[sandbox] making important news visible

[noobmonkey]

Brainstorm link - http://maemo.org/community/brainstorm/view/making_important_news_visible/?solution=important_news_talk_forum (http://maemo.org/community/brainstorm/view/making_important_news_visible/?solution=important_news_talk_forum)

Description of Problem:
In the last few months there have been quite alot of key threads and quick news on the Talk pages... within days there are normally 10-20 extras posts of people not realising, for example the servers are down, or the upgrade is out etc....


Why :
So i have created this brainstorm in the hope that a simple solution for all can be had :) - this will help the moderators and users trying to help, and also other users trying to find information. It will also help centralise some discussions.


I have added a few brainstorm solutions- please add more if you feel there is a decent solution.

[joppu]

I'm gonna do some kind of mockup of a information banner.

http://imgkk.com/i/R6jQwT.png

[qgil]

Great proposal, thanks!

I just uploaded 2 solutions discussed some time ago. Lt's see if this brainstorm proposal helps getting to a solution to this old problem.


Solution #3: Push relevant Talk Threads to maemo.org/news
Posted on 2010-01-17 12:39 UTC by Quim Gil.

The place to follow the news of the Maemo community is http://maemo.org/news/ . There should be a way to push there the best threads as soon as they are growing. Automatically, in order to avoid manual overhead. Based on everybody's ratings, in order to avoid overhead from a busy bunch of moderators/editors. If someone wants to pick manually a thread she can always have a blog aggregated to Planet Maemo and blog at will about any activity a Talk.

If this solution is well receive then we can discuss further about the implementation details but one example of criteria to be pushed to maemo.org/news could be: threads younger than 48h with at least 10 5-star votes and an average equal or higher than 4-stars. We can always fine tune depending on whether the criteria turns out to be to restrictive or lax.

No idea about the complexity of extracting from Talk that information though. Once the threads are selected they could conform a feed that maemo.org/news would sinply aggregate. Users not interested in the rest of maemo.org/news (?) could just subscribe to that feed and be done.


Solution #4: Jaffa's proposal: Maemo Weekly News
Posted on 2010-01-17 12:48 UTC by Quim Gil.

Jaffa sent a Maemo Weekly News proposal a couple of months ago:

"A weekly news digest of key useful/informative/interesting/insightful news from all Maemo news sources. Similar in style and approach to Linux Weekly News"

See the full proposal & debate in the maemo-community mailing list.

[noobmonkey]

http://imgkk.com/i/R6jQwT.png

Very good start! - and thank you very very much!

[noobmonkey]

Great proposal, thanks!

I just uploaded 2 solutions discussed some time ago. Lt's see if this brainstorm proposal helps getting to a solution to this old problem.

Thanks Quim, sorry - still hard to read every post etc - i did check the brainstorms before posting though.

With vbulletin this is a very easy one to implement. - just needs some rules, and common sense applied to it :)

Realistically a couple of people who are on most days and know whats going on :) - then all it needs is people to see it! hehe.

You can even force a popup window in vbulletin when required to let people know about important messages.

[qgil]

There is a large amount of people that know about Talk but only about Talk (not visiting much even the maemo.org page or http://maemo.org/news ).

There is a group of people not that significant in quantity but with a long/deep involvement in the project that, on the other hand, don't come to Talk due to several factors.

Both would benefit of having the best Talk threads going through the same process than the rest of maemo.org news. All this to say that a good summary of best thread seen only in Talk would be, in my opinion, just half of the solution.

[noobmonkey]

There is a large amount of people that know about Talk but only about Talk (not visiting much even the maemo.org page or http://maemo.org/news ).

There is a group of people not that significant in quantity but with a long/deep involvement in the project that, on the other hand, don't come to Talk due to several factors.

Both would benefit of having the best Talk threads going through the same process than the rest of maemo.org news. All this to say that a good summary of best thread seen only in Talk would be, in my opinion, just half of the solution.

good point....
Maybe a breacrumb bar right at the top that appears on all sites? (Framed or similar?)

[qgil]

Coincidence? After several weeks of inactivity (at least in the surface) Jaffa has posted about his Maemo Weekly News proposal: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=478170#post478170

So perhaps it is better to concentrate helping him directly rather than keeping this discussion?

Anyway, at least myself have the feeling that he is onto something good. :)

[joppu]

But, but, the weekly news is actually totally unrelated. The idea of this proposal is to have some kind of highly visible banner on all maemo.org pages to announce (critically) important events before we get 20 threads on the same topic by uninformed users.

