[Seattle-editorial] Re: [Seattletech] Technical Changes Discussed At Editorial Meeting

[Laury]

Your caveat that you don't know MIR  very well is the unfortunate truth 
for most -- if not all of us -- that work with it on a daily basis.  
I've worked professionally on websites for over 5 years.  IMHO, MIR is 
unnecessarily complex for a small support team.  We don't have the 
bandwidth to have to pull in technical support every time we change a 
banner or an address. In a larger team environment, MIR might be the 
right tool.  For right now, however, we need a tool that is a little 
more forgiving.

Fortunately, there are thousands of other CMS out there.  Like wiki, 
most utilize PHP.  Luckily for us,  that means that most of them are 
free ... and they don't require a new hosting provider.

I'm going to ask the NYC IMC about the CMS they are using.  Once again, 
if anyone has a contact working at the NYC IMC, please let me know.  I  
want to gather enough info to see if this is a viable alternative.  If 
it is, I would like to have a broader discussion on the pros/cons of 
making a change in the CMS.

-- Laury

On Jun 10, 2004, at 8:55 AM, Brandon Faloona wrote:

> (I've removed imc-seattle from my reply)
>
> I am willing to help teach people MIR, with the caveat that I don't 
> know
> MIR that well.
>
> I can't help with changing the CMS, because I just helped with that
> process for the seattle IMC last year and my soul would die a little to
> tear down the work that took years to consense on.
>
> MIR is distributed into people's homes, requiring that we only pay for
> DNS. If the switch is made to a more traditional CMS a hosting provider
> would need to be found and paid for.
>
> Is the wish list posted somewhere?
>
> Below is an wiki page for teaching each other about MIR. Perhaps we can
> expand it to meet the current needs of the editorial group?
>
> http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/SeaEdMirTutorial
>
> Sadly, and significantly, since I last checked (7 months ago), this 
> page
> has not changed:
> http://mir.indymedia.de/en/documentation/archive.shtml
>
> -brandon
>
> Laury said:
>> Hi All  --
>>
>> In our last editorial meeting, we agreed that we needed some changes 
>> on
>> the website.  An unforeseen result of the MIR Content Management 
>> System
>>   (CMS) is that editorial can't make some basic layout or content
>> changes without the assistance of the technical staff.  This would be
>> less of an issue if we had a sizable technical team. Since our current
>> tech support is neutral about which CMS we use,  I suggested that we
>> look at another open source CMS -- perhaps a PHP system -- that would
>> have less of a learning curve than MIR/Java.  PHP is wildly popular in
>> the open source community, so we may be able to lure more tech
>> volunteers and take advantage of the thousands of scripts that have
>> already been written.
>>
>> The editorial team has a relatively long "wish list" of changes, and 
>> it
>> is reasonable to look at whether we should try to develop within MIR 
>> --
>> or use someone else's proven code.
>>
>> While surfing the NYC I discovered that they are using PHP.  I also
>> noted that they have implemented a few of the policy/procedural 
>> changes
>> that we have discussed in the last few meetings, i.e.:
>>
>> 1.  They have posted a clear Editorial Policy on newswire and feature
>> submission:
>> http://nyc.indymedia.org/mod/info/display/editorial_policy/index.php
>>
>> 2. They have established logins to permit users to post/edit their
>> comments, create filters and rate other posts:
>> http://nyc.indymedia.org/mod/info/display/howto/index.php
>>
>> Note how they are using their user rating system to control what
>> newswire items display on the home page:
>>
>> "While browsing the site, you are encouraged to rate articles using 
>> the
>> popup menu at the end of each piece. While user ratings cannot remove
>> an article from the site completely, they serve the invaluable role of
>> deciding how much prominence is given to the display of an article.
>>
>> "By default, only articles rated higher than -6 are displayed in the
>> right-hand column, and on the "newswire" home page. This is called the
>> "display threshold." If you have created a user account, you can even
>> alter that threshold to suit your own needs, e.g., display only
>> articles receiving +3 or higher. Articles which fall below the
>> threshold are moved to the hidden articles section, which is linked
>> from the bottom of the newswire column. They are still available on 
>> the
>> site, and can be linked to directly, but their prominence is degraded
>> as a result of user input."
>>
>> 3.  They have also implemented a pulldown menu that permits users to
>> categorize their posts into topics.
>>
>> http://nyc.indymedia.org/newswire/index.php?function=publish
>>
>> I was very interested in how they authenticate the authors:
>>
>> A.  authors with logins can later edit their posts
>> B. authors are asked to provide an email address for validation
>> purposes.  This is optional, however, the form clearly states:  "If 
>> you
>> do not validate, users will be encouraged to distrust your
>> information."
>>
>> 4.  I was also impressed with the sorting capability on the home page:
>> readers can sort by type of article (feature, newswire, etc.) or by
>> political category.  The Open News section is hardcoded to bump Local
>> Interest items to the top:
>>
>> http://nyc.indymedia.org/
>>
>> Does anyone have connections with the NYC team?  We may not have the
>> volume that NYC has, but they seem to have resolved the site issues
>> that we have been discussing for the last few months.  If we could
>> leverage their code, it would save us hours of development time.
>>
>> -- Laury
>> _______________________________________________
>> Seattletech mailing list
>> Seattletech at lists.indymedia.org
>> http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/seattletech
>>
>
>
> brandon faloona
> ---------------
> Television is now our form of government.
> - Kurt Vonnegut
> _______________________________________________
> Seattle-editorial mailing list
> Seattle-editorial at lists.indymedia.org
> http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/seattle-editorial
>