O.k. . . . .

Whoever is in charge, please put Jeremy on this project ;-)
----

Two features that we have been discussing wanting to experiment with here
are:

1) Adding a feature to promote more thoughtful discussion that would work as
follows: A participant sends their message to the list, the server sits on
it for 15 minutes and then sends it back to the person who sent it with a
message that says "If you would like to post this message to the list,
please hit reply". Our thought is that this would give people an
opportunity to cool-down and give them a chance to think about exactly what
they want to say. It might help keep the discussions less heated and more
focussed on issues.

2) A feature that would help you manage your incoming message volume, as
follows: Each email message sent from the list would have a link embedded
in it that says, "Opt out of this thread". Clicking on the link would tell
the list server not to send that user any email messages with the title of
the message they opted out of. Now, I know what you are thinking . . . one
of the strengths of e-democracy is that everyone is exposed to all
viewpoints rather than having "customized" news tailored to their views; but
I see this as a compromise . . . they are still exposed to the initial
discussion, but it gives them some control over volume -- If they are really
not interested in a particular topic, they are probably not reading the
messages anyway. This feature could be a way to help lists scale to much
larger amounts of participants, while still keeping the message volume
manageable.

- Steve Kranz
- Winona


----- Original Message -----
From: "jeremy hunsinger" <jhuns@...>
To: <clift@...>
Cc: <do-code@yahoogroups.com>; <edem-forum@...>;
<drwool@...>; <shel@...>; "rick Birmingham" <rickb@...>;
"steven M.Schneider" <steve@...>; "kirsten Foot"
<kfoot@...>; <kent@...>
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2001 8:33 AM
Subject: [EDem-F] Re: Creating the Ultimate List Archive, E-mail/Web
Conferencing Combo


> joined the list, but here are my opinions:
>
> this is not 1 application but many, instead of facing the problems of
> creating one application with hundreds of pages of code. I'd suggest
> creating lots of applications with few lines of code. Once you have all
> the little applications, and they can all be unified by a shared API,
> with core objects, then you can quickly add features without creating
> cross-system bugs.
>
> I'd also suggest separating frontend/backend code the display of the
> data is easy and operations on the data is easy
> however, combining display and operation in the same level makes it very
> hard. So every "pre-set web view" should be its own little display app,
> and what you do to the data should be its own little manipulation app.
>
> ok, to do that, you need to separate and describe the data from the
> functions performed on the data that create new data.
>
> for instance the initial data structure might look like(though this is
> quite simplified):
>
>
> each list is an object it has an object id
> which has the properties
> listserver
> listsoftware can tell us:
> listowner
> listinfo
> etc.
> messages(sub-object of list also has an object id)
> header
> all header info
> message
> header
> body
> footer -signature
>
> each user is an object it has an object id
> which has properties
> preferences
> personal information
> password
>
> once you have the data structured, then you can attach the mini-apps,
> like statistics, monitors, etc. to the object id's instead of having to
> manipulate each peice of data individually
>
> an example of how far you can take this logically is:
> http://adept.cddc.vt.edu/project/index.html
> login qwer
> pw: qwer
>
> you can see that there are many of these mini-apps already integrated
> and built into this system, they are written in PHP and theoretically
> could be attached elsewhere
>
>
> Steven Clift wrote:
>
> >Does this idea inspire anyone? Do you have specific technical
> >suggestions on elements that could be used to pull this together.
> >What technical specifications/feature would you add? Anyone want to
> >start building this?
> >
> >Cheers,
> >
> >Steven Clift
> >Democracies Online
> >
> >P.S. Join the Democracies Online Code e-mail list to discuss
> >technical options and ideas: do-code-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Jeremy hunsinger http://www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy
> CDDC/political science http://www.cddc.vt.edu
> 526 major williams hall 0130
> virginia tech
> blacksburg, va 24061
> 540-231-7614
>
>
>
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