On 10/17/07, Soumyadip Modak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > <snip> > > Regarding Pratul's suggestion of using Drupal, the problem (IMHO) of > using CMS solutions like Drupal and Joomla is that it leads to a lot > of administrative hassles. Suppose I create a page. Someone wants to > make some modifications that I do not like. Can/Should that person be > restricted? What sort of control do we exercise over content, and what > sort of priviledges we give to a creator, a contributor, a member who > has registered, etc. If we think carefully, Drupal (or any CMS) is > (again IMHO) not the correct solution for a community site, where you > encourage people to sign-up and contribute. CMS software are mainly > for company or organisation websites, where you give out information > about yourself/your company/your organisation, but you do not expect > the community to be the primary contributors. Ubuntu-in lives due to > the community contribution, which necessarily points to a wiki based
Well you are deadly mistaken here. Lack of understanding about CMS as well as community site, is visible in your reply. Is drupal.org not a community site? Is spreadfirefox.com not a community site ? There are plethora of examples where community websites are running on a CMS based solution. The idea, of only Corporates needing a CMS is nothing but b***s***t. As for editing right, dear there is a thing called editing rights. You can allow any user to create content but only allow one or two (or a group) to publish articles on the web. This is a tried and tested setup and it works. > solution. In fact some of the categorisation in the > http://www.ubuntu-in.org/wiki/Web2007 page is frankly amusing. FAQ is > supposedly a static page, pray why? Is it something set in stone? Why > should newbie users and developers sections be static? Shouldn't we be > encouraging them to contribute back? How different will they be from > Documentation and Tutorials that they merit a non-wiki infrastructure? > Is the Team set in stone? Don't we have new people being added there? > If I remeber correctly, when we started, all the sections had only two > names. Only Gora was the third IRC ops and Barkha the third mailing > list admin. Well if you feel some segment is not static please feel free to make changes in the wiki . What is stopping you ? Instead of writing a long email please feel free to make changes. Btw I did not mention any page as static. I mentioned "non-wiki" and by no means non-wiki means static. It simply means not every tom, dick harry could edit the page. By no means sections under non-wiki are non-modifyable. They are less volatile i.e the content is not going to change so often and new content addition (or editing of old content) will require some kind of approval. > > Vivek Khurana wrote > >Why not start writing a collaborative book on the ubuntu India > >website ? Any takers ? > > Shouldn't our primary goal be to contribute more content to the > Ubuntu-in site rather than write a book about the site itself? There Hola, who said we are writing a book about site ? We are writing a book on one or other aspect of ubuntu. Book is a form of documentation with possibility of having paper prints in future. Careful reading of email is recommended before giving a stock answer. > is hardly any effort to create meaningful content on the wiki itself, > why do we have to waste our energy pursuing other goals? Going through > the statistics from Google Analytics, I find that of the 11000+ page > hits we have on ubuntu-in.org every month, more than 30% goes to the > page I created on SATA RAID way back when Dapper was released (around > 4000). The sad fact, the bounce rate is 82%, which means that > percentage of people visit just one page and leave, within about a > minute and a half. One major reason for this is horrible navigation on the website. It was during discussion with Pratul that we realized the depth of content on the site and non-navigatability of the site. You are lucky if users stayed for minute and half. I normally would leave in half a minute. Bad navigation was more of an impetus than look and feel, for me to propose this redesign. > > Nan budh, you are talking about Newbie sections, go ahead, the wiki is > there, create a section, contribute content. Can I consider you as the > contact point for the creation and development of the Newbie section, > please? Can't someone contribute articles on setting up a home server, > a firewall box, a media center, etc. with Ubuntu? Even articles that > deal with common system administration work that people need to do > regularly? Simple answer engage more people as contributors than as email readers. > > Why don't we see articles on properly enabling Indian language > desktops (there are issues with input methods, especially SCIM, which > is Ubuntu's default, and OpenOffice.org)? Why don't we see articles on > programming? Articles that talk of setting up the perfect Python > development box, with IDEs, nifty libraries, etc., using as much > software from the Ubuntu repositories as possible? The perfect Java > Web (and even Desktop) Development workbench? PHP? Ruby? A page on "10 > cool things you can do with Bash, sed and awk"? Making your Ubuntu > desktop look like MacOSX or Windows (yes, there are people who would > read that)? How about a page on the games available in Ubuntu, howto > organise a lanparty using Ubuntu and OpenArena? Creating Free maps for > OpenArena/Nexuiz/Tremulous? There, I hope I have thrown up enough > ideas for people to chew on and start working upon. Crack your > knuckles guys and gals. Why dont you write all this or find people who can write all this ? It is always easy to point mistakes for others and always difficult to take responsibility for your own actions. > > For Events, can we use this plug-in: > http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Calendar_(Barrylb) ? Maybe > there would be problems with the MediaWiki version, which I admit we > website/server admins have been too lazy to upgrade. G0SUB, your > inputs on this? > > Sorry for ranting, but I feel there is way too much talk and not > enough work. Maybe that's symptomatic, seeing the experience of the Well you really gave us a good example of too much talk and too less of work :-p . There is hardly anything useful in your email. A pure example of rant. :-) > > Those who I have mentioned by name, please do not take this > personally. Vivek and Pratul, you have been exceptional in making the > forum see the light of the day. Nan budh, thanks for being the gadfly > and pointing out that we have not had focused articles on newbies. > But, this is an appeal to all of you there, please start stretching > the current infrastructure to its limits. As the old-timers will > testify, starting up something is not terribly difficult, but > sustaining the enthusiasm and nurturing the creation to the point > where it is self-sustaining, is certainly very difficult indeed. Well talking will not give you anything. Start doing things yourself and engage more people. You will only find contribution to projects which are constantly changing/upgrading. Dead sites and long rants will not get you anything. ;-) regards VK -- The hidden harmony is better than the obvious!! -- ubuntu-in mailing list ubuntu-in@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-in
