[theforum] Cats and pigeons

[David Kaufman]

Martin Paul Burns <martin.burns at uk.ibm.com> wrote:

> Genghis wrote on 08/11/2004 04:54:10:
>> I think we should port evolt.org to Drupal ( http://drupal.org ).
>
> Coming in from left field, in part serious, in part to provoke
> discussion, and in part to annoy John ;-) :
>
> In the early days of evolt, it was reputadely suggested that the
> evolt site should be a wiki. Now before anyone jumps in with voices
> of doom of wikidom, I can see certain benefits to the idea:
>
> 1) We don't *need* pre-publication editing

We don't?  Then why do we do it?  From listing in on the content list, 
we sure seem do a lot of it...

> 2) The community can expand small articles
> 3) In fact, there *is* no problem with small articles
> 4) It's no less structured than what we have now
> 5) If we had ratings, then the *community's* opinion would promote
> articles, not some abstract authorial voice

I like this approach a lot, as well.  Have I mentioned Slashdot yet? 
Let the readers promote (and demote) content to dynamically decide what 
makes it onto the homepage (*and* which comments get shown, and which 
merely linked)

> Actually, to summarise most of this: control passes to the community.
> Which is Goodness.

+1 to that

> Obviously, it would need tying into version control and permissions
> (ie anon users don't get to edit!), which suggests that it runs with
> something behind it to supply that (http://www.zwiki.org for example).
>
> No doubt this is going to get flamed all to hell and back again

Don your flame-retardant suit, Martin.  I detest Wiki's.  Not for the 
workflow or the concept of community-updates, just the little things 
like WonkyWords and other little annoyances.  Wikis always just creep me 
out, in general for some reason.

But yes, community content is king.  It is the essence of goodness: 
http://tim.oreilly.com/opensource/paradigmshift_0504.html

-dave