[uportal-dev] birthing projects

[Andrew Petro]

Web presence: What Scott et. al. have done with /products/cas/ is very effective and professional looking. It also requires the contributors to get their brains around Hypercontent in order to contribute, and  therefore disempowers people who don't have their brains around Hypercontent from contributing.  That's probably part of why it's effective: fewer people to cause the vision and aesthetics to stray. I think Confluence *can* produce usable and effective web sites.  I see success emerging in CAS manual and uPortal manual, and I look with some jealousy at what Atlassian themselves have been able to do with Confluence. Chris, if you see a way to make Confluence effective in giving your portlet a web presence, I prefer that -- I find Confluence far more approachable and inclusive of contribution. Supporting email lists: If creating lists incurs "more administrative burden then it's worth", then we're doing email lists very wrongly.  Email lists are cheap, easy, and flexible, with all sorts of external integrations so that people who don't like lists can choose to consume them as web forums or nntp or RSS or whatever. I'd look for a naming convention like: <project>[EMAIL PROTECTED] for collaboration of actual development of a project, and <project>[EMAIL PROTECTED] for more open-ended discussion. Dedicated lists for various purposes have the nice property of organizing the resulting archives to be more useful.  Where do I go for info on this bookmarks portlet?  Currently I'd have to open-endedly search all of [EMAIL PROTECTED]  If there's a more focused list, there will be more focused archives. Dedicated lists are also more approachable for current outsiders.  While Eric's portlet is excellent, I doubt there's anything higher-ed-specific about Bookmarks.  Unless this JSR-168 standard is a hoax, it should be true that this portlet will work in other portals.  So the question becomes, what's the barrier to entry for a current outsider to get involved, when he's *not* interested in uPortal but is interested in this portlet?  No specific list, the message is that this portlet is an incidental part of uP rather than a real standalone project. I guess a lot of my affinity lists comes from admiring the way Apache uses them to encourage self-organization. Establishing licensing terms on new web content up front rather than after the fact: New email lists and web presences are also an opportunity to establish the licensing rules on shared content up front.  Something like "All posters on this list agree to license and are licensing their posted content under Creative Commons - Attribution."  Making the terms of engagement around harvesting worthwhile information out of these lists and digesting it into that nice web presence clearer.  Worthwhile discussion and solutions whiz by on cas*@ or [EMAIL PROTECTED]  Archived email lists are better than nothing, but progress is made by digesting that content into compelling documentation that avoids having to discuss these things over and over. Currently we're in an unhappy place where well-meaning JA-SIG contributors wanting to re-process community knowledge in this way are technically sticking their necks out.  JA-SIG should fix that where possible. Chris Doyle wrote: I would very much love to see this project break out of the aforementioned “trappings of projectness” as well, yes.  Is there a venue preference for its web presence (wiki vs. http://www.ja-sig.org/products/portlets/bookmarks/)?  I’m a fan of cleaning up the Channels and Portlets spaces in the wiki, following suit with the great work being done in the uPortal manual space.  I’m also a fan of creating supporting e-mail lists for such projects, so long as it doesn’t create more of an administrative burden than it’s worth.  Any thoughts on naming convention for such lists (<project>@lists.ja-sig.org)?   --Chris     From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Andrew Petro Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2007 1:14 PM To: uportal-dev@lists.ja-sig.org Subject: Re: [uportal-dev] Bookmarks Portlet   Chris, The incremental approach sounds best, yes.  I have no problem being listed as the project lead, so long as it's okay with everyone else.   +1 [1] for an incremental approach involving making these improvements in bookmarks /trunk and frequently tagging and releasing working code. Thanks to some last-minute assistance by Eric and others, this Bookmarks Portlet will ship with uPortal 2.6.0 as an example showcasing the JSR-168 support.  I'd love to see it be feasible to include updated versions of the portlet in subsequent patch releases of 2.6. Chris, per our discussion at the JHU dev meeting, I wonder if this is an opportunity to build out the "trappings of projectness" around this project -- a clearer web presence, whether in confluence or at http://www.ja-sig.org/products/portlets/bookmarks/.  Email list(s) dedicated to discussing developing and deploying this portlet could help to give it identity? Andrew [1]: (including the Apache sense of implicit volunteerism to help if necessary) -- Join your friends and colleagues at JA-SIG with Altitude: June 24-27, 2007 in Denver, CO USA. Featuring keynotes by: Phil Windley, Matt Raible, Matt Asay Sessions on topics including: CAS, uPortal, Portlets, Sakai, Identity Management, and Open Source For more information & registration visit: http://www.ja-sig.org/conferences/07summer/index.html --- You are currently subscribed to uportal-dev@lists.ja-sig.org as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]