Ideas for the site

[Pietro]

Now that the software have been probably found and the name probably too, it's time to start thinking about the internal structure and extra ideas we want to install. Those ideas will eventually be the one that make this site much better than all the others. ( haha :twisted: loosers).

 

Here are some.

 

I noticed that is possible to have the same thread be present in more than one forum. This is brilliant... because:

If something is present in more than one thread than it can be present in ALL THE THREAD that pertain to it.

In other words, if someone is discussing under the thread "mental health" how to deal with fixed thoughts...

and someone answer to it from the diet point of view, and the discussion continues from the diet point of view in relation to mental health, then the thread should be in both in the "mental health" thread and in the "diet" thread.

 

Personally I would like to see at least one forum for the water method, and I suppose we should have a forum for each major school (Energy Arts, Healing Tao/Universal Tao, ...) Then some discussion will be contained in that forum ( Should I go to London to the Kan And Li workshop?...) And other will be spreading across forums (The effect of Kan and li respect to the ego, goes both in the HT and in the Stillness Forum. But then as someone suggests another remedy from "energy arts" it also should be copied in the "water method" forum). This permit to people to only follow the forum they are interested in, knowing that eventually if something is relevant it will be copied there.

 

In short I think we should try to avoid to create a division of our experience in separated entities (a partition in math terms). Essentially because

 

a) it is impossible, most post touch most topics

every thread start somewhere, but eventually goes round and round, touching many many topics.

 

 

This would also be a way of tagging discussion (instead of classificating it), will avoid people getting nervous because:("hey, you are going off topic!"), and will be something very new (virtually unheard that I know of) in the world of discussion groups.

 

I don't think only one person can do all this work. Reading the F.A.Q of the site, it seem that to move a thread you need to be an administrator. So, even for this my suggestion would be that we have many (shouldn't we be all) administrators.

 

Just some basic ideas

Pietro

[sean]

Cool ideas Pietro. I slimmed down the categories significantly for now. But since it looks like this forum software has at least the core features we need I am interested in learning the inner workings of it in the following months and learning how to make mods and whatnot. If there are any other programmers amongst us, maybe we can work on figuring out how to make this tagging system. I agree with you that it's very limiting to have fixed categories for discussions like this, but having one big forum for all discussions could eventually turn into an unmanageable "junk drawer" in a sense.

 

I really like how gmail handles this and would like to potentially emulate this on the forums. It's pretty much exactly what you've been describing this whole time. Instead of folders like in my most email software, you apply "labels" to your email. You can create as many labels as you want an apply as many labels as you want to any piece of email. Then you have your main "All Mail" inbox where all your mail shows up, and you also have your label boxes in which each email shows up in as many labels boxes as you've tagged it with. So for example, you could tag an email as "friend", "business", and "art" and it will show up in all those label boxes.

 

If you, or anyone else wants to check it out, let me know. I have 5 gmail invites left.

 

Sean.

[Max]

There is a great saying KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). Too many forums, too many administrators... Why?

Lets make it as easy as possible so we can all enjoy it without this becoming a full time job. Water method and all the other stuff can fall under "Meditation". If you have just 2 forums "Meditation" and "Off-topic", this will solve all the other stuff, like tags, labels, etc. Then 2 moderators for each forum will be enough. For "Meditation" could be Sean or Pietro (or whoever wants to), and for "off-topic" Ron Jeremy.

[Pietro]

Yes, I have and use gmail too. But gmail have taken from delicious. So please play with that a bit. The difference is that in gmail you have to apply the labels yourself. In delicious, you do your part, but everybody else does it too. Is the wiki of the tag system (and here we go again)!

 

It seem that we have two necessities to mingle. On the one side we want to have one folder, with the possibility to see everything at the same time (that's why we organised the threaded view, right?), and we have some obvious difficulties in dissecting a body (the taoist body, hehe) which is obviously one thing.

 

On the other side we want to be able to find all the posts about a certain topic. But more than that, we want to be able to find all the thread that contains lateral references to our topic. Something that cannot be done automatically. It's not just that B.K.Frantzis is the same as bruce and is the same as b.k., because it is also the same as 'the other school from california that dissolves". And the possibilities are endless.

 

So the only solution is to have a tagging system. Like the one used by gmail, but such that anybody can add tags and assign tags. It would be sad and impractical if only few people could assign what tags can be used, or what tags do a certain post depend to.

 

Only in this way is not going to be anybodys full time job, as the load will be spread among everybody.

 

I don't know how hard should it be to modify the code to insert a tagging system, but if Sean is willing to look at the code (and me? Plato? Max? or anybody else) it might be that is just few lines of hack. After all is just to apply an extra DB table (according this uses MySQL) that connects posts and threads. Or something similar.

 

P.

[Pietro]

Max, is not that I want to be Administrator, it is that I don't want (or better that I fear) having someone above me, taking decisions that will affect me. I got pissed that James deleted my post, especially since I was not going against any rule, just because was not playing along his Agenda. Now James is a personal friend for me. I know him, we've chatted in Thailand in the evening, and we have many friends together. The idea that James did this is for me a prove that you should trust no one to be above their personal agenda. Not even me. So I don't want one person to decide, or to be pleaded, or asked to make a change. Either we decide together, and then, only after the decision is sealed (decision: anyone against, going 1, going 2, going 3, GONE!) the administrator carries out as we decided. Or we should all have equal responsability.

 

I call it down up administration, it does work. It's often hard to nail down, but it definitly does work.

 

For me I would put anybody who has been in the board for at least one year as an administrator. So anybody can become one.

 

Regarding your other part of the post, I answered you extensively on the other post inb this thread.

 

Pietro

[Max]

I hear you.... it just takes too much time to make simple decisions that shouldn't even come up in a first place.

[RON JEREMY]

PIETRO, ALL DA FORUM ADMINISTRATOR CAN DO IS BAN PEOPLE, DELETE MESSAGES OR CHANGE SILLY TEMPLATE STYLES.

 

WHAT YA NEED IS A WIKKI THAT LET YA DO EVERYTHING SHORT OF SERVER SIDE PROGRAMIN (NO PHP ETC)

 

AS FOR PHP ETC, WELL IF YA WANNA HAVE THAT POWER THEN WE NEED TO GET A DEDDCIATED HOSTING BECAUSE IT IS NOT RIGHT TO MESS WITH SEAN'S PERSONAL SITE.

 

SO LET'S ADD A WIKKI TO DA SITE N EVERYBODY'S HAPPY.

 

BTW: IS THERE A WAY TO IMPORT INTO A DIFFERENT WIKKI ALL DA MATTERIAL FROM YER SEEDWIKKI OVER THERE???

 

BYE NOW, SAY HELO TO THAT MEGAWHORE, DA QUEEN O ENGLAND FROM ME OK?

 

RJ