Writeup:Neoturbine v5
From Wikiturbine
By: Dmitriy Vysotskiy
Neoturbine v5 (also known as Seti and Project Resurrection, though often these terms refer to the overall effort to create a Neoturbine website as of December 2007) is Dima's pitch at remaking the Neoturbine website and network. The proposed project hopes to take the current network features and organize then on a base that could later be expanded without a total rewrite. This article servers as a formal explanation of Dima's idea.
PLEASE DISCUSS THIS ARTICLE IN TALK SINCE IT IS HARD TO FIND COMMENTS IN THIS TEXT
Contents |
[edit] What We Have Now
The way I see it, Neoturbine is composed of these 3 general layers in order of importance:
- The Neoturbine community via IRC and major projects we undertake and help each other out with concerning Neoturbine
- The original Chicago members of Neoturbine and projects relating to this group (mostly NeoCon)
- Individual websites and projects of all members
Or in other words, we always make big efforts to do something about the website as well as events surrounding NeoCon, followed by stuff all of us do on our own and share. I think we can also agree in general that as a community we try or like to do the following:
- Share personal projects, links, data with each other
- Try to link back to neoturbine.net if we consider it to be fitting (eg. personal websites)
- Help each other on projects now and then
- Have a interesting ideas to bring up the community on IRC for all of us to try out
- Expand Neoturbine by getting more members in and becoming somewhat more popular
- Invite friends
[edit] Some Analogies
This might not help some of you, but this is what I compare us to. I think we can look at Neoturbine as a roadside tavern and also a scrap box. The tavern analogy holds for the fact that we are sort of like a small tavern in the countryside on a small road between cities. Some people live around it, some stop by and come often while others are more likely to just come once or twice and leave. We would like to see more business like many pubs and bars in the city, but in a way want to feel unique and not sold out to some popular idea, also keeping in mind that we can't simply pick up and go where the big names are. The way we can get more people to visit more often is if we have something unique to offer and if we can let others know about us via word-of-mouth. The scrap box analogy is that we are also a collection of various skills that our members have and that we can use, sort of like a scrap box of potentially useful objects. We can't just simply try to stick objects from the box together in hopes of making something out of it, but if a good idea comes along, we can recall having this box as a resource for our project. Our skills and resources come in handy for stuff we do.
[edit] What We Want to Get Done Here
This is roughly written in order of importance, based on the numbered list from previous section.
- Establish textual information on the website that explains who we are, how to connect to us, and what other things we link to. The idea is to have some complete frontend for visitors to look at (usually because they come to after seeing our personal websites out of curiosity). This means IRC info, contact info, how to connect, links to our subsites and affiliates.
- Resurrect and complete the wiki, a NeoCon website, QDB and similar projects that revolve around the Neoturbine community. Provide linking to it from main site.
- Establish a use for a log-in/member DB system that would in a way connect Neoturbine users on some sort of stable platform (backend framework vs PHP debate not addressed since this is beyond this article)
[edit] What Dima Suggests
The 1st two points from the previous section are easy, since we have a general idea of what we want out of them. We seem to struggle to create a nice way to implement the 3rd point about user databases and accounts. I would like to address a few points:
- We want to avoid copying social user-based idea that already exist, such as facebook, digg, and others. We want the user accounts to be a worthwhile incentive for new members to join and come more often, not a copy of something that exists. If I wanted to see "interesting links" on a homepage as a new user, I'd go to StumbleUpon or digg, and not bother with what a few people make. We DO NOT have big user base to start anything big yet.
- We want to establish user accounts as a base for other things we can add on, therefore we want to keep it simple and with expandability in mind. I am fully aware that there are already projects out there aimed at social websites, but to make them work for what we need will be a bigger headache than to make something less overkill ourselves.
[edit] User Accounts
What I suggested in the channel is a following implementation should by the end work with the priorities I mentioned:
- Every person who visits us and sticks around is encouraged to get a neoturbine account. The account does not affect their IRC membership, but marks them as a frequent visitor. As a base, a new user account provides a public profile about the person which is stored in a database. The user can upload a stylesheet to edit how the profile looks, and choose privacy options for information to display (public vs in-network).
- As an incentive, this account will also provide them with a neoturbine.net/user/*** URL, which by default points to their profile. By moderator discretion, we can also enable that URL to point to their own server/webspace. The catch to having this redirect is that the user will have to put some of our profile code on their website. This code will pull user information from the database and create a neoturbine profile box on their website, which signifies that the person is part of our network, which in turn provides a link back to us for their visitors to click. To make sure users are using this code, it will have something in it to ensure that it exists at the location the user is redirecting to. The idea is, people can get free neoturbine subdomains as long as we get this modest link back and their participation.
- We can have a class of power users, who are considered to be important or fairly active members of our network. These people will have an option to receive a ***.neoturbine.net domain and maybe more control over the redirect. These user are most likely the ones that will be featured on a page on the main site that links back to 'friends and affiliates'.
- The top level of users will be administrators. These will mostly be those who actually run and code Neoturbine. Their have the power to alter, lock, disable or delete user accounts, based on common sense of decency.
- By getting the main account, every user will also automatically have access to accounts on other public neoturbine projects (ex: wiki account, qdb account) with same login.
- Other features will be added to this base that users can enable and disable. We can also consider widgets and otherwise, but the main step is to code a base.
This table breaks down user classes:
| User | Power User | Admin | |
| Neoturbine Profile | X | X | X |
| neoturbine.net/user/*** URL | X | X | X |
| ***.neoturbine.net URL | X | X | |
| URL Redirect | ? | X | X |
| Featured on Neoturbine.net | X | X | |
| Own Profile Deactivation | X | X | X |
| Moderation Powers | X | ||
| Access to Neoturbine Projects | X | X | X |
| Privacy Options | X | X | X |
[edit] Site Organization
We want to sort of have following on the website, as sections / links on navbar:
- Home - Welcome crap, server status, user count, updates
- Members - log in for setting updates / moderation, also a place for new users to register
- IRC - information about connecting to IRC, maybe a web client, additional info
- Portal - links to our power user pages, friends and affiliates
- Wiki - link to wiki
- NeoCon - link to the NeoCon seasonally?
- Contact Us - usual stuff
[edit] Deployment
We want to complete work on the website in a few stages, each stage giving us some covered ground to fall back upon. I see following 3 stages:
- Textual - finalize site organization and HTML framework (so that we have several styles), put in all of the content that will bring us up to getting #1 completed from "What We Want to Get Done Here" section.
- Member Log in - Enable creation, deletion and modification of profiles
- Advanced features - redirects, user classes, global access, etc