Open Source Ecology Forums

elifarley

Matt Maier wrote:

Hey man,

Is it possible to create a sort of "commons" page on the wiki? Like, a place where anyone/everyone could make regular (daily or weekly) posts, everyone else could see them all in one place, and discussions could spring off of any of the posts?

I was thinking something kind of like this http://blog.reprap.org/

Mediawiki says they sort of have an RSS aggregator, but it's still developmental and it has to be installed on the server. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Rss

It should be something that's flexible enough people don't have to use it specifically. Like, the personal logs are great and easy, but you have to use them specifically and they can't be aggregated or discussed transparently. An RSS aggregator seems to make the most sense because several people (like Brianna) have already started blogs, so an aggregator would let them keep using the same thing while anyone else who wanted to be part of the discussion would just start one (easy enough).

Anywho, what do you think?

elifarley

Good idea.

We currently have a single RSS feed being shown under "News" (top right blue rectangle on the main wiki page). It comes from blog.opensourceecology.org

Here's the code that shows it: http://opensourceecology.org/w/index.php?title=Template:News&action=edit

Also notice that each forum category has its own feed, like this one:

http://forum.opensourceecology.org/categories/gvcs-development/feed.rss

On top of that, people can subscribe by email to any given forum category, and start receiving emails with new posts and comments made on that category.

Another important feature is that we can create a forum category and subscribe it to one or more RSS feeds, so that each new item on the RSS feeds will be transformed into a new forum post on that specific category (and feed items can also be filtered by keywords, AFAIK).

Putting it all together, we could have a nice social hub :)

(see also: RSS feeds)

Matt_Maier

Cool!

Is there a way to display and interact with more of the post than just the title? Like, can it display the comments on the post as well? I think we need a structure that makes not just the results, but also the discussion, easy to see.

For example, I was able to create two separate lists. One for Brianna's updates and another for the comments on her updates...but that's pretty awkward. http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Team_Discussion

elifarley

To merge feeds: maybe we could create a new feed comprised of the feeds we want to merge.

There's a list of online services to do just that: http://www.tothepc.com/archives/10-tools-to-combine-mix-blend-multiple-rss-feeds/

Regarding the option to post on this forum all items from an RSS feed: I have configured Brianna's feed and you can see her blog posts (and add your own comments) at this forum category:

http://forum.opensourceecology.org/categories/root

elifarley

@Matt_Maier said:

Is
it possible to create a sort of "commons" page on the wiki? Like, a
place where anyone/everyone could make regular (daily or weekly) posts,
everyone else could see them all in one place, and discussions could
spring off of any of the posts?

I was thinking something kind of like this http://blog.reprap.org/

On that blog, people can read each post in full, but in order to see the comments, they have to click on "comments", right?

We have a similar situation with this page (the category feed):
http://forum.opensourceecology.org/categories/it-web-infrastructure/feed.rss

(But instead of clicking on "comments" to read the comments, one has to click on the discussion title to go to the discussion page, where all comments appear below the initial text)

We have another similar situation at this other page (the category page):
http://forum.opensourceecology.org/categories/it-web-infrastructure/

(Now, instead of seeing the whole discussion text, people can only see the title, and they must click on the title to see both the full text and the associated comments)

Of course, we could create a specific category for these "commons" posts, and the chosen page could be embedded in the wiki.

The problem with this approach is that posters would have to visit the forum to create their posts, instead of simply posting to their own blog, but I'm not sure this is such a big problem.

Howdy, Stranger!

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