Wow ... much bigger response than I thought this would get to this. When I first agreed to start doing mailing list summaries here, I had some of the same ideas. I even started a project to implement them ( http://code.google.com/p/summado ) That is about as far as I got. The first summary I put together convinced me (at the time) that a larger collaborative tool wasn't really necessary. I think a lot of that was because that particular time period had a lot of easily identifiable posts that had no real interesting content.
Anyone who is interested in exploring this idea with me is welcome to join the project, just let me know. Rather than churn out a whole pile of responses let me summarize (I know, bad pun) what I think about all of this: Tagging: Great idea, but to what end? If I know nothing about cherrypy (which is just about true) I will probably avoid even looking at writing summaries for any cherrypy-tagged posts. As it is I *have* written summaries about threads dealing with cherrypy and obviously didn't need to be an expert to do so. Instead of tagging by topic, tagging by a summarization-important context would be more useful. I'm thinking tags like: "question-answered", "off-topic", "announcement", etc. Integration of the summarization system and mailing list posts: I don't like it. Is it convenient? Yes, of course. But it hijacks the purpose of the mailing list. We will see posts that contain nothing but the tagging mechanism, or a brief summary, which is going to be confusing as hell to anyone who doesn't understand it. Imagine if you enter a new mailing list, post a question, and have someone reply with: "tags: quesiton, off-topic". I think preserving the interaction methods we already have should be a chief priority. That said, any kind of summarization mechanism should be as simple as possible. There are any number of in obtrusive ways we could handle this, and I have no doubt that something can be determined for each way that people access this list. Automatic categorization/tagging: I like this as well, but don't see much of a way to implement it. Like I said earlier, I think category-level descriptions will hinder summary writing more than they will aid it. After a summary is completed it would make finding posts relevant to what you are talking about easier, so maybe it should be available but hidden from summary authors. Bookmarklet/Plugin/Integration-with-your-viewing-platform: I love this idea. I usually read this list from the web with Firefox, and could easily see a firefox plugin that would support adding tags, writing summaries, and finding related posts. It would be nice to have something that provides a natural progression from resource for finding more information to resource for helping the community categorize its information, which is really what this is about. Other resources: Ok, no one mentioned this, but I think it is important. With some clever structuring this tool could be used to write summaries about and categorize any resource that is important to TurboGears. There are probably a whole world of blog posts, discussions on other forums, and other things that get missed by the community as a whole. Categorizing and summarizing this information can help all of us. Obviously this is getting into the realm of more general sites (like del.icio.us), and maybe that is another option to explore, but I think it would be a shame to let some of these other resources slip. -Adam --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TurboGears" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/turbogears?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
