New ideas

[Doug Loss <dloss@csrlink.net>]

Roman and I have been discussing some things off-channel, and we wanted to get 
your thoughts on some of them.

It's become evident that our website isn't well-designed for ease of access to 
the information we have.  That's mostly because it wasn't really designed at 
all; it just grew as various people said, "Hey, we ought to have thus-and-so at 
the eul-edu site."  Each of the ideas by itself was pretty good, but they 
didn't reflect any over-all design or organization.

I know Roman has some ideas on how the website might be organized.  I'm pretty 
sure Fredrik Liljegren does too (don't you, Fredrik?).  I'll be awfully 
surprised if there aren't at least a few others with some good ideas to share.  
So here's what I'm asking: could you all chime in on a discussion on how to 
organize the seul-edu website for the easiest, most pleasant access to the info 
we have here?  I can pretty much guarantee that all ideas will be carefully 
considered and many if not most will be acted upon.  None of us who set up the 
seul-edu website consider ourselves master web authors (well, maybe Wil does, 
but he's not on the mailing list at the moment so he won't see this :-) ), so 
we'll gratefully accept any help we can get.

That was the first thing.  The second was the possibility of adding some new 
methods of interacting in the hope of building even more of a community feeling 
than we already have.  I'll have to check with Roger on just what 
possibilities are available to us, but I know we could start IRC meetings if 
people want to.  I'm not an IRCer, but I'll take a try at it if a lot of 
people think it would be helpful.  There may also be the possibility of 
Usenet-style newsgroups, which could give us the benefit of input from 
"passers-by," people with an interest in our topics who don't want to 
subscribe to a private mailing list.  Such a group might also be done as a web 
forum, using one or another of the packages available for that sort of thing.

The last idea goes hand in hand with the previous one.  Most of our talk here 
is quite task-oriented.  Roman was thinking that we should post a bit more 
about ourselves so we can get to know one another a bit better.  I think that 
could be useful in cementing the budding friendships I have seen forming on 
this mailing list since it started in November.  Of course, we might scare 
each other off too, but that's a chance we can take.  This is really just an 
extension of the short bio we ask new subscribers to post when the first 
subscribe.  Occasional off-topic threads about things of interest to us can 
make this mailing list feel more like a gathering of friends who are working 
on a joint project (in my cultural background the nearest equivalent would be 
a "barn-raising") than a dry workgroup with no common interests beyond the 
job.

To that end I'll post a bio myself tonight or tomorrow morning.  If that 
doesn't cause a rash of unsubscriptions by horrified people, you all can take 
a turn at it :-).

Doug Loss            Democracy substitutes election by the
dloss@csrlink.net    incompetent many for appointment by
(570) 326-3987       the corrupt few.
                        George Bernard Shaw