and a track in turn is divided into sessions. This makes it possible to create schedules within day-views of events. I've added the optional element to the element. and are mutually exclusive, you cannot have both simultaneously. If neither or is included, the assumption is made that the event will take place for 1 hour. I've added elements to , , , and elements. This will use the taxonomy utilized by the Dropal taxonomy module. I'm working on the media namespace now, and it will likely be a hybrid SMIL document, but I'm still deciding how well that works. -- Kurt Cagle
RE: [hackers] Fwd: User account details for joshk at Indiana for Dean
I used to be a big fan of newsgroups, but I've fallen out of love with them for a number of reasons. They are incredibly difficult to moderate, keeping them free from SPAM is difficult at best, and it's a metaphor that people are going to less and less. I'd say that if we were going to set up a newsgroup, it should be pretty far down the priority list. -- Kurt -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jay R. Ashworth Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2003 11:59 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [hackers] Fwd: User account details for joshk at Indiana for Dean On Sat, Jul 26, 2003 at 08:18:46PM -0700, Lynn Siprelle wrote: > On mailing lists vs bulletin boards: I'm with you on that one. Mailing > lists scale much better than bulletin boards, except that searching a > Yahoo group sucks rocks. I'm hep with the gateway vibe myself. > Discuss. :) NNTP. I know everyone seems to want to go ape over "how complicated it is" and "how no one seems to know how to use it", but, you know, "Death of Usenet Predicted; Film at 11". And it *is* designed for that sort of discussion. Flutterby, among other basically-web-forum-y venues has just built an NNTP backend to allow the use of a news client to follow discussions. So why *not* dean.* Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] Member of the Technical Staff Baylink RFC 2100 The Suncoast Freenet The Things I Think Tampa Bay, Floridahttp://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 OS X: Because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows -- Simon Slavin, on a.f.c
Re: [hackers] Fwd: User account details for joshk at Indiana for Dean
On Sat, Jul 26, 2003 at 08:18:46PM -0700, Lynn Siprelle wrote: > On mailing lists vs bulletin boards: I'm with you on that one. Mailing > lists scale much better than bulletin boards, except that searching a > Yahoo group sucks rocks. I'm hep with the gateway vibe myself. > Discuss. :) NNTP. I know everyone seems to want to go ape over "how complicated it is" and "how no one seems to know how to use it", but, you know, "Death of Usenet Predicted; Film at 11". And it *is* designed for that sort of discussion. Flutterby, among other basically-web-forum-y venues has just built an NNTP backend to allow the use of a news client to follow discussions. So why *not* dean.* Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth[EMAIL PROTECTED] Member of the Technical Staff Baylink RFC 2100 The Suncoast Freenet The Things I Think Tampa Bay, Floridahttp://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 OS X: Because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows -- Simon Slavin, on a.f.c
Re: [hackers] Fwd: User account details for joshk at Indiana for Dean
This is long, forgive me. I started to respond to this in depth but I found myself repeating myself a lot, so I'm going to sum up (believe it or not, this is the summary). I don't speak for the group, I can only speak from my understanding, but my understanding is this: On coercing other sites into using our kit: This is A tool, not THE tool. Folks are welcome to use whatever tools they've got. We're focusing on drupal because we think we can easily set it up both as modules for existing drupal sites to drop in and also as a kit folks can roll out and have an easy-to-work with set of tools. I am fond of saying I am a designer who learned to program in self-defense, and granted, I am a quick study but I'm not THAT quick and in the last month I've written three themes and a couple of modules, and I have two more themes underway. If we do this right, we will have a kit that allows you to run an install script from the web and bing you're ready to go--if you choose to use the hack4dean/DeanSpace install. On mailing lists vs bulletin boards: I'm with you on that one. Mailing lists scale much better than bulletin boards, except that searching a Yahoo group sucks rocks. I'm hep with the gateway vibe myself. On feeds: Let's say I'm the webmaster of Oregon4Dean. (I have no idea if there is one, I haven't looked yet. If there isn't, I think I just volunteered myself. K.) I don't have time to search through every weblog in/about Oregon to find the ones for Howard Dean--and I even know how. I'd rather depend on my software to allow interested people to set up a political blog if they'd like on my site, and then rely on the networking/syndication tools to send that info up and down the hierarchy.* I myself have two blogs, three if you count the hack4dean one I'm running at Kombucha Brewers for Dean. One is my ezine's blog, where I try to cover news that's important to my readers, one is at my religious website where I cover news related to earth spirituality (where I run drupal), and once there's a local or virtual Dean community I want to join I'll probably get a political one going too. I don't like cluttering up my more site-specific blogs with other issues like politics other than occasional mentions. I imagine I'm not the only experienced blogger who feels that way, for one, and for seconds, if this works the way we think it's going to, we'll be bringing in a lot of folks who've never even HEARD the word "blog" before and getting them excited about the possibilities (I'm watching this happen right now on my religious site and we're not even involved in something as exciting as a grassroots campaign). People who want to opt out of this aggregation, that's fine, opt out. It's all good, as the kids say these days. On hosting: We've been going around and around about the feasibility of setting up a host of our own and I'm staying out of that one. Under FEC rules, if I'm understanding this right, my corporation Siprelle & Associates Inc. can contribute $2000 worth of hosting services. It charges $10/mo under "family and friends" rate for hosting that includes PHP, MySQL, email and blah de blah, so that works out to 200 months of hosting. Let's say we go all the way, and we have every reason to believe we're headed for November '04 . That works out to about 14 sites for 14 months, if they were established today. So we line up 1,000 people and companies like S&A, and you know we're out there. I don't think that's such a tall order. I really don't. And this is if we make things official or whatever. I am so not following the FEC conversations, I am just trying to keep my nose clean and code. Discuss. :) Lynn S. *Having said this, a blog/site registration module to allow bloggers and site managers with RSS feeds to register their feeds at DeanSpace sites and add them to the Dean aggregation/distribution of info is not a bad idea. DON'T LOOK AT ME, I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO PROGRAM SOMETHING LIKE THIS. Well, actually, I think I might if it's just registering the feed. oh god, what have I done...
[hackers] Fwd: User account details for joshk at Indiana for Dean
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 feed
