Where I work, we've been installing and building a system for my group to basically share best practives and that sort of thing in the design and testing process. I've been working with setting it up a lot, and as I did, I've been thinking how beneficial it would be to us DIYers. It uses a program/framework called plone, ( http://plone.org ) and basically is a nice and very user friendly system for a group of people to post, either in raw text, or actual PDFs or jpgs or gifs or whatever. And, all of the files were organized. So, I could basically make a community sort of webpage, where a few of us published/uploaded files whenever we pleased for the general sharing of the communtiy. This would be good because
- There are a lot of us who publish articles all over the place, but there's no sole, organized site for it all
- A lot of our article/schematic sites are pretty disorganized and not user friendly
- All of the files, since submitted by the author/drawer, would be completely ethics-argument-free
I thought it was a pretty good idea. I'd be willing to try to set up the system. I'd be doing it on a , you email me and I create your account basis, although ideally everyone would be able to view all of the files. I was thinking we'd have 3 categories for the files, one for articles (mostly text that people have either typed solely for the plode or just copy/pasted from their own files or site), one for schematics (all of which had been drawn by one of the authors), and one for datasheets (I already have a decent colllection on my site, but it would bec ool to get them organized and have other people contribute other useful ones). Then, I could make use of the news section for updates and all that sort of stuff. We do have a very nice and organized DIY forum, but there's no really good and organized way to share our files, articles, and ideas. So, you tell me if it's a good idea. I figure if we get maybe 10, 20 guys off the bat to help jumpstart the site it will get somewhere, but this is going to be pretty community based, so it requires your input/co-operation/use as well.
Good idea/bad idea?
-Colin
i think its a great idea!
sounds good to me...
QuoteThere are a lot of us who publish articles all over the place, but there's no sole, organized site for it all
- A lot of our article/schematic sites are pretty disorganized and not user friendly
- All of the files, since submitted by the author/drawer, would be completely ethics-argument-free
it's a good idea, but I have to ask the question:
Schematics 2 was always available to anyone to post.
Links were always available for anyone to add to.
The forum is free for anyone to add to.
About the only thing you are adding is the last sentence you list.
I've always asked in the past for people to add to the Schematics 2 and the Links page.
Gripey sais
Why do ppl put silly questions [that don't seem to get answered] in schematics II, and reviews? It just 'mucks up' the good reads...
You're right, Aron, but you aren't providing hosting for the Schematics 2 section. Also, the forum is not organized by effects type or anything like that.
I don't know, it won't work without support/use, so I guess that's the deciding factor.
-Colin
I can provide hosting for the files, in fact I have thought of it many times. For some reason, it doesn't seem like the determining factor whether anything will be entered in the Schematics 2 section.
I could be wrong though.
Quote from: anonymousexperimentalist
I don't know, it won't work without support/use, so I guess that's the deciding factor
you're too right about that. I routinely come upon dead areas of the community, both here and at otehr web pages. But the fact is, if its good, we'll use it...like this forum.
The reason why the forum is not divided into effects type is that even dividing into areas like:
Building, modding, general etc... seems to splinter the group. AMPAGE did this and I didn't notice any improvement, in fact I noticed a decline in posts. I chose not to do this because of what I perceived.
In the end, I found that nothing beats a simple, forum that's kept active by generous people that help by posting.
This wouldn't be as much as a forum, though, than an idea sharing community. Where on a forum you post questions to get answers and stuff, here we'd only be posting answers. If someone was to post, say, a recent phaser design they cooked up, then someone could add a comment in the form of a question, but no one would post a question article.
-Colin
Also, I think the reason that the ampage forum's split like that went badly is because people are going to go where the most posts are to ask their questions (IE the general forum or whatever), whereas here it would just bea way to categorize the articles people have written up.
-Colin