I was thinking about the conversation being had about devtome and it's accessibility. I agree it needs quite an overhaul in the long run to appeal as a source of "stuff" to the general public.
I'd like to propose a bounty, if I may, for "A better devtome system". 6 different strategies for 6 shares each, on how devtome can best be organised to:
Allow contributors to easily add content (as they do currently via the wiki version, but it doesn't have to be this way; think about the options).
Allow easy indexing of the content so categories form more naturally.
Allow easy administration for tasks such as plagiarism checks, copyright checks, managing writers (if need be), etc.
Allow the audience to find what they want quickly (front page with random articles? automatic related article finder? automatic internal hyperlink system? etc).
Ideas for a better categorization system, if one exists.
Ideas for other ways of delivering content - eg reading apps for mobile devices?
This is a discussion paper where the writer describes what the perfect system would be like, by identifying problems with the current system and imaging improvements. You don't necessarily have to practically solve them, just logically. I would expect each page to be 1000 words or more, to thoroughly explore the topic. The above parts are just examples of things to think about, but there are tons more worth considering and the writers can explore ideas and brainstorm. I'd also encourage the later bounty seekers to absorb the good ideas from the first few in their own, if they can - this is open source, after all!
I'm not sure whether the wiki has plugin options, but if it does, we can either consider building the current one out to better fit our needs (and the needs of our readers), or biding our time until we can build our own software in the future if it's more valuable. Again, this is just about ideas at the moment, on how we can make it a pleasant experience as possible for mass audiences, such that they would find themselves having a hard time staying away.
Any objections? Is 6/6 overkill?
Yes a lot of that (indexing, visuals, categorisation etc) is already doable via dokuwiki plugins but (semi-quoting jasinlee who maintains devtome) it needs someone proficient in php to fix bugs as they add plugins and ongoing. If you google dokuwiki plugins and other dokuwiki sites there's a lot out there, but it's open source and often never debugged.
This is why it's such a laborious, manual process with not great functionality, and always playing catchup with categorising. Focus still is going through all exisiting writing to check the basics let alone improvements.
Anything to improve things would be great by me, so good suggestion for ideas.
Edit: Also want to add that much of what you see on devtome is still in the process of working through checks for categorising, formatting, content. On top of dealing with new articles, giftculturewriting is working from existing Z-A and I'm on A-Z. Speaking for myself, I'm still on A...
I know gift has some good ideas for better front page presentation and usability, but for now it's basically just a tree of topics - categories - subcategories -articles to make the process above quicker and easier, and can then just work on rolling new submissions and look at visuals.
If anyone has ideas (sticking with existing dokuwiki functionality and syntax for now as that's what there is) then please suggest them. It's taking a long time and we just haven't had time to get into that yet.
