Re: SquishDot

["Bruno J. Vernier" <vernier@vc.bc.ca>]

On Wed, Jul 28, 1999 at 12:01:48AM -0400, Camilla R Fox wrote:
> 
> I agree that SquishDot is cool, but what is it about us that makes it
> appropriate for us to jump on the bandwagon?

> As it is, our archives are easy to use, our content meaningful, and our
> list productive.  Why do we want to throw a way a system that works,
> that has effort invested in it, and that isn't duplicated elsewhere?

good point.  thanks for bringing it up.

> The SlashDot thing seems to be designed for people with shorter
> attention spans, and larger supply of news.  The reason SlashDot works
> so well is that it's always got a lot of fresh content - in fact, it
> takes a full time staff to maintain, even with all the reader input.
> You can't just set up something like that, and expect it to run itself,
> nor can you scale it down to our size, and still keep it alive - the
> SlashDot medium has a higher critical mass than the web page and
> mailing list mediums.  Our web pages and mailing lists seem to work
> with the level of maintenance and input that they get, and I'm
> unconvinced that we have enough input to fuel something with SlashDot's
> format.
> 
> Quite aside from that, SlashDot is very general, and big enough to be a
> nitch filler.  Why do we want to compete with them for it?

I am thinking ahead:  education and linux is vast field, almost as big as
education itself.  Assuming even just 5% of educators become interested in
what we are doing, we will be dealing with millions of people world-wide.
this is a specialized niche, and if I understand correctly, each niche will
need its own "portal".  Our seul-edu niche will be for people with longer
attention span.  No matter what, there has been and will continue to
be some maintenance work to keep the discussions/threads organized and 
somewhat focussed.

So I am going to go even further and suggest we think about making seul-edu
a portal (not right now, but we can start building it or designing it)
It does not matter to me whether we use squishdot or not, what matters is
that we should be prepared for a possible geometric increase in participation.


Bruno