[Chapter-delegates] Tracking ISOC issues [was: chapters collaboration demo - evaluating buddypress - anyone care to use it ?]

Thu Jan 26 01:02:08 PST 2012

Elena  and all,

- no good deed goes unpunished -

the youngest discussions tied to INET 2012 but related to
communications in general showed that there are quite some issues with
communications within (and maybe without ISOC). Some of the issues are
(a) vaguely specified so that there is no obvious solution. Others are
(b) requests were we can expect an answer of type
rejected/accepted/partly accepted/ accepted with
amendments/implemented. Next category (c) are undisputed issues with a
rather obvious solution. We are hearing a lot of "we listen", "we
consider" and we will forget because of another bandwagon.

Short examples of the various categories:
 (a) the new Website is not accessible and poorly internationalized
 (b) free participation on INET2012 for all ISOC members
 (c)
http://www.internetsociety.org/who-we-are/chapters/chapters-ii/find-chapter
is a accessibility and usability disaster because a) ... , b) ...

I suggest to use the collaboration tool for tracking those issues.
While (a) could be covered b a general blog or Wiki (b) and (c) would
gain from a issue tracking system. (A wiki would work too, but since
there are quite some issue trackers for Wordpress around we might want
to integrate them into the platform.)

Any ideas?

Best, Klaus

PS.: Personally I would volunteer to maintain a tracker related to
issues with the new website. (I suspect there is none, if there is we
should demand access).

Elena Zvarici wrote on 2012-01-24 01:16:
> Dear @all I would like to thank to those who have joined our
> proposal for a chapter collboration platform at
> http://www.anuntul.eu/wordpress and for taking the time to study it.
>
> It is more or less clear that this is a demo solution, not ready yet
> but it could do the job if we put our minds to it colaboratively :)
>
> If interested I can make you administrators so you can take your
> time to study the back-end when you have the time.
>
> There are several nice features to this installation:
>
> - a Wiki editor with html editing capabilities (Buddypress Docs),
> which allows for collaborative document editing and revision history. 
>
> - an eLearning solution within each group which can be used as a
> virtual classroom.
> I am testing out the Buddypress Scholarpress plugin for our
> chapter's purposes, which allows the creation of eCourses  within
> dedicated Budypress groups. Private messaging can also be activated
> within each group to allow / disallow for student communication.
> Maybe Scholarpress can be used by chapters for their eLearning
> purposes towards their local membership - this is what we plan.
> Buddypress and Scholarpress can be fully translated into all
> languages, several translations are already available.
>
> - The integrated forum is in fact a collection of forums split into
> discussion groups - topics (a bit confusing, I know). You can see
> the different groups I've created to simulate a little bit the kind
> of discussion we could have among chapters. In this situation we can
> imagine a general group to include all registered members and
> specific groups dedicated to discussions on specific topics. Group
> creation can be made available to all user roles OR restricted to a
> user category (chapter delegates .. )
>
> - Each group can be made public (free to join) private (request for
> membership necessary) or hidden (only possible to join on invite
> from an existing member). It functions a little bit like Facebook
> groups.
>
> - Within each group the user can set his / her group digest
> settings: daily, weekly, monthly.
> - Each group can contain a document storage space for PDFs, docs etc
>
> - Each user profile can be made public or private - only friends
> will see the user's activity stream and other generated content.
> check this within your profile
>
> - Members can become "friends" or follow each other's activity.
> Based on the user's privacy settings, users can specifiy if they
> want to be contacted only by friends or by everyone.
>
> - The advantage of Buddypress compared to a classical forum is the
> activity stream resembling a little bit a private Facebook with
> possiblity of embedding multimedia, videos and slideshare docs like
> you see in the sitewide activity stream. This can generate lively
> discussions on specific topics. Each activity stream has its own rss
> feed making it possible to check it from anywhere within your
> browser provided the forum is public. A bit of testing is necessary
> to fine tune the privacy settings and to decide what is public and
> what is private.
>
> Of course like with any Wordpress installation, users have the
> possibility to publish posts, collected into the blog page. But I
> guess the groups and the forums would be the preferred alternatives
> for communication. We will definitely see more messages passing as
> you just need to hit "Enter" so short messages will abund instead of
> long emails. Daily / Weekly Group digest settings will be welcome in
> this case.
>
> - There is a known bug with Embedly (http://embed.ly/) which breaks
> any frontend html editor in Buddypress (used by Wiki but also the
> Scholarpress lectures) I will have to find another embedding plugin.
>
> Well this is pretty much it, the solution has to be fine tuned,
> privacy levels specified, and a webspace decided for it (it can stay
> here or Isoc can host it?) but it is doing lots of things "out of
> the box" for an opensource solution.
>
> Most importantly - do you see yourselves using it instead or as a
> complement to the classic mailing list ?
>
> @Ted, I hope this covers your question about why we "chose" this
> solution over others: it functions prety much out of the box
> quickly, the other solutions were bulkier like Alfresco (java app, 4
> gig of memory needed, a real server) and need "real" developer hours
> rather then tweaking a few things to make it work.
>
> Best,
>
> Elena Zvarici
> Communication manager
> Internet Society Romania
> +40726128728
> http://www.isoc.ro
> /Consider the environment: don't print this email unless necessary. /
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/chapter-delegates
>
> -- 
> Klaus Birkenbihl
> Internet Society German Chapter e.V. (ISOC.DE)
> http://www.isoc.de/
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