discuss: Discussion/news site & HOWTO's proposal
Subject:
Discussion/news site & HOWTO's proposal
From:
Phil Kerr ####@####.####
Date:
27 Jan 2002 22:02:06 -0000
Message-Id: <3C549439.470710E4@plus24.com>
Hi List,
I've raised the issue of a discussion/news type site to support one of
my HOWTO's with David Merrill over then last few day's and the
discussion widened quite a bit and he's suggested proposing this to the
list.
A little background.
I've been working in a rapidly moving are for Linux, MIDI, and have just
released a HOWTO on the subject. There's a lively discussion in this
area over on the Linux Audio Dev/Users mailing list and this does have a
real sense of community. Now the lists are great for the active
users/developers but it's sort of the wrong audience and I was thinking
of supporting the HOWTO with a Slashdot type site to allow
news/reviews/tutorials and discussion relating to them to take place.
David and I discussed some of the merits/problems with this approach and
we agreed on a possible model/partner.
I'm looking for a site where I can bring fresh topics to the fore,
generate discussion about it and then distill this back into the HOWTO
quickly and manageably. I've a test site which sort of covers the idea
here:
http://plus24.com/howtomidi (there are a few bug's in it but hopefully
you see what I'm aiming for).
We discussed how this could be of use to the wider community and David
suggested a site which seems to be a good model:
http://andamooka.org
The site looks really geared for documentation and authors which is a
big plus over other sites I've seen.
Another of the idea's was to have the HOWTO's in a WikiText type system
so editing (by the authors) could be done.
One of the reasons for this idea is that although the LDP site is a
great reference point the content (on the main page) doesn't have the
same draw as say Slashdot/K5/The Register and by having a site like this
we can draw people back on a far more frequent basis which can give
authors good feedback on their works, provide idea's for new directions
and engage with the readers in a far more direct manner than a static
HTML/text page can.
Looking at how a site could be constructed I thing it's possible (and
desirable) that the existing HOWTO's and Guide directory structure
should stay the same (if this was on the main LDP site) so all links
back to the works would not be broken. Also everything that goes into
the mirroring of the works should not be disturbed.
It will mean that for some authors they would have to dedicate a little
more time, and I know that this could be a problem, as well as the
overhead in keeping the signal/noise ratio high. But the increased
level of feedback we receive may make up for this.
David will approach the andamooka.org site's maintainer to see if we can
work something out (if the proposal is accepted of course!).
I realise that this proposal has been made before so sorry to stir
things up again ;)
So, comments/feedback on this proposal would be welcomed.
Regards
Phil
ps. This is, I must confess, a post and run thing as I'm moving country
in 5 day's so my free-time at the moment is pretty small. But I'll try
and keep up with things :)
