My hopes to handle this project through the auspices of the computer science department at Auburn University have been crushed. I’ve got some people interested, but none of them have the time to commit.
So, I’m going to try to shift the project online. I know some people who read my journal here have expressed interest, and I realize you’re all busy. Anyway, what I’m going to do is work up an actual design document. I’ll be laying out the multiple phases of the project. Here’s the first phase:
Phase one is simple. It involves two simple steps. First, WordPress needs modification to a multi-user system (something like a rather simplified LiveJournal). Basically it needs to handle multiple users (which WordPress already does) and display each user’s blog in a separate subdirectory (something like www.domain.com/user/). Second, a web-based Jabber client needs to be integrated into the sidebar. On the back-end, the package needs to also install a Jabber server that’s integrated to the sidebar client. Users who register for a blog also get a Jabber account. That’s phase one.
The later phases get pretty involved. Quoting tools, custom aggregator views, tag-matching algorithms. Some of the later stuff I don’t even know where to start on. But phase one, at least, is easy. Well, probably not easy, but feasible.
I’ll also need someone who knows something about CSS and someone who can design decent UI. Preferrably multiples of each.
So, if you’re interested, email me, or drop a comment. I definitely want to hear from you. In my hubris, I think this project is important for society, so I’m pretty excited to get it under way.
Thomas
Thomas,
I’m wondering why you are trying to turn wordpress into a multi-user system, rather than starting from one of the existing multi-user systems. You mention livejournal as a model of what you would be working towards, so why not modify livejournal code (which is open source)? This has the advantage of having many features already in existence, and also of having a 2000 member developer community. If you are hesitant to use livejournal code (and there may well be good reasons for that, I haven’t looked into it), why not start from Drupal? Drupal has a very active developer community, is specifically designed to be easily extensible, is the basis for the political organizing community software civicspace and has recently picked up interest from IBM, creating an additional input of very skilled developers and documenters (their Drupal documentation looks very interesting). Drupal allows for a complex mixture of blog, forum, wiki and essay content that would allow for the creation of a very sophisticated community structure. Scoop (about which I know nothing except that it is what dailykos is run on) would be another option.
If your goal is to create an improved multiuser system, why not start from a multiuser system?
Good question, and a fair one.
My interest in WordPress stems from the fact that back when I was looking to put all this together on my own, I figured WordPress was going to be the easiest piece of software for me to figure out.
My interest has been maintained due to the fact that WordPress constructs RSS feeds for pretty much everything dynamically. I haven’t looked deep enough into the backend, but I know it builds feeds out of comments (an absolute must for me) and also can construct feeds based on tags (another must). The way it handles inherited tags is also a big bonus.
So I’m totally willing to switch to something else, especially since I won’t be doing much (any?) programming heavy lifting. I just know that WordPress already does a lot of what I want…
Thomas