I've done some more thinking, and have had some changes of attitude.
1. Editor/Project Manager
Perhaps one person is not the best thing. This is an immense responsibility
and would probably require a large amount of time. Two or three people -
_responsible_ people - would be better, I think.
2. Content
As someone said (and I paraphrase) "let's boot this thing!" Some people have
been firing URLs to the list of their ideas for headings/logos etc.
While this is good, I firmly believe at this time we need to be developing
CONTENT. The writing can be the default font with default colours for all I
care (which is probably better, considering the wide variety of end users) but
we need to start on it, kick this thing into gear.
Of course, to do this, we need people to run with it.
I would recommend that anyone who wishes to put their name into the ring for
Project Manager position do so through this list. Someone (probably me!)
collect the names, and we can proceed from there.
3. Hosting
I've had a major rethink on this. Distributed hosting is a no-no. It
would be a logistical nightmare. Mirrors yes. Distributed hosting no. One
place, preferably free and not someone's personal space, that is set up by one
person and in the control of that one person (probably the/one of the
project managers).
Someone suggested Xoom. I've never used Xoom, but I think I'll look into it.
(Oh dear... some are born to greatness, some have greatness thrust upon
them... am I talking so much as to end up in a PM position? <grin>)
To summarise:
Two or three Head People. Content first, presentation second. Hosting in one
place.
> I've done some more thinking, and have had some changes of attitude.
heard the gears clunking from here... :-)
> To summarise:
> On Thu, 28 Jan 1999, Jeremy Sadler wrote:
> 1. Editor/Project Manager
i think jerry han is the emerging figure. anyone have any objections?
> Perhaps one person is not the best thing.
i think we need one person right at the top (in the same way that the
archbishop of canterbury is at the top of the church; the monarch is really
the top, but not in operational matters. i think jon t is sort of
assumed to somehow be at the top in some nebulous and non-invasive way),
but we could certainly have a board-of-directors plus employees model.
ok,
if jerry is editor-in-chief, we should have a couple of other editors. i
would suggest one each from the usa, the uk and oz/nz (jerry is
canadian). i've no real idea why. or maybe one each from the ft, ds2 and sg
subcommunities.
> This is an immense responsibility
delegation is the key here.
> 2. Content
While
> this is good, I firmly believe at this time we need to be developing
absolutely. all of those of you playing with psp, stop now! start making
lists of urls and writing paragraph-length descriptions. someone start
figuring out overall architectures.
mmm, architecture. i think someone has proposed a three-volume
organisation. i would expand it as follows:
1 Current Affairs a atlas b gazetteer c international relations
2 History a general history b battles
3 Military Organisation
a navy
b army
note that the kv and sv count as nations for this purpose. the alternative
explanation would be do do it on a per-country basis:
1 Ruritania a Current Affairs i location ii description iii relations b
history i general history ii battles c military
i navy
ii army
2 New Babylon...
etc.
the best thing to do would be to support both - these are really just
two ways of looking at the information. we could make each section (at the
level of "general history") a separate page (usually with pages linked off
it), and then provide two sets of index pages, one from a category point
of view, one from a nation point of view.
i should imagine that many people will want to keep the bulk of the info
on their own site - it would be a pain if every single update went
through the 'pedia. the pedia should maintain stable info, and point to the
home website for that info. for instance, the entry under "New Roman
Empire"/"Navy" will probably have a word or two on general organisation
(high space fleet, sector fleets, system defence fleets, use a lot of SMLs),
and a link to john atkinson's site for fuller info.
which reminds me - the entries on a nation (some of them, anyway) should
be written by persons other than the nation's stakeholder (this is to
cut down on propaganda; no offence, john! :-).
if people have a stable setup, they can submit the lot and it will be
maintained at the 'pedia. if people have no web space of their own, the 'pedia
can host it for them.
