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ImcJapanTechWishlistG

Table of content :

Wishlist From G Thu Mar 6 09:39:30 2008 + Fri May 30 2008

(main page: see ImcJapanTech)

G's wishlist and how much of these are satisfied by samizdat-0.6.1, plus the patches which (as of 8 March 2008) are patches for an older version and will need to be updated for 0.6.1:

patches: https://savannah.nongnu.org/patch/?group=samizdat

6 CALENDAR

Since most of our newswire postings are event-announcements, we should give this more space.

• calendar function... The radicalendar rots. The posting interface is english, byzantine, and though it links to our top page, it only shows 'today's events' in jp, we could use at least a week.
  • this is patch 5883, not yet integrated into samizdat-0.6.1: https://savannah.nongnu.org/patch/?5883 - the calendar function is fully integrated into the main samizdat structure; this patch is only a simple hack (by boud), in the future there should eventually be a more intelligent version of a calendar integrated into samzidat

• if possible to have an RSS kind of way to compile from existing movement calendars (e.g. From earthday, peace-media kansai, stop-rokkasho, bund, etc. etc.)?
  • patch 5883 is unlikely to do this, a more intelligent calendar function should be able to do it; please give specific URLs of their calendars, so that we can see what standard structures they use and what would be practical for doing this ''TODO''
  • example: http://g8medianetwork.org/ja/event with ICAL feed http://g8medianetwork.org/ja/event/ical/all/all

1 SIMPLIFY Posting

• Offer several posting options incl. by e-mail and mobile phone
  • open posting by email and mobile phone (at the moment text only) is available as patch 5936 on samizdat-0.6.0.20070519-2 https://savannah.nongnu.org/patch/?5936
  • TODO: discuss the evolutionary/practical side of how open/closed this should be
• (also consider making mobile and/or text only version of site)
  • samizdat-0.6.1 is designed according to various web standards and looks fine in e.g. the text browser lynx, so on a mobile phone it should presumably be OK

• simplify posting form to look more like something people are familiar with. No more required categories, language selections--> instead tag/keyword system
  • 0.6.1 - posting form much simpler than for dada; language selection is optional; categories can only be chosen by a logged in user; categories can be added later on by any logged in user(s); categories are more like tags/keywords than traditional indymedia categories, since logged in users can freely create new categories - called "focuses" or "foci"
• make it clear you can post without logging in, but make clear there are benefits for having an account & logging in.
  • it's probably clear enough that you can post without logging in; some info about the benefits of logging in may be visible to the new user, but probably more could be added ''TODO easy''
• simple way to chose/understand copyright/creative commons licenses
  • there's no licence option in samizdat-0.6.1 - do people really want this? ''NEED MORE FEEDBACK''
• better/easier posting for photos and videos
  • posting them as files and previewing the images works as of 0.6.1; things like conversion to the flash format (non open!) with indytube are in principle doable, but not yet integrated into samizdat-0.6.1 ''TODO lot of work''

2 sort out bilinguality issue

• idea: english and japanese not completely separated (not different sites) but a way to chose e.g. 'japanese' and have japanese-only and japanese translation displayed prominently, english only texts not so prominent.
  • samizdat-0.6.1 should satisfy this, though there are some things for this which could still be improved ''TODO some time''
• a translation function like the 'translate' button on indymedia.org ( when you click it you should get an option: "translate only this article" or "sign up as translation volunteer")
  • at the moment this function is provided by a two step process - any user (anonymous or not) adds a translation as a comment, and then a logged in user presses a button to declare it to be a translation; once people see how this works in practice, we could probably decide if we need to add a button for users who don't understand this process, e.g. the button would just apply the comment function, and maybe explain the concept to the user as well ''TODO after live test''

3 editorial info:

• when people look at an article, there should be a box on the side with info on author, etc. (as there is now) - it should also include editorial/collborative history (e.g. 'pictures added by...', 'translation added by...') and the titles of the comments (to get rid of the problem that you don't see corrections/discussions until you scroll to the bottom)
  • samizdat-0.6.1 has author and a history button if the article has been edited, but this is probably not as much as you want ''WISHLIST''

4 LOGIN/SECURITY

• Anonymous posting is important. We should make it look really safe to post even sensitive things (i.e. The police won't come looking for you).
  • In that case, we should encourage users to use both https and TOR - they're not 100% safe (nothing is on the internet), but together they make the cops' business much, much more difficult
    • these need both technical aspects and cybernaut education
    • https: TODO - encryption should in principle not be too difficult, but users will get a warning message about authentication (different to encryption) which they should ignore
    • TOR: this is from the user side, it requires user education: japanese english
• ability to post anonymously, and without registration (I think) is an imc requirement. But we should make it easy for people to log in before posting, e.g. When you click 'publish an article' --> you come first to a login page (with an option to skip login- e.g. 'in a hurry?' button)
  • in samizdat-0.6.1 there's a login button at the top right very near the publish button, so it's probably fairly obvious

• We should explain what the login is good for: you can edit, we can contact you if necessary, you can receive notice when someone comments on your article, etc.
  • A text explaining the benefits of logging in could certainly be added somewhere; of the 3 benefits listed, in samizdat-0.6.1, only the first one is present, since the users' email addresses are in the database but only available to the sysadmin, not to moderators; email notification when someone comments on your article is a nice idea, but not yet implemented ''WISHLIST''

• At the login, we could have an option- join facilitating collective (translator, editorial, tech etc.) and 'receive IMC update' (a one-way mailing list to which we send calls for translation help, invitation to events, etc. etc.
  • good idea ''WISHLIST''

5 INTERACTIVITY & RSS type links

• ability to have other people (not just editors) add e.g. Images. At last meeting we had this idea: when you submit a text, but don't have graphics for it you can add a placeholder that says 'please add illustration here'. And any other user can add it.
  • if you publish your article as "open for editing by all members", then any logged in person can add graphics to your message if s/he knows how to write/edit either html or "textile" which is a kind of shortcut to html

• Use RSS and other ways to get content from the many good alternative media online in Japan (and other parts of Asia) ON THE TOP PAGE - also from indymedia.org
  • a simple version of this for the front page is in samizdat-0.6.1, also in 0.6.0.20070818-2 + patches
  • this is done once an hour for languages that have been accessed according to the cache (in simple terms: sometimes people will need to click and read normal articles a bit and wait for this to be done automatically)

samizdat: language 'other' when publishing

Is there some sensible way to add a pseudo-language 'other' to the system? i.e. 'und' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-2_codes ?

samizdat: simple and advanced query interface

some of the english in the interface is still too technical. E.g. Who on earth can figure out this: http://japan.axxs.org/query ????

There to be a real simple search box and an 'advanced search' button. But even the advanced search function needs clearing up.

• When you are in basic mode, the page is very simple and is just on words in message titles. For example if you type in "housing" to the box, you should get to a list including this message (which should become a category, once we link some other messages to it): http://japan.axxs.org:441/4811
• Is there really a problem with this simple search?

• It is true that in advanced mode, the form is definitely only for technically minded people. The motivation is that nearly all of the database is directly, publicly searchable through the web. This is moving towards "Web 3.0" or "the semantic web" - something like a more intelligent version of Google, but totally decentralised instead of centralised through Google. About the only exceptions to what is searchable are things like passwords or people's email addresses, which are kept confidential.
• What sort of improvements are possible? Probably this would have to be done together with the samizdat-dev list http://mail.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/samizdat-devel