OSE Forum
Overview
The OSE Forums (forum.pensourceecology.org) are currently unmanaged. OSE Forums have been around since 2008, but we never installed a formal moderation process. Elifarley Cruz was a volunteer administrator for some time. Since then, updates on Facebook have served as a regular communication channel. Currently, Facebook is the main news and update outlet for the organization, such that anyone wishing to find out news and workshop announcements should follow the OSE Facebook Page.
We have found that the main need of a forum is to maintain constructive dialogue, and we are absolutely committed to maintaining a safe and constructive atmosphere, and a Zero Tolerance Policy for violators. As we go into the future OSE's goal is to upgrade the forum so that it can also be a part of our technical development process. Further, as OSE moves into the future and OSE chapters are started around the globe, our goal is to provide a model for how other chapters can start their own forums, especially if the forums are in a different language than English. To this end, here are the features and requirements that would help us meet these goals:
Implementation
General
- Clear and open source protocol for setting up, administering, and managing a forum. This would also serve as a manual that would facilitate the startup of forums by new OSE chapters, including a shared standard and the ability to share data. So that OSE maintains control of its data, ooen source software must be used.
- Forum Moderator, and Moderator Team
- Clear User Agreement and Contributor Agreement to protect the open soirce nature of the community
- Easy login procedure and user permissions management
- Integration with Wiki regarding user login and profile, such as a contributor's skill set
Forum Features
Essential
- A good search feature
- creating new threads
- User friendly, rapid posting interface
- Good structure of forum itself. Structure consisting of only a few subject areas, such as Discussion, Development, Distributive Enterprise, and Community. Clear guidelines regarding each section are required, as well as at least one full time Moderator for the Forum. The funding mechanism for the Forum Moderator should be an OSE Distributive Enterprise, in order to further dogfood our products and community development process.
- Upvoting Mechanism for threads and specific responses within threads. This would turn the Forum from a simple discussion to a powerful selection and distillation mechanism for valuable content. For example, a Forum thread can be used as a technical question or a review request, and the best answer would be upvoted and would be most visible. This would allow the gems of knowledge to rise to the top of a much larger sea.
- Viewing of content by most recent or most upvoted. Viewing by thread, or by message.
- Display of link content from the OSE wiki only, and viewed as links only for any other content.
- Upload of images, resized automatically to 100k or less
- 3D viewable/rotatable display of FreeCAD images from OSE wiki. This may be done using html embed codes, but using local processing power.
- html code embed for displaying any html content
- Embed code generation such that forum threads can be pasted elsewhere, such as the OSE wiki
Secondary
- Map of contributors
- Badges
- Link to person's wiki profile and wiki log
Forum Structure or Information Architecture
The main current purpose of the OSE forum is to promote technical development of the GVCS. This includes all the tech ical developme t leading go robust product design - as well as to the creation of Distributive Enterprise related to the GVCS.This must be reflected in the forum structure. There are several supporting functions, including orientation of new participants, helping people find contributors in their area, development of new OSE groups and chapters, technical development per se, and development of Distributive Enterprise, etc.
Annual Budget
- Setup (one time)
- Regular maintenance
- Hosting fee. Traffic requirements. Annual cost per GB ? 10 cents per gigabyte. Recruit http://www.mkomo.com/about for assistance.
- Moderation
Links
- See initial Forum design notes from 2011 at Forum Policy, which has a link to an Essay on constructive criticism.
Work Product
To be developed.
- OSE Forum Guidelines
- OSE Forum Moderation Guidelines
- OSE Social Contract
- OSE Forum Information Architecture
- OSE Wiki Registration Template - questions that are asked during registration
- OSE Forum Registration Template - questions asked for Forum Registration.
- OSE Forum Requirements
- OSE Forum Specifications - platform used, hosting, traffic, growth plan, management, moderation.
- OSE Forum Operations Manual section - hosting, setup, speed, memory
- Comparison of Open Source Forum Software. To include analysis of support availability, software maturity, features, cost, integration ability.
- OSE Contributor Agreement Intents (same as wiki)
- OSE Contributor Agreement
- License. Same as all OSE. Write the intent, and have it rewritten in legal language.
- OSE IP Guidelines