Re: [seul-edu] (FWD) webring/mirror/etc

[Doug Loss <drloss@home.com>]

Roger Dingledine wrote:

> I like the idea of a comprehensive database, but the jumble that is
> http://www.seul.org/edu/links.html also doesn't seem very useful to
> me.

I disagree.  It's useful for what it is, which isn't what you're talking about in
the next paragraph.  It's a list of links to other sites that deal with Free/Open
Source software in education and as such can probably be expanded to be the links
page that David, Mick, and others have been talking about.

> It's good to know about every option, yes, but I want to know a
> good answer to my specific question. "I need a Linux replacement for
> Outlook." Consider using web mail, such as IMP or Squirrel Mail. Here's
> a guy who's using them now and can tell you more. Great, thanks. [other
> examples snipped]
>

What you're talking about here is a FAQ, or a set of FAQs for various problem
domains.  Not the same thing as a links page at all.

>
> I think the trickiest part will be choosing presentation and categories
> so it's useful for as many people as possible. Seul's links.html is a
> good start for some of that, but isn't going to be nearly enough. Eg,
> the 'Resources' section of http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-jr/ is
> much simpler and to the point. I guess we need a compromise.
>

Not so much a compromise as an understanding of the purposes of the various
pages.  I think we need two entirely separate pages (or groups of pages) for
these tasks.

>
> I would really like to migrate
> much of the content from the seul/edu website over to somewhere else,
> such as schoolforge if that becomes appropriate. The seul/edu website as
> it currently stands is probably not the right website to go to if you
> want to learn about Linux in education, except insofar as it tells you
> about the seul-edu mailing list. And the url "http://www.seul.org/edu/";
> sure doesn't yell out "Linux in education" to me.
>

I was thinking about that too.  Our website is, as you say, mostly a placeholder
for the mailing list.  Our attempts at further content (the links page, the
software database, the reports, the projects, the documentation) have either
stalled or are easily transferrable to other venues.  Perhaps it's time for
SEUL/edu to get its own site other than as a sub site under SEUL.  But let's not
let that idea dilute the effort here toward a Linux educational coalition.  If it
turns out that SEUL/edu could be subsumed into that, let's consider it.

>
> > - look at developing an education distro, or customisation script(s), or
> > both.
>
> I bet if we made a CD worth of high-quality applications
> that schools can use and gave it to Red Hat, they would do the work
> required to finish off an education-oriented distribution, plus market
> it and help maintain and extend it. Or Mandrake. Or SuSE. Or all of them.
>

I'm definitely with you on this.

>
> A while ago Bill and I made a big list of applications, at
> http://cvs.seul.org/~arma/seul_cdrom.html
> That file is almost a year old now. There is so much stuff out there,
> but teachers won't find it and if they do it will be a badly packaged
> tarball with no instructions. *That* is what needs to be fixed.

It looks as though it's perhaps time to update that list and see if we can get
this stalled sub-subproject moving again!

--
Doug Loss                 Always do right.  This
Data Network Coordinator  will gratify some people
Bloomsburg University     and astonish the rest.
dloss@bloomu.edu                Mark Twain