> The writing can be the default font with default colours for all I
this is a particularly good point - we need to keep this as plain as
possible for now. i propose page approval be conditional on html validation by
the world wide web consortium; they have an automatic validator at:
http://validator.w3.org
which we can use to check the syntax. i'd be obsessive and say we always
use the maximum strictness and require total compliance, including with
weblint-pedantic's advice. this means doctype statements and everything.
i suggest we use html 3.2; html 4.0 is not yet widely enough adopted to be
much use, and most people can handle 3.2. as far as possible, we should
restrict ourself to core html elements which will be readable by older
browsers too.
> 3. Hosting
agreed. we should have one main site, and periodically take snapshots and
archive them around the world, so if we get lossage due to isp failure, user
error, destruction of continent by meteorite impact, we can restore the
master. mirrors are good, too. we will need rigorous timestamping and
versioning. i propose a three-digit versioning system:
major - rewrite (eg NI fleet doctrine goes from stealth to speed)
minor - revision (eg NI escorts redefined as scouts not attackers)
micro - correction (eg "escort" changed to "light ship")
so 2.5.3 is the third correction of the fifth revision of the second rewrite.
versioning should be centrally tracked. when in doubt about which field to
increment on an update, roll the larger. whenever a field goes up, all the
fields after it go to zero, so it goes 2.3.2, 2.4.0, 2.4.1, 2.4.2, 2.5.0; all
fields should start at zero (including the major version!), so all versions
start at 0.0.0.
timestamps should be in GMT or include a timezone. if they could use rfc 1123
formatting, that would be ideal.
we need a mail address where everything can be dumped; not someone's active
address, as it would get overloaded, but either something set up somewhere
someone has some leverage with the postmaster (ie, a university) or a webmail
account. we can use this to collect management mail from the web hosts,
submissions from authors, feedback, bug reports, notification of version
changes, questions, etc. the editors should all have the
password and have some sort of rota/scheme for checking it. nothing
should ever be deleted, just filed. this gives us the ability to search back
for info that gets lost. the mailbox could get very full, so we'd need to be
able to pull out the old mails and stash them somewhere.
> To summarise:
agreed. i've chucked most of these mails, but as soon as they show up in
the archive, we should fish out all the official-like stuff to form the
nucleus of the GZGPedia Charter.
Tom
Thomas Anderson sez:
***
absolutely. all of those of you playing with psp, stop now! start making
lists of urls and writing paragraph-length descriptions. someone start
figuring out overall architectures.
mmm, architecture. i think someone has proposed a three-volume
organisation. i would expand it as follows:
***
In spite of limited experience with simple databases like Access and Paradox,
I'm not terribly good at understanding design. However, it seems that the
structure based on 'country' at the highest level most closely mirrors what
I'd expect to be the actual structure IF distributed data
across several web sites is the norm. Each non-book 'country' has one
major proponent, and that person is most likely to do the work of putting the
info on a web site. Rather than worrying about 'propaganda', I recognize
it's power to get the work done. ;->=
However, if the links are fairly stable, another big if, and the separate
sites stick strictly to the lower levels of 'country' structure, the other
structure would be easy to form as a series of links.
My concern becomes, again, that the canon GZG be separated somehow, especially
for those new to GZG's background. Looking at the RH list, I'm disturbed by
references to NRE; in the same way, I would not do an NAC timeline that
included the Texaco Free Commercial District (yes, I keep changing the name),
but would have a TFCD timeline that included NAC
incidences. Mechanisms as simple as highlighting / color-coding are
possible.
If no one seconds the above concerns, I'll assume others find this useless
carping, I'll make it my last statement on this, as I seem to be in a strict
minority of one.
The_Beast
> 1. Editor/Project Manager
I think that "Project Managers" is a far better idea. Editors should be
farther down the food chain. They MUST be both responsible and neutral. It's
quite easy to get caught up in one's favorite portion of a project while other
aspects suffer.
> 2. Content
While
> this is good, I firmly believe at this time we need to be developing
Agreed
> 1. Editor/Project Manager
One person who delegates. (I could go on for pages about leadership theory and
practice, as it's a topic I've been involved with for over ten
years--but I'll ask you to take my word for it, this is the way to go.
An oligarchy either reduces itself to a de facto monarchy or separates into
factions).