[jdev] Proposal : Community site

[maqi at jabberstudio.org]

On Thu, 2 Sep 2004, Will Kamishlian wrote:

> - Build internationalization support in
> - Do not use a wiki
> - Make it look as professional as possible
> - Include discussion forums
> - Use a well-known application server
> Internationalization support needs to be built in because it will be much
> too hard to convert a site at a later date.  I would not suggest a wiki
> format because the site should look as professional as possible (to
> attract new members), because the site should be stable, and because many
> end users are not familiar with wikis.

This is a great number of unconfirmed assumptions ;-).

1. Wikis *can* look professional (see wikipedia.org). Even blogs can look
nice. It's not a matter of the underlying idea whether someone takes the
time to configure a good-looking CSS/whatever setup. It's just that
someone has to do it. If you think that with Typo3/Plone/whatever you
automatically get a "professional" look, you are wrong.

2. Wikis can of course be both stable in terms of availability (not even
jabber.org's wiki has problems there ;-) and content (it's just that
someone needs to maintain it or there have to be proper policies - see the
jabberd14 wiki that can't be changed by anybody at will directly).

3. It's true that many end users are not familiar with wikis. So what?
Can't they even read what's written in there then? Nobody forces you to
use wiki slang or WikiWords.

I don't say you have to use a Wiki "at all costs" ;-). However, I don't
think the points you mentioned are valid. Also, I'm sure that you need a
close coupling of content and user feedback - using whatever means.
Without this (for example, if you use static web pages and set up a
separate forum), you'll end up with outdated documentation and a forum
which may form a nice platform for the "usual suspects" but which makes it
very hard to find actual information.

Regards