Welcome to future home of Freedomware Marketing. The Tux Project is going to be shifting gears a bit. This site is set to become a grass-e-roots website where we can all work together to openly collaborate on promoting the use of Freedomware in our local communities. Whether you are a business owner who uses or offers Freedomware solutions, or an individual enthusiast. You will find that this is the place for you to share your promotional ideas and work together collaboratively in order to make them a reality.
LINUX-NOW! Project page
This project aims to make Live CDs available for free by calling 1-877-LINUX-NOW or by going to http://linux-now.info
Call for Free CDs (877)linux-now !
This comment has been moved here.
Is the number on hold?
Google radio ads
A last note before hospital.
Google are offering (or about to offer) a sort of 2 for 1 deal with radio advertising. If you buy $1000 of radio ads now Google will give $2000 of credit towards future ads. Sounds too good to be true, but many things Google does are in that category.
http://services.google.com/ads_inquiry/audioproposal/
This looks like a very hard to beat proposal for linux-now.
Broken link or link processing
The "View available tasks" takes me to the issues page. The link is a different url but leads ultimately to the same looking destination as the "View all pending issues" below it.
Ie, http://thetuxproject.com/project/issues/linuxnow?categories=task and http://thetuxproject.com/project/issues/linuxnow present the same looking webpage.
I think the tasks page url should be http://thetuxproject.com/linux_now_tasks .
Customizing the terminology...
...and link names. As always thank you for actively digging in here Jose. :) I will be customizing the project page parameters to better fit what we are doing here. Keep the constructive input flowing!
All projects should link to related forum topics directly
[edited to make initial post a little more readable.. about one hour after initial posting]
Link to the forum topic that led to Linux Now project: http://thetuxproject.com/node/215 .
*********** ***********
Currently this project has the following sections.
*****
Releases
-- View all releases
-- Add new release
Resources
-- Home page
-- Read documentation
Support
-- View all support requests
-- View pending support requests
-- View pending bug reports
-- View pending feature requests
-- Request support
-- Report new bug
-- Request new feature
Development
-- View pending patches
-- View available tasks
-- View all pending issues
*****
Then we are given the option of adding comments.
I know that projects were just introduced, but I'd like to suggest a way to link up discussions using what is already provided.
We can provide a link to forum topic and other discussions by putting
in a new category called "Discussions." We can add this new category at
the top level above, or place it directly under "Resources", alongside
"Home page" and "Read documentation".
This new feature should perhaps be generalized to work for all projects automatically.
[As an aside, I noticed that the getnix wikibook is considered to be a
"project". Perhaps instead of making a wikibook a project we can place
a wikibook inside a project. The difference is that a "project" can in
this way be abstracted and come with its own set template and allow
itself to be queried or manipulated in a common reusable way with other
projects (we were always able to fake a project through a forum topic
or wikibook).]
Now I'll describe six different views. Each view can actually be
implemented below "Discussions" in a natural manner (or as suggested in
the description). Alternatively, we can hardwire only one or very few
of the views.
Besides describing how we might categorize discussions, the views
described next serve two other purposes. One is to clarify the various
relationships and categories into which discussions might fall. The
other use for these views is to give ideas on what can be accomplished
by a user-centered set of website tools that allow the end user to
customize views of (in this case) discussions as they relate to a
particular project.
View 1:
Discussions [Description: these will include forum topic discussions;
comment threads; external discussions; and any other type of content we
would want to label as a project related discussion]
-- Project Discussions
-- -- [here we find a list of discussions categorized into directory
hierarchies as determined by the project leader (or others). The
discussions links are to forum topics, wikibook entries, and other
comments that are found on the website.]
-- -- [here we find a flat listing of some or all entries classified
above. These links can be created/made by the project "mainteners"
using symlinks. Later on, this can be the section where we allow users
to add customized symlinks to project discussions they want to have
handy instead of hidden inside some directory category. A symlink can
be a distinct entity which has properties (eg, title, description,
explode or not (see below), type, fancy formating options, link target,
list of symlinks that target the same item, etc). We can instead
implement symlinks as simply as a comment holding the link and a
description of it or whatever the user wants to place in the comment.
This second method is flexible and is what we currently use to fake
symlinks, but it's bulky.]
-- Subprojects
-- -- [here we find a list of suprojects. These links go to the "Discussions/Project Discussions" page for that subproject.]
-- Other Related Projects
-- -- [like for subprojects but these are projects that are not under
the umbralla of this project (we would have to define carefully what we
mean by a "subproject"). Until we have tools to do better integration
across a specific set of (related) projects, we could ignore the
earlier Subproject section (and the concept of subprojects) and use
instead this Related Projects section.]
