Fedora News on Zikula

Wed Sep 16 13:34:19 UTC 2009

We looked into quite a few of these thing wrt workflow when we
originally got zikula set up - but some of those notification /
grouping features were either not available, or not available unless
we used different modules which required a lot more work to set-up /
design.

$.02,
Robyn

On 9/16/09, Paul W. Frields <stickster at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 11:35:25PM -0700, Dale Bewley wrote:
>> ----- "Paul W. Frields" <stickster at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 10:28:23AM -0400, Mel Chua wrote:
>> > > Thanks for asking, Dale.
>> > >
>> > > On 09/10/2009 06:19 PM, Dale Bewley wrote:
>> > >> After reading https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Insight I
>> > >> wanted to login and see what Zikula looks like and how it would
>> > >> actually be used.
>> > >
>> > > The Fedora Insight (FI) workflow is being hacked on in Marketing, so
>> >
>> > > I've copied the Marketing list - actually, you have impeccable
>> > > timing.  Robyn Bergeron has gone through and made a basic
>> > > workflow (and her work was the initial driver that made sure a
>> > > lot of basic functionality in Zikula was put in), but it's time
>> > > to figure out the actual workflow for News, so I was literally
>> > > *just* about to ask the News list about this.
>> > >
>> > >> I created an account and logged in, but do I need to have my
>> > >> account authorized by someone? I don't see how to create a test
>> > >> post.
>> > >
>> > > It looks like all new accounts are being made administrators by
>> > > default on the test instance, so you can go to
>> > >
>> > > https://publictest6.fedoraproject.org/zikula/index.php?module=News&type=admin
>> > >
>> > > to create new articles. This obviously needs to not be the case
>> > > for the live instance. ;) So we need someone from News to figure
>> > > out the workflow you would like.
>> > >
>> > >> I realize it's early, but it seems like a pretty flat
>> > >> hierarchy. I'm having trouble picturing how "FWN" would be
>> > >> carved out.
>> > >
>> > > The answer is "we don't know, and we were actually just about to
>> > > ask you."
>> > >
>> > > Dale, would you or anyone from News be willing to tackle
>> > > https://fedorahosted.org/marketing-team/ticket/32? It shouldn't
>> > > be that hard, and the best way to carve out FWN so that the News
>> > > team likes it is to have the News team carve it out. ;)
>> >
>> > It's much easier than it seems to "carve out" space for any
>> > topical area in a CMS.  The flatness essentially means things can
>> > be organized or reorganized at will very easily.  That sounds kind
>> > of hazy and conceptual, but it's pretty simple to have URLs and
>> > navigation on the site work to support something like:
>> >
>> > http://insight.fedoraproject.org/weekly-news
>> > http://insight.fedoraproject.org/podcasts
>> > ...
>>
>> I'll admit to being somewhat curmudgeonly on the whole CMS idea, but
>> I am doing my best to put that aside and give it a fair shake. :) I
>> can see benefits, but wonder what barriers to entry it might create.
>>
>> I went back and read up on the fedora-news discussion of what was
>> referred to as Fedora Journal and Project FooBar before being named
>> Fedora Insight.
>>
>> Most of the conversation took place in July
>> * http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-news-list/2009-July/thread.html
>>
>> Here are my repeatedly edited thoughts which may or may not make
>> sense by this point.
>>
>>
>> = How might it work? =
>>
>> FWN has typically served to provide a roundup of the developments in
>> Fedora over the previous week, comprised of several "Beats"
>> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Beats which cover mailing list(s)
>> etc for a topic. I can imagine a mapping of Categories in Zikula to
>> a set of "Beats" or Topics. Presumably each Category produces its
>> own RSS feed. Users could ignore FWN and subscribe to just a single
>> beat.
>
> Yup, all makes sense.
>
>> Each Category may not have or need a beat writer, but if the concept
>> of FWN is to continue there would have to be a means for a writer to
>> adopt a Category and feel responsible for monitoring it. The beat
>> writer or others could contribute stories at any point during the
>> week. Once a week a beat writer could post a roundup of their beat
>> including the usual sources, plus any postings made to the Fedora
>> Insight category during the week.
>>
>> A FWN editor could then gather these beat roundups into a larger
>> roundup called FWN (or something else) for publishing with a ToC and
>> a summary abstract. That post would go in the FWN category, and the
>> RSS feed from that would become FWN.
>
> This makes sense too -- LWN.net does something that looks like this
> from the outside, although I'm not sure how their internal process
> works.
>
>> That whole concept could also possibly go out the window, but that
>> seems a shame. It seems to me there is value in a regularly
>> scheduled newsletter. Otherwise, isn't it just a forum or a blog? If
>> developers and others post enough news, maybe there won't be much
>> need for a beat writer, or maybe the writer will feel discouraged
>> that way.
>
> The way LWN does it seems to work very well.  I don't check it every
> day, but I usually look at the weeklies to see what I missed by not
> doing so.  By giving the users more choices we're doing a better job
> getting news out there.  Some people read RSS every day, some people
> will read the weekly aggregations.
>
>> The creation of categories is something to work out. They seem to be
>> flat and would span the CMS. The mechanics of assigning beat writers
>> is something to ponder. Also a means to notify an editor that a
>> category round up is complete would need to be pondered. Tags? Same
>> old wiki page?
>
> This is where a CMS can excel -- workflow.  It could actually notify
> the editor via email (or some other way) when a beat writer simply
> checks a box or tags a beat done.
>
>> = Ease of adoption =
>>
>> Putting my curmudgeon hat back on... Posting content is going to be
>> very inconvenient without the leverage of wiki markup. Constructing
>> links to list postings, wiki content, other news items will be much
>> more painful. Perhaps there are Zikula plugins to recreate some
>> functionality like the <ref></ref> <references /> in mediawiki. Such
>> plugins would require explanation to new beat writers. I reckon way
>> more newcomers will be familiar with Mediawiki.
>>
>> It seems to me this could make it harder to attract beat
>> writers. Maybe that's only a personal bias. Maybe more time poking
>> Zikula will yield more optimism, but it's time spent poking. (I'll
>> continue to poke some more)
>
> Zikula should include one or more WYSIWYG editors that make life even
> easier than the MediaWiki markup.  A contributor could use the same
> tools they're used to on Wordpress, Google Docs, forums, and all
> around the web.
>
>> Besides all the logistics, this is the biggest problem to me as a
>> beat writer. I am loathe to hand code HTML. Beat writers burn out
>> all the time. The more painful it is, the quicker the
>> burnout. Life's hard though. :)
>
> Agreed, no one should have to hand code HTML to do this work!
>
> --
> Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
>   gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
>   http://redhat.com/   -  -  -  -   http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/
>   irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug
>
> --
> Fedora-marketing-list mailing list
> Fedora-marketing-list at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list
>