Re: control freak? Maybe.

[Jason Pincin <jpincin@ashtech.net>]

External documentation will be integrated into our database structure and will be part of
the tree.  I'm proceeding down this road carefully though so as to fine tune it enough
that external documentation doesn't overrun all native articles.  But yes, is the answer
to your question, it will be.  I'd like an option in the search engine to filter it out,
but I'm not sure if you can provide that with ht://dig or not?

As for the form for mirroring, to make everything nice & automagic, it's a good idea, but
again, we'll have to impliment it carefully.  We don't want it abused.  Again, we'll
probably integrate that into the moderator system, have the form submit to the moderator
form.  Upon moderator mirror approval, the scripts are put in place and it begins.  The
moderators can also approve it's integration into the tree.

As for these people maintaining the email gateway as well, there some options there.  I
think we need to discuss EXACTLY what each of us see that gateway doing and the process
it will go through before any decisions are made there.  Some questions I have for you
are:

Will the email gateway allow only pre-formatted messages or free text?
How do you see it fitting into the moderator system?
Etc.

I have my own ideas and views, but lets talk about it.

I see it growing immensly though.  Here's how I ultimately see the email gateway working
(not only do we become THE support portal, but we become THE support forum):

Email gateway will take either free text or formatted text.
If formatted text is given, the article is generated and posted for moderator approval.
I'll explain free text in a few lines.

A 2nd part to the mail gateway enables something I've seen from the beginning (not needed
for go-live either).  The ability for someone to mail a question from the site using a
web-form.  To summarize, the form directs the questions to the proper people by
information already built into the DB.  People that sign-up as KB support Reps (or
whatever) fine tune how many mails they wish to get per day or week, and what category of
questions they wish to recieve.  The mail is recieved, and the interchange of mails begin
betwen the people.  The reply-to's, etc are set up in such a way that the KB tracks all
these mails until case closure, and then builds a transaction log for the conversation
which gets posted in a forum for volunteers to turn into an article.

Now, from above, the free-text submision into the mail gateway would also be thrown into
this forum.

This mail system I describe along with the mail gateways, etc. would allow the KB to
really become the ultimate support mailing list.  More configurable than any other list
out there.

Thoughts are welcome.

Jason


On Tue, Jul 06, 1999 at 01:13:29AM -0700, Aaron Turner wrote:
> 
> Well after reading 50+ submissions I'm not sure I want to share the search
> engine.  Last I heard from Jason, the hacks to htsearch won't be necessary
> with the new database structure.  Assuming that's true, it would be faster
> for me to make the final last modifications to the search engine myself
> than try to get someone else up to speed.  If the hacks are still
> necessary, then maybe one of:
> 
> Thomas Buschhorn
> Victor Stanescu
> Dean Giberson
> 
> would be helpful.
> 
> For the LBF, since this isn't necessary for go-live, no need to deal with
> trying to manage people working on this project.  I'm not sure how big of
> a project this is right now since I'm still working on the feature list.
> 
> The mirror project is going to require some complex Perl scripts and some
> SQL knowledge.  I found a few people who I think would be a good match,
> but honestly, before I bring anyone on, Jason and I need to come to an
> understanding on what this is for.  My goal for the record is to (not sure
> how to do this) integrate content that isn't written specifically for our
> site (LDP, Linux Gazette, man pages, etc) into the database.  The issue is
> that we have to present the external content in as a URL in the form of:
> 
> http://www.linuxkb.org/mirrors/
> 
> Hence, external docs will not only be listed in "related links" but in the
> actual category tree.  Also, I expect the email gateway we discussed will
> maintained by this project/group as well.
> 
> One thing we can start immediately and that anyone can do is start
> tracking down good sites to mirror.  Anyone who doesn't have the
> experiance or time to do development can scour the web for sites we should
> mirror.  
> 
> Another bright idea I have is an auto-mirror form.  Basically a site admin
> goes to this form, fills it out, and it sets up the scripts to start
> mirroring their site.  As an added bonus, they have the option of checking
> a box signaling they grant us the right to include their content in our
> database.  This makes the legal chore of contacting each site admin way
> too simple.  :-)  We could announce this service on Freshmeat/LT/etc and
> I'm sure we'll see scores of small Linux support web sites sign up.
> 
> Basically, we become *the* Linux support _portal_.  The possibilities are
> endless.
> 
> --
> Aaron Turner, Core Developer       http://vodka.linuxkb.org/~aturner/
> Linux Knowledge Base Organization  http://linuxkb.org/
> Hanlon's Razor:
> Never attribute to malice, that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>