This will be my last cross post ... to keep discussing this, join my
Democracies Online code e-mail list:

do-code-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

It has over a dozen civic-minded techies (very busy techies I might
add) that I have recruited one by one and off my DO-WIRE list.

Below is a detailed reply by Kent Landfield who I worked with on the
http://www.govnews.org project and he is the host of
http://www.hypermail.org.

My quick reply is, whew I feel better now that I shared what I have
spoken with many of you about. I agree with Jeremy about
modularizing the backend from the front end. Is there a format of
form of sort that I can use? I'll do my best to tell you what I'd
like to see in more detail before I scoot out of the country from
Nov. 2 - Dec. 4.

At this point I suggest we focus specifically on the web archive
features with the ability to handle any e-mail list, but with an eye
to Mailman which provides "hooks" (whatever that is) for external
archivers <http://www.list.org/features.html>.

For those interested in both intelligent mailing list features and
potential fully recipircol e-mail/web forum functions, why don't you
write up your comprehensive dream list of features and send them to
the group. More importantly you could dig into mailman, sympa, and
other list circles (Tim Erickson, could you share a list of lists for
list owners/administrators?) to find others interested in
seeing/building such features. The harsh reality of the open source
meritocracy is that to be legitimate you have to be able to code
solutions to the problems/for the features you identify or you have
little standing.

What we may need is a connection to some university computer
departments who might be able to help us with these ideas? Anyone
know where to start? Ultimately, we need someone technical to lead
and coordinate first the archive idea and then later (or Steve Kranz
if you can find someone now) the enhanced mailing list/civic groups
idea.


From: Kent Landfield <kent@...>
Subject: [EDem-F] Re: Creating the Ultimate List Archive, E-mail/Web
Conferencing Combo
Date sent: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 09:27:00 -0500 (CDT)

> Subject: Creating the Ultimate List Archive, E-mail/Web Conferencing Combo
>
> 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?
>
> Steven, long time... ;)
>
> Ok, before you can determine if the idea inspires anyone, you need to define
> a couple of things. What does Ultimate mean ? What are the features of the
> E-mail/Web Conferencing Combo ? What features are going to be in the list
> archive from an archival perspective ? Search facilities, etc... The idea
> is interesting. I have considering doing something similar for faqs.org
> to support FAQ authors/readers. But a better definition is needed.
>
> # 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.
>
> Yes. This is a set of functionality with defined interfaces so the system
> would be much more modular and expanable. This approach allows parallel
> development of cooperating features by separate teams.
>
> # 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
> #
> # --
> # 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
>
> Your ideas are good. Sounds like you are interested as well. :-)
>
> The first step is to get a good definition of what the functionality
> is to be. Sounds obvious but....
>
> --
> Kent Landfield Phone: 1-817-545-2502
> Email: kent@... http://www.landfield.com/
> Search the Usenet FAQ Archive at http://www.faqs.org/faqs/
> Search the RFC/FYI/STD/BCP Archive at http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Edem-forum mailing list
> Edem-forum@...
> http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/edem-forum
>



^ ^ ^ ^
Steven L. Clift - W: http://www.publicus.net
Minneapolis - - - E: clift@...
Minnesota - - - - - T: +1.612.822.8667
USA - - - - - - - ICQ: 13789183