Leigh Blackall wrote: > Many of the features Wayne and you have introduced are pretty good though, > but it > is a concern that they are introduced without any evident consultation > with the "community" while the "community" requests seem to go by > without even a trial!
For the record -- the technology road map where Liquid Threads was introduced to the community was uploaded on WE on 19 February 2007 -- (see http://www.wikieducator.org/index.php?title=WikiEducator_roadmap&oldid=20169). It's great to have a technology that records every edit and is open for anyone to contribute. There were no objections noted on the relevant talk pages. I ran an online workshop using Moodle and the Newbie Tutorials in March 2007 with 78 participants around the world. Newbies were confused by using an external Moodle forum for discussions while the tutorials were on WE. I recieved numerous complaints from this group of WikiEducators. We took the decision to resource and develop LQT. I don't have the exact dates with me -- development commenced in May 2007. There was a window period of at least 3 months for WikiEducators to communicate that they did not want discussion functionality improved. Yes - I take full responsibility for the decision to go ahead with the development of LQT on WE -- which we have released back to the MW community. Thinking about Kaltura ... Leigh -- you have unashamedly been the most vocal advocate in the WE community concerning the need to incorporate 3rd party rich media. I share your enthusiasm for the pedagogical potential of rich media in education. In the same breath I have been conservative in simply going ahead with the incorporation of extensions due to concerns associated with proprietary software and the risks of excluding the developing world. Kaltura seemed like a good compromise -- while extensively based on Flash technology -- the code is being released as open source. I'm very uncomfortable with this reliance on Flash and proprietary media formats because this will make it very difficult to collaborate with other free content projects. Leigh you are right -- there was not extensive discussion with the community whether we should or shouldn't test the extension. I made a value judgment that it would be in the interests of the community to test the technology before taking decisions on whether to incorporate this or not. However -- we did not in any way imply that this was a community decision -- in Erik's notification he wrote "Per discussion with Wayne I've turned on the Kaltura extension" and on the instructions page there was a very clear statement that this was merely a test. Again - I take full responsibility for this decision. WE is a community project funded by an international development agency. (Note -- we are not a technology company <smile>.) We believe firmly in the merits of the WE project in widening access to education by developing a free curriculum. However, we are taking one step at a time. Relatively speaking we are still a very small community by comparison to the WMF projects -- consequently the costs of hosting more than one server have not been warranted. The downside is that we do run a risk of downtime. As the sole funder of WE -- COL has done it's best to ensure and promote a participatory community governance model. Early in 2007 I nominated an international advisory board for the project with a clear statement that when we reach 2500 users we will democratically elect a WE council for the project. You will be aware of these discussions. As COL funds this project -- I have a fiduciary responsibility to act and yes -- take decisions in what I believe to be in the best interests of the initiative. I'm sure that I've made mistakes and don't get things right all of the time. But hey -- there are elections coming up and the community can vote whoever they want onto the Council to lead the project. A successful project is one which can sustain itself -- if after a few years they project cannot run on its own -- it's been a failure. So our hosting discussions are an excellent test for the robustness and commitment of the community to our collective project. I'm particularly pleased that the contributions to the list so far are opting for a strong community driven model as opposed to a commercial hosting solution -- that's a good sign for ongoing success. Leigh wrote: >>I too hope this community (or I) do not begin second guessing WE, as a hell >>of a lot has been invested in it this end. I hope that you will not need to second guess WE -- OtagoPoly are establishing a leadership position within NZ in the free knowledge movement. That said, I do not want you to feel that your work is at risk. Therefore, I will arrange for a database dump of all WE content so that OtagoPoly can access a copy of all your work to date should you wish to migrate to another hosting solution. Paradoxically -- last night Google groups were having major issues. So if a big corporate like Google can have access issues with their servers -- I guess its OK for a small operation like COL to have a few growing pains with its free content project <smile>. Cheers Wayne --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" 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/wikieducator?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