-- Other Related Discussions
-- -- [here we have links to tangentially related forum topics; links
to actual comments starting a relevant thread but in an unrelated forum
topic; links anywhere outside tuxproject and unrelated to tux project]
View 2 [these are links only]:
-- (I) Forums
-- -- [Here we find links to forum categories, forum topics, wikibooks,
article talkbacks, etc, (a) that are directly or indirectly related to
the particular project, (b) that lie within Tux Project or a very
closely affiliated site or neither, and (c) which host comments.]
-- (II) Threads
-- -- [Here we find links to specific comments which begin a thread. We
can use this to draw focus to threads when it makes sense not to focus
on the entire forum where the thread is found. Another use is when we
already link to the forum (through (I) Forums) but want to highlight a
particular thread separately.]
-- (III) Other links
-- -- [Here we find links to all remaining discussion resource links.
These may include links to discussions that took place on archived
email (specific emails or email listings), articles that quote
discussions within the text itself but have no interesting talkbacks
attached, any other page that lists some discussions in a way that
doesn't naturally fall into the first two categories, I or II.]
View 3:
-- (I) Discussions that are directly related to this project
-- (II) Discussions that are indirectly related to this project.
View 4:
-- (I) Discussions that are found on this or a very closely related website.
-- (II) Discussions that are NOT found on this....
View 5:
-- (I) Flat link (subject) listing
-- -- [All links are listed on one page, links that would otherwise be
in categories or generally which would require many links to be
traversed in order to be reached. Useful for gathering links (a) nested
within the project discussion within categories, (b) belonging to
subprojects, (c) belonging to related projects, (d) etc.]
-- (II) Hierarchial
-- -- [These may or may not include symlinks, which allow for various parts of a hierarchy to be shown at different locations.]
-- (III) Inline
-- -- [The actual discussion comments are inline, meaning they can be read from that webpage.]
-- (IV) Exploded
-- -- [These are hybrid views of the above. Examples of this view are
the various online FSF manual pages when listed on a single page.]
We can try to build "exploded view" functionality. To use this from a
webpage, we might offer the option "Create exploded view", and that
page would give us a way to define the parameters of what is to be
exploded. As a first attempt at this, we might have the form prompt the
user for a list of one or more "dirs" within some subsection of
"Discussions" (including the top dir). For each of these entries we
could add "exclude the following dirs" to prune out some stuff. We give
other info such as the title of the view and where it will be placed
(the path might be implied by wherever we were when we decided to
create the view). Then we submit this info to create the exploded view.
Alternatively/additionally, we can provide a manual way to build this
view so that we can handle external website discussions or mix and
match. A manual approach would have to include a few more options than
the "create comment" or "add page" that we currently use to organize
material on forum topics or wikibooks. We should have symlinks, for
example. We may have a location dialog or text area pop up to browse
for paths.
View 6: We can augment any of the other views by allowing, in addition
to discussion material, links to directly/indirectly related material
that are not discussions themselves.
Clarifying the basic tying of discussions to projects
Let me state more briefly the intent of the parent comment. I tried rewriting it, but it's still too ungainly.
Here is the point:
There are many discussions we have had in the past that are interesting
but lie in suspended animation getting buried ever deeper into the
various forum topic listings. Also, over time we forget just where a
particular discussion was taking place and which topics were related to
each other. In the past drupal groups helped group these topics and
that information might still be around but is not being updated. Also,
projects seems to be the new focus. Projects are meant to do various
things, including play the role of the drupal groups. [For those that
are lost, groups are not currently accessible but they were like a
webpage per group that listed a bunch of forum topics on it that had
something in common. For example, there was a Writing Team group.
Script ideas and related topics were tagged as being a part of this
group (as well as other groups).]
I would like to be able to get back to old ideas and discussions very
easily. This is how I might accomplish these steps in the future. I
would know the project name or I would do a search for some discussion
and quickly get the projects that are related to that discussion [many
to many relationship]. Then I bookmark in "my" area the desired
projects found. In the future, I immediately access any of these
projects through "my" area. I then go to the project section that
points to all discussions that have occured that have been tied in to
that project.
The tasks to be done to reach a level where projects are together with
their discussions (and together with any other related resources)
include categorizing discussions and linking them up with relevant
projects (we'll have to create a lot more projects to get started).
That work should be achievable without special access to the website.
It should be done by anyone that creates/owns a project or someone with
the proper access (eg, a user designated as a (co)maintener of a
project.. or maybe even typical project members will be able to do some
of this work). This work can proceed in parallel and generally will be
done by those with an interest in the particular projects.
The other main task is the one that enables the first one. The website
developers need to provide an environment for all of this organization
(linking, page-and-dir creation, roles designations, bookmarking,
searching, etc) and later growth to take place.
The parent post attempted to show some of the categories and potential
organtizations that could be used to manage the many existing different
types of discussions.
