Re: [libreoffice-website] [Proposal] A central employment-office-like web structure for LibO volunteers

On 23/05/2011 Gianluca Turconi wrote:
> since few days I'm discussing a proposal about the creation of a  
> employment-office-like collaboration tool for LibO volunteers. Here is my  
> original proposal:
> http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Website/LibreOfficeWiki/Proposed#Central_Employment-office-like_Web_Structure_for_LibreOffice_Volunteers

It's a very interesting proposal, but I find it still too unspecified to
start assessing tools (nobody wants lengthy discussions) or building
broken-but-you-get-the-idea prototypes and castrating the project due to
the constraints of a semi-random tool choice.

These are the first 10 items that, after reading all related discussions
I got exposed to in all mailing lists, I believe should be included in
the proposal before thinking about tools or prototypes:

1) The site must be fun to use. Not easy to use: FUN to use. It's a site
for hundreds of people, not for the few that are highly committed and
would contribute even without it. This must be priority #1 in design.

2) Success should not depend on developers using this site. LibreOffice
developers, rightfully, oppose everything that could hinder their
productivity, and reserve to choose their tools. There's plenty of
non-developers tasks and the site could now really focus on these only.

3) The site must provide Faceted search for tasks: one can progressively
narrow down the results to find all tasks needing knowledge of Italian
and less than a day and easy-medium difficulty, by clicking suitable
values on the "Language", "Duration" and "Difficulty" panels. In images:
http://www.lucidimagination.com/files/image/articles/faceting/CNET_faceted_search.jpg
(just found with a search engine, I'm not affiliated with that site).

4) It shouldn't be necessary to register; optimally, the site would just
use cookies like bit.ly does, at least for the first session.

5) Cooperating should be rewarding; not (or not only) money as specified
in the proposal, but bonus points that allow to identify the best
contributors (may conflict with 4, but there could be some hybrid way,
i.e., asking for an e-mail account and "registering" users this way, by
sending them an e-mail in background).

6) The site must support free tagging: if the Italian community wants to
post a series of tasks tagged "libo34it", they should be able to do it.

7) There must be an interface to clone an existing task. Optimally, to
clone a series of existing tasks. I envision Italo having to clone all
the "Translate LibreOffice 3.3.3 Release Notes to Italian/French/German"
tasks to the corresponding 3.3.4 ones with one click.

8) Links should be easy to refer and use, like
http://SITENAME.libreoffice.org/task/308
http://SITENAME.libreoffice.org/tasks/308+313+318+323
http://SITENAME.libreoffice.org/tag/libo34it
so that people could refer to "task 308" and link to it easily.

9) Upon marking a task completed, the system should select the closest
ones and propose them as further work. Like YouTube, if you wish.

10) The site must be based on Free Software infrastructure, and this is
not really a limit since there are plenty of systems allowing your
requirements and my requirements.

Sorry if I made a step backwards and brought the discussion back to
specifications, but before assessing tools I think a clearer vision is
needed: as I wrote, this is not an ordinary site for specialists but an
inclusive platform for the masses, and it needs extra care in planning;
if you don't think so, just go on with prototypes, no problem.

Regards,
  Andrea.


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