[FM Discuss] questions about place

[adam]

ok...so. to answer Lachlan...I mean the backend (/write) would be under
booki.cc...the rest under www.flossmanuals.net ... but maybe i need to
unpack this a little more to explain why I think this is an interesting
option...


first. Booki is a lot better than the current FM toolset already. By
'better' I am talking strictly about functionality. What else is there
(you might ask)? Well, design of course...we still need to deal with
Booki design, and also there is the minor issue that Booki is still
alpha and we need to test it, mature current features, and extend it. FM
already 'just works'.

But when Booki is ready then I am sure that you will enjoy the
difference...

So, why not just install booki under the fm domain? well..because Booki
does not only extend the functionality of the FM toolset in interesting
ways BUT fundamentally it opens up a lot of other possibilities due to a
shift to a slightly wider paradigm, namely - any kind of content can be
authored in Booki. Currently FM is dedicated solely to the development
of books about Free Software (and associated topics like mentoring free
software projects and collaboration). 

However, in the Booki universe FM would become a group. One of many.
There might also be a group writing poetry about city living, there
might be one about cooking, there might be one focused on writing
fiction, there might be on writing a book about the dna of mosquitoes in
Broome (western Australia)...i dunno...think of a topic big or small and
there are people wanting to write books about it......So does this mean
we lose our identity? We get lost in a morass of groups? Will this
lessen our sense of community?

Firstly, I think actually the community will be strengthen by moving to
booki, not just because its a nicer tool set to use, but also because
there is a focus on inter-contributor web-based communication. At the
moment we have about 1800 registered accounts and only 300 on this list.
What if you could message _everyone_ in FLOSS Manuals...awaken those
dormant accounts to contribute or get to those people that dont know the
list exists or dont like using email for this kind of thing (there is a
growing number with this syndrome). So I think Booki itself will improve
the community dymanis regardless of the domain...

But more directly - there will be more groups but I have the feeling we
can only gain from this. The reason is that there are many associated
groups with which we could exchange information and assist or be
assisted by and this can only enhance and improve free documentation
about free software. What if, for example, there is a school that is
writing a text book about computer science and use booki to do this.
Part of the booki system is to announce projects and call for help with
specific issues. The school in this scenario might announce the book
'booki-wide' and ask for help writing a chapter on how to use Word
Processors. Someone(s) in the FM group sees this and says 'hey we have a
chapter that almost works for you' and we point them to it and
taaddaaaa....they document Open Office (of which they might never have
heard before) instead of some other closed source word processor...

that is one reasonably obvious example and one that is not too fanciful.
This is also just one example of how we could interact with other groups
to advance our cause.

This might seem a little way off...would this really happen? Well, yes I
think this will happen. There are already very many people asking if
they can author a book in FM and these books are not, or only
peripherally, related to free software. We have to grow the concept,
that is for sure, take booki to other contexts and demonstrate its
usefulness....it took 2 years to get to the position we are today. We
now have to do this for other content bases. Bringing other groups in
will not happen over night, but I am convinced it will happen. We proved
it works for one of the most difficult cases - free documentation - i
can only imagine that it can be only be easier to get other groups on
board.

So, next...why not do this under the Fm domain? ie...why not install
booki under www.flossmanuals.net and invite others to create their own
books there? well...mainly because that domain is specific and related
to the content we create...i doubt people will want to write books about
other topics under that domain...

Also, with regard to the www.flossmanuals,net domain - at the moment I
am not happy with how we deal with languages and representation of
content in the /read section of FM. We dont have much available space to
get the word out there on all the manuals in all the languages and all
the formats (pdf/html/epub/book) within the current FM site. So, I think
we need to restructure that site a lot. Moving the production and
community to booki would free up the www.flossmanuals.net domain to be
better focused on the readers...for featuring the content in all
languages and formats. that does not mean we cut the ties between the FM
community and the readers...quite the contrary...I think we need to
develop better tools and methods to get the two to interact. At the
moment we get very little interaction, so we can only improve on this
position. This will come with the re-think of www.flossmanuals.net and
is only assisted by freeing that domain up to be more reader-focused.

and lastly, the interaction between www.flossmanuals.net and booki.cc
would be a good model for how others might use booki. Many groups even
in the free software world do not like using www.flossmanuals.net to
produce documentation because of domain-envy. this is that familiar
syndrome of connecting domain to ownership. If the manual is made under
www.flossmanuals.net then fm 'owns' the content (which I dont agree with
but I understand why people conclude this). 

We have tried to make fm domain-free by making tools available like the
'embed manual' javascript that is part of /remix. However...not many
people are not using this. My feeling is that this is because the
paradigm is new and people 'dont get it' and the idea is a little
inconsistent and a little conflicted. What is fm? a publisher or a
toolset for anyone to create content about free software and have it on
their own domain? I think both, but most people dont. Most people think
the former (they see fm as a 'publisher') and can't deal with the fact
that you dont have to use fm that way.

But booki is made this way. Booki is made to provide content for other
domains...it is a toolset for production.

Material will get developed in booki but represented in the static
('readable' / 'stable') form under www.flossmanuals.net. Hence there
might be other groups we collaborate with in booki to help them with
their manuals...we become 'a legion'...or, to put it in slightly more
contemporary keywords - 'a multitude' - that develops free documentation
about free software and outputs this content to our own domain as well
as helping others (other booki groups) develop books about free software
that will appear under their own domain (eg. the school example, or
perhaps we help the joomla group produce books for the joomla domain
et)...


We don't yet have these 'domain publishing' tools, nor do I think we
have yet cracked this idea (ie. we dont yet know what tools would be
best to realise this vision) but I am hoping we will resolve this during
the code sprint in NZ in a few weeks...

ok. this is a big topic and i wanted to seed it for discussion so we can
think also about how to dev booki. I am actually away from tuesday for
the weeks leading up to the code sprint, so please continue this
discussion, think about things, and process...and i will come back into
the conversation while I am actually working on booki in real space with
Aco and Douglas

okedoke....

adam


On Sat, 2010-02-06 at 10:16 -0500, Joshua Facemyer wrote:
> Just curious: why would you want to do that?
> 
> I think it's intuitive to have a booki domain as a place for 
> work/distribution of the platform rather than for Floss Manuals 
> collaborative work.  FM seems to make sense at flossmanuals.net
> 
> Just my thoughts.
> 
> JF
> 
> adam hyde wrote:
> > hi,
> >
> > I just wanted to shoot a quick question to the list...it seems FLOSS
> > Manuals will have many more books available over the next months. There
> > is a lot being translated and many new books, and some updates, in the
> > wings. 
> >
> > There is also booki on its way.
> >
> > So when booki is ready for us, I am actually thinking the domain
> > flossmanuals.net becomes soley a repository for the readable manuals
> > (html, epub, pdf, paper books) and we move all our backend to
> > www.booki.ccc. That means we still have the list, we have
> > www.flossmanuals.net as the repository for content for readers, but we
> > do all the work under the domain www.booki.cc in the 'FLOSS Manuals'
> > group...
> >
> > my questions is...does that feel weird to anyone? is there any emotional
> > attachment to editing/creating content under the www.flossmanuals.net
> > domain? or any other issue I am neglecting?
> >
> > interested in your thoughts....
> >
> > adam
> >
> >  
> >
> >   
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