This makes sense
Given the fact that we have a relative small number of participants, we are already "losing" good or strong suggestions and project feed-back. I can only imagine what will happen once we get a large number of participants and idea submissions. Landy et al have done a magnificent job of trying to keep the sanity here but I can see where it could become a lost battle. Jose has some strong ideas here and I think they merit some discussionan and implementation...implementation being the operative word...;-)
h
Too often it's the unsoiled hand that feeds The Critic's mouth.
We can link and organize the project discussions now.
I agree that the defensive view (glass half empty) that we will lose
ideas and such is a great motivation for this, but I am looking at it
right now as an offensive maneuver (half full) where we can start to
build a very nice organization to the discussions one project at a
time. Imagine every single contribution that is related to some project
being there readily available. Even a good relevant idea presented as
an aside within an otherwise irrelevant reply to an irrelevant topic
can now be captured.
Also, with such a high concentration of relevant data in close
proximity and within defined bounds (ie, gathered in one place based on
relevancy to the project), it becomes feasible to do indexing and
searching that otherwise would be too time consuming. If nothing else
it means searches may be more efficient and this helps give the server
hardware a longer life as traffic increases [the website devs might
have to be proactive with the design of the tools or db in order to
take advantage of this localization]. This is not to be taken lightly
because some types of searches take exponential time. This means you
won't notice delays until you reach a critical level and then
everything will grind to a halt and only get worse very quickly.
Trippling hardware power does not keep up with exponential problems
(ie, only a few more new users will lead to the hardware upgrade
becoming irrelevant). The only solutions are algorithmic/design.
The good news is that we can (and should) begin to gather this info now
as new projects are created. All we have to do is post comments with
the links that otherwise would be accessible from the toc. In fact, we
can build categories by, eg, writing out the path names and then lising
the links that belong in that section. For example, we can post the
following hypothetical comment:
**********
-- Discussions/Origin_of_Project/Other_Website/
-- -- http://...... This was the official announcement of
this project on slashdot [LOL]. It led to noting special happening
because slashdot has lost their magic.
-- -- http://...... This discussion on the XX mailing list
between the two founding members of TP and others set out the goals for
what became this website.
-- -- http://...... This talkback by someone named Y laid
out an economic model that formed most of the initial motivation for
why we chose to do Z.
-- -- http://...... This is where User A pointed out the
economic model linked above. The date shows User A made us aware around
the time this project was taking form.
-- -- http://...... A similar project (to this one) on our
sister site W had this forum discussion. We decided to follow through
with the plan since they were short staffed. Notice in particular the
back and forth exchange that occured between A and B. From this we
drafted our first Co-Sponsor Agreement Form, the one we used
exclusively to engage businesses until our new upgrade... blah blah.
-- Discussions/Legal/Official_Forms
-- -- http://..[symlink to above].. This shows how/where
our Co-Sponsor Agreement Form originated. Most of the text used in
version 1 came from here.
-- -- http://...... Waiver of X Form for use with the Y
county public school system. This email from the school superintendent
details the requirements for ..blah blah.
-- -- http://...... A portion of that blog became verbatim our Form Z. Specifically, this ".... long quote ...."
-- -- http://...... This document was instrumental in our
understanding and decisions to use G license for P project.
**********
This system of capturing discussions is very practical because it
scales very well. It's also immediately useful since we can do the work
with our current tools (through comments) until the website has better
support. Additionally, doing this now through the comments/reply
framework helps define the sort of support and special tools we might
need. We may even realize that we don't need any further tools or will
be able to get by fine with the addition of only a few very simple
tools or tweaks. In this way, we help avoid a situation where the
website designers spend too much time to achieve marginal gains.
Did you catch this last part website team? We can/should begin the
gathering and ordering of project related discussions using our current
tools. I withdraw any urgency I suggested through earlier postings.
[What might eventually be nice would be a way to capture a thread (ie,
a group of comments) as one entity easily and without the mess of
having to link to every component of the thread or to use words to mark
the boundary of the relevant content. This request is low priority.]
[Another low priority request would be for a more formal symlink
system. We'll have to see exactly what this would look like and if it
would be worthwhile implementing.]
I'll conclude by saying that this idea is natural and would be
developed at some point (if it isn't already in the works). It makes
sense to use the project webpage/section as the central point to gather
all discussions related to the project. The alternative prior to the
creation of a project entity was to create yet another forum topic to
link up to all discussions and then develop a naming scheme to be able
to identify these special purpose forum topics. With the project
structure in place and with a template to work from (such as was
partially presented in the hypothetical comment above), it should be
much easier now for anyone to contribute to the gathering and
organizing of the discussions we have been having.
Linux Now website
You might want to check out my previous comment: http://thetuxproject.com/project/GetNix#comment-627
--
Sander Marechal
http://www.jejik.com
logo for the get Linux website
Hey, blowtorch that msfreedom.png off of lobby4linux.com. I think that chainsaw and ball/with/chain might say it all.
Too often it's the unsoiled hand that feeds The Critic's mouth.