Re: [seul-edu] Schoolforge ready for Prime Time?

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

On Fri, Dec 07, 2001 at 12:45:22PM -0500, Felipe Bergo wrote:
> I was told that schoolforge would replace the whole seul/edu site, so it 
> would have to keep mailing list subscription interface and archives, the 
> activity reports (which I think are the most important part of the whole),
> an application index (either the current existing one or a new, whatever).

Actually, for now schoolforge should not take over the content from
seul-edu. David and Doug convinced me that it would look really bad if
we form a "fair" "representative" coalition page and then stick all our
content on it. :)

So for now the coalition page remains separate from seul-edu. But down
the road, once this thing has gained more acceptance and it's clearer
how it works, I think we will allow people to move their content onto
the schoolforge site to consolidate things further, if they want to.

> Now that we are at it, I didn't give much thought to the logo when I 
> drawed it. Does anybody have anything strong against it or a better idea ? 
> (this is probably better answered privately to me)

I like it as-is. I think it will do very nicely for now. Perhaps down
the road we will have a logo contest for publicity.

> Also, from what I overheard here, Red Hat and Debian (through its Debian
> Jr. effort, at least) are to be part of the coalition. Aside from the
> schoolforge document above, the high templars of both (Bob Young? and
> someone from debian - I don't follow their hierarchy, sorry) could write
> an editorial piece on why they are in such a coalition, to be "thrown in"
> the "tech press" soon after schoolforge is announced.

Good idea. But all of that is for the future. :)

> > *An unordered, alphabetical list of links to coalition members' sites
> 
> I don't like the yahoo.com-like mode. There was something like this for
> Linux software, www.webwatcher.org, and it's dead now, with freshmeat
> taking the crown. But it's just my opinion. A better option would be a
> list of sites with a 1-paragraph description of the contents and some
> iconical information of what can be found inside (case studies, technical
> documents, support service, consulting (in the OSEF sense)...).
> 
> But I still can't see it fitting in the front page.

I think the frontpage should have several things:

* A logo, as discussed above
* A brief blurb on why schoolforge, what schoolforge, etc.
* A list of 'core partners' (perhaps in the bottom left), partly for
  legitimacy, partly to pass people to their sites.
* Headlines (new stuff) from news places like opensourceschools and
  (in the future) app indexes. We should pull these dynamically from
  the other sites.
* A list of resources, pointing to all the different places that
  provide each. I think this should be the main content on the schoolforge
  front page. It should be based on the "Critical Linux Resources"
  list I keep sending out. I'll work up a model of that in a bit.

Please disagree with me.

--Roger