Architecting the Doc Solution

[Marielle Lange]

(For some reason, I cannot post on revdocs, which has anyway become  
inactive, so I put my reply here)

 > Am sitting here with Marielle and have been discussing the wiki
 > strategy we wish to see at least. The aim is to work on this with or
 > without RunRev support in January. I have registered the domains
 > suggested and set up the hosting and much of the infrastructure, but
 > have a couple of technical problems with subversion on the Trustix
 > distro to resolve.

Hum, written on my behalf but without letting me know about it.

There is a bit of misunderstanding there. What I had proposed David  
was to buy a domain like "openrev.org" to host a set of webservices  
more specifically focused on the members of the community who have  
small or no commercial interest. The idea was to start working on the  
creation of a library of shared functions/components. Unfortunately,  
we didn't get to discuss much of this. Initially, I thought we did  
but it appeared there was some conflict of interest and the  
discussion had no positive outcome with regards to an open alliance  
of any kind. Some parallel discussion has taken place with Alain  
Farmer, of xcard (<http://pan.uqam.ca/xcards/pmwiki.php>) but nothing  
tangible has come out of these discussions. This may change in a few  
months, but for now, there is nothing tangible in terms of a "small  
or non profit runrev users alliance".

I produced the codes cms on my own webserver, to host a catalogue of  
codes, as a first step in that direction. This was something missing  
and this was not something I could expect runrev to take care of.  
Frankly, I prefer them to work on improving the nice application of  
theirs than to spend an hour or two every day maintaining such a CMS  
like the one I propose there. I hope that this cms will reduce the  
reasons some users have to express dissatisfaction at runrev services  
but I am aware more could be done.

 > Also as Marielle lives in Edinburgh - thinking of doing a
 > presentation to RunRev regarding these options early next year.

Hmm, David, you didn't tell me that. Anyway, I met runrev team on my  
own behalf about some issues I have as somebody who tries to have  
revolution better promoted in the education community and who cannot  
do much without runrev support. My demarch has always been to try to  
support their effort rather than propose to take responsibilities  
"with or without rev support" that are theirs and should never be  
mine.  Yes, on the use-rev list I proposed to have forums created  
elsewhere as they were recurrent complaints about the traffic on the  
use-rev list... which  by experience is really a problem for non  
profit/education users who have only 3-4 hours a week to spend on the  
list. I have said that there was no need to ask for runrev approval  
simply because that's the case... we don't need runrev approval to  
create a forum on some runrev related topic. But I never proposed to  
host the revdocs with or without RunRev support. If they believe I  
can help them identify the best system to host this doc, I will  
humbly share my experience of cms wih them. If they need a hand, I  
will gladly give it. But I won't host the revdocs on any of my  
websites nor join a group that does (host revdocs on private websites  
without runrev endorsement).

In fact, what I rather suggested to Kevin and Mark (of runrev) was to  
try to channel the discontentment expressed on the list by having  
some community members encourage and facilitate some  better  
community structure. The problem I tried to address is that there is  
the feeling that there is a mechanism for the "entreprise" members to  
influence decisions (with improve-revolution list) but there is none  
for the "non profit/education user". Of course, we cannot expect to  
have runrev encourage one-to-one contact between all its users and  
the company. The idea, then, was to have a few persons from this non  
profit/education community taking a role of "representative" who have  
for role to channel and centralize the requests and suggestions and  
meet once or twice a year with the rev team to pass the information  
and get the rev team feedback on it, pass it down to the members.  
Hence, what has been expressed on the list is that users decided to  
rant because they had the impression that any more "positive"  
approach (suggestion, recommendation, request) will have no effect  
whatsoever. What I argue for is the set up some structure by which  
"small" users (non profit/education) get a chance to  submit requests  
and suggestions to the rev team without having to directly complain  
to revolution or write infuriating posts on the list.


Marielle

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Marielle Lange (PhD),  Psycholinguist

Alternative emails: mlange at blueyonder.co.uk, M.Lange at ed.ac.uk
Homepage                                                            
http://homepages.lexicall.org/mlange/
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Supporting Education Technologists              http:// 
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