On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 11:35:25PM -0700, Dale Bewley wrote:
----- "Paul W. Frields" <stickster(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 10:28:23AM -0400, Mel Chua wrote:
> > Thanks for asking, Dale.
> >
> > On 09/10/2009 06:19 PM, Dale Bewley wrote:
> >> After reading
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Insight I
> >> wanted to login and see what Zikula looks like and how it would
> >> actually be used.
> >
> > The Fedora Insight (FI) workflow is being hacked on in Marketing, so
>
> > I've copied the Marketing list - actually, you have impeccable
> > timing. Robyn Bergeron has gone through and made a basic
> > workflow (and her work was the initial driver that made sure a
> > lot of basic functionality in Zikula was put in), but it's time
> > to figure out the actual workflow for News, so I was literally
> > *just* about to ask the News list about this.
> >
> >> I created an account and logged in, but do I need to have my
> >> account authorized by someone? I don't see how to create a test
> >> post.
> >
> > It looks like all new accounts are being made administrators by
> > default on the test instance, so you can go to
> >
> >
https://publictest6.fedoraproject.org/zikula/index.php?module=News&ty...
> >
> > to create new articles. This obviously needs to not be the case
> > for the live instance. ;) So we need someone from News to figure
> > out the workflow you would like.
> >
> >> I realize it's early, but it seems like a pretty flat
> >> hierarchy. I'm having trouble picturing how "FWN" would be
> >> carved out.
> >
> > The answer is "we don't know, and we were actually just about to
> > ask you."
> >
> > Dale, would you or anyone from News be willing to tackle
> >
https://fedorahosted.org/marketing-team/ticket/32? It shouldn't
> > be that hard, and the best way to carve out FWN so that the News
> > team likes it is to have the News team carve it out. ;)
>
> It's much easier than it seems to "carve out" space for any
> topical area in a CMS. The flatness essentially means things can
> be organized or reorganized at will very easily. That sounds kind
> of hazy and conceptual, but it's pretty simple to have URLs and
> navigation on the site work to support something like:
>
>
http://insight.fedoraproject.org/weekly-news
>
http://insight.fedoraproject.org/podcasts
> ...
I'll admit to being somewhat curmudgeonly on the whole CMS idea, but
I am doing my best to put that aside and give it a fair shake. :) I
can see benefits, but wonder what barriers to entry it might create.
I went back and read up on the fedora-news discussion of what was
referred to as Fedora Journal and Project FooBar before being named
Fedora Insight.
Most of the conversation took place in July
*
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-news-list/2009-July/thread.html
Here are my repeatedly edited thoughts which may or may not make
sense by this point.
= How might it work? =
FWN has typically served to provide a roundup of the developments in
Fedora over the previous week, comprised of several "Beats"
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Beats which cover mailing list(s)
etc for a topic. I can imagine a mapping of Categories in Zikula to
a set of "Beats" or Topics. Presumably each Category produces its
own RSS feed. Users could ignore FWN and subscribe to just a single
beat.
Yup, all makes sense.
Each Category may not have or need a beat writer, but if the concept
of FWN is to continue there would have to be a means for a writer to
adopt a Category and feel responsible for monitoring it. The beat
writer or others could contribute stories at any point during the
week. Once a week a beat writer could post a roundup of their beat
including the usual sources, plus any postings made to the Fedora
Insight category during the week.
A FWN editor could then gather these beat roundups into a larger
roundup called FWN (or something else) for publishing with a ToC and
a summary abstract. That post would go in the FWN category, and the
RSS feed from that would become FWN.
This makes sense too --
LWN.net does something that looks like this
from the outside, although I'm not sure how their internal process
works.
That whole concept could also possibly go out the window, but that
seems a shame. It seems to me there is value in a regularly
scheduled newsletter. Otherwise, isn't it just a forum or a blog? If
developers and others post enough news, maybe there won't be much
need for a beat writer, or maybe the writer will feel discouraged
that way.
The way LWN does it seems to work very well. I don't check it every
day, but I usually look at the weeklies to see what I missed by not
doing so. By giving the users more choices we're doing a better job
getting news out there. Some people read RSS every day, some people
will read the weekly aggregations.
The creation of categories is something to work out. They seem to be
flat and would span the CMS. The mechanics of assigning beat writers
is something to ponder. Also a means to notify an editor that a
category round up is complete would need to be pondered. Tags? Same
old wiki page?
This is where a CMS can excel -- workflow. It could actually notify
the editor via email (or some other way) when a beat writer simply
checks a box or tags a beat done.
= Ease of adoption =
Putting my curmudgeon hat back on... Posting content is going to be
very inconvenient without the leverage of wiki markup. Constructing
links to list postings, wiki content, other news items will be much
more painful. Perhaps there are Zikula plugins to recreate some
functionality like the <ref></ref> <references /> in mediawiki. Such
plugins would require explanation to new beat writers. I reckon way
more newcomers will be familiar with Mediawiki.
It seems to me this could make it harder to attract beat
writers. Maybe that's only a personal bias. Maybe more time poking
Zikula will yield more optimism, but it's time spent poking. (I'll
continue to poke some more)
Zikula should include one or more WYSIWYG editors that make life even
easier than the MediaWiki markup. A contributor could use the same
tools they're used to on Wordpress, Google Docs, forums, and all
around the web.
Besides all the logistics, this is the biggest problem to me as a
beat writer. I am loathe to hand code HTML. Beat writers burn out
all the time. The more painful it is, the quicker the
burnout. Life's hard though. :)
Agreed, no one should have to hand code HTML to do this work!
--
Paul W. Frields
http://paul.frields.org/
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