[qgil]

ahm, I thought you meant news all kinds. It's so frequent that a Talk thread goes up to the 40th post about something that is actually explained on the top news at http://maemo.org/news

Sorry for the confusion.

[chemist]

I had something like that at a communitysoftware, showing a newsline just below the top menu, news could be extracted from categories and also explicitly posted with a schedule integrated, from when to when is it visible.
I think it was called Announcement feature, for a single subforum active and the news was just an additional plugin.

As we do not use an all-in-one solution this needs extra coding for the layout I guess but shouldnt be a big issue at all?!

[noobmonkey]

ahm, I thought you meant news all kinds. It's so frequent that a Talk thread goes up to the 40th post about something that is actually explained on the top news at http://maemo.org/news

Sorry for the confusion.

both would work together though!! keep both alive !

[Jaffa]

I like the idea of an "emergency broadcast system" which can be used to push single-line messages out to all *.maemo.org users.

However, the "all *.maemo.org users" bit is a big technical problem. There are multiple servers and sites all working together which'd somehow need to talk to one central server. The easiest way to accomplish this is probably a piece of JavaScript which is hooked into the MediaWiki template, the Bugzilla template, the vBulletin theme, the Midgard styles, Garage and so on.

This JavaScript could then add the current message, if any; without having to coordinate updates and communication at the server level between these disparate services.

[noobmonkey]

I like the idea of an "emergency broadcast system" which can be used to push single-line messages out to all *.maemo.org users.

However, the "all *.maemo.org users" bit is a big technical problem. There are multiple servers and sites all working together which'd somehow need to talk to one central server. The easiest way to accomplish this is probably a piece of JavaScript which is hooked into the MediaWiki template, the Bugzilla template, the vBulletin theme, the Midgard styles, Garage and so on.

This JavaScript could then add the current message, if any; without having to coordinate updates and communication at the server level between these disparate services.

*bingo* - i think that sounds like a decentish idea. Definitely on the one liner as well. (Could stil luse a one liner frame on the top too) - but prefer the java' stylee idea.

[Jaffa]

The current news item (http://maemo.org/news/announcements/repositories_down/), BTW, has been buried by 3 people. Time to revisit the "don't overly promote anything which has been thumbed" policy or provide an admin override for key news.

[qgil]

I would say time to explain again what those thumbs up/down do to the news.

[Texrat]

Maybe certain news items, like status from maemo.org team, could be made "immune" to thumbs?

[RevdKathy]

I love the idea of a 'status' and 'vital news' ticker feed. As someone who seems to have spent the weekend redirecting people to the 'repos down' thread, anything that answers a question like that before someone starts a thread asking, which the mods then have to merge, would be a great asset.

If it were taking the feed from the general news, I would suggest that Someone Important (or a few Someones) should have the authority to hit some sort of over-ride to ensure that something vital remains in the feed for as long as is necessary - in the case of the repos, until they're back.

[geneven]

But, but, the weekly news is actually totally unrelated. The idea of this proposal is to have some kind of highly visible banner on all maemo.org pages to announce (critically) important events before we get 20 threads on the same topic by uninformed users.

It might even be worth going a step further and having a news banner that you get before you even get into the site, and have to click "continue to maemo.org" to go on. We see irritating advertising that does this all the time. This would only be used for dire situations such as the repositories being down, of course.

[Jaffa]

[...] provide an admin override for key news.

Maybe certain news items, like status from maemo.org team, could be made "immune" to thumbs?

[...] Someone Important (or a few Someones) should have the authority to hit some sort of over-ride to ensure that something vital remains in the feed [...]

Wow, there's an echo in here :-)

[noobmonkey]

Wow, there's an echo in here :-)

Sshhhhh jaffa will soon think we listen to him ;)

Still theres a few suggestions and options here.... (Linking both ideas)

1) The news forum area that moves the large posts into an area, and helps uinform weekly news etc...

2) A visible banner on the pages - or a pre-loader information message. (Off some type somewhere, controlled by sensible clever mods and admins...)

I have to admit from a noobish users point of view having something at 'my' first port of call would be very usefull... to a visible banner on talk.maemo
As Quim i think pointed out, others have other starting pages, so putting them sitewide would also be beneficial....

Either way they both serve the same'ish purpose and help people, but in different ways :)
one is immediate read now - (Or in some cases, ignore now and post....)
And the other is digestable in larger chunks as a bulletin.