I've looked at dozens of content management systems in the last few weeks, and thought that some feedback about what I've seen at openacs.org might be of interest in these forums.  I figure that when I look at a CMS, one way I can contribute is to give some feedback about what I see -- maybe feedback from the standpoint of a potential new user helps offset the cost of people responding to my newbie questions.  Thanks for listening.

Here is a little background.  I've looked mostly at open source platforms.  (The others seem to have too much marketing mumbo jumbo to quickly figure out what their capabilities are.)  My main requirements are that the content management system:
  - have content editable from standard web browsers,
  - respect browser text size preferences, especially in Internet Explorer (e.g., don't make the font size fixed at 12 pixels),
  - use the full extent of the screen, even on large monitors (e.g., don't make the display a fixed 750 pixels wide),
  - be stable,
  - be simple to edit and run content with,
  - have good security,
  - have an active user community,
  - have a facility for adding reasonably good discussion boards to my site,
  - be reasonably fast and scalable, and
  - be not too difficult to install.
It'd also be nice to have something like the ability for users to add their own
comments to each page, like what happens at php.net in the user manual.

Here is some feedback.

OpenACS seems to have an active developer community.  That is nice.

I do not like that OpenACS uses AOLServer and PostGRE -- I'd feel more comfortable if Apache+MySQL were an option or the only option.  That would give a broader range of hosting options and would instill less fear of security and compatibility problems.

I hate Tcl, based on past experience using it, and I wish that OpenACS didn't use Tcl.  Also, the role of Tcl in OpenACS is not clear from the top level descriptions -- one probably has to either use OpenACS or read in some magic place in order to understand how Tcl is used in OpenACS.  Maybe a link from the front page at openacs.org to a very high level architectural diagram would help with this.  Maybe there already is such a link and I didn't see it.

The openacs.org site organization is a bit confusing.  I still don't see where I can try out OpenACS as an admin/content author without setting up my own site. This was the first thing I looked for, after the forums.

The openacs.org front page is too busy for my taste.  Also, I get the impression that the front page has a lot of redundancy.  For example there's a section, "How do I work with OpenACS", and there is another section, "About OpenACS".  The two sections are very similar and therefore confuse people (or at least me) who are looking for things in those sections.  Maybe these two sections could be combined.  In general I think the front page should be about half its current size, or less.

It might be nice to have an explicit statement at the bottom of the front page of the web site, saying that the site is in fact built using OpenACS -- I wouldn't assume that people realize this.

Some of the other pages, including the forums, are much less busy, and I like that.  The site's color scheme is not too garish and I like that too.

This site openacs.org is really slow.  When I post something in the forums, sometimes I have to wait up to a minute in order for the post to be stored.  When I search for something, it takes forever for the search results to show up.  Simple navigation around within the site also seems sluggish, although not as slow as posting in the forums.  Are all OpenACS sites so slow?  I am fearful that if I use OpenACS, my site will be as slow as openacs.org.

I like that the developers are concerned about security and even have a large section about it in the manual.  I have seen nothing like this in other systems.

My first, probably uninformed impression is that the cookie security is unnecessarily complicated.  This makes it hard for me to determine whether the scheme is good and makes me distrust the security.  (Those are my reactions, justified or not.)

I do not like that openacs.org has the user name and password sent in clear text (I started another thread about this).  I wish that it used JavaScript client and server nonces.  I do like that there seems to be a standard OpenACS solution for the cleartext name/password problem: having login information sent over SSL.  This is much better than requiring the entire site to be done over SSL, and much better than doing nothing.

When I searched from the forums, I expected the search to be done only over the forums, not over the whole site.

I think that many new users are gonna be confused about the relationship between OpenACS and dotLRN -- it'd be nice to have a few words clarifying this when dotLRN is introduced on the front openacs.org page.  Also, I could have sworn that somewhere I saw something that said that "dotLRN" was preferred, but I see ".LRN" all over the place at openacs.org.  (.LRN/dotLRN seems to me to be a terrible name.)

The links to the IIRC chat and log are cool.

You might change "Contribution Instructions" on the front page to "How to Contribute" or something that sounds a bit less demanding.

I hate that when someone registers at openacs.org, their email address is visible to the world and there is no way to change this.  I don't think it's anyone's business what my email address is.  If someone registers at openacs.org, they have to worry about spam, and also about loss of anonymity.  Users could be allowed to contact each other without knowing each other's email address, by letting users send email from the openacs.org site without knowing the destination address of the email.  Users could exchange email addresses later if they wanted.

It'd be nice if the forums had a WYSIWYG editor.  I also miss an explicit "preview" option when posting.

thanks for your feedback.

although it's not highlighted on the site, there is a whole book written on the history and roots of the acs including why certain choices were made -- "philip & alex's guide to web publishing" by philip greenspun (http://philip.greenspun.com/panda).  you should look through it.  although openacs has made drastic improvements over those days, you can still get *a lot* of good information from it.

now...  as far as technology, there are well-documented justifiable reasons why postgresql and aolserver are used.

not to be rude, but nobody gives a crap if you "hate tcl".  all languages have advantages and disadvantages.  the openacs is...  open source.  if you want a perl version, write it.

technology flame wars are stupid, so be productive and don't invite one.

anyway, keep in mind that openacs is not necessarily a website-in-a-box, although you can certainly install it and have a great, functionable website.  it's a "toolkit" that provides you with the means to build and extend your own website, and it's much more than a cms alone.  i would agree that this is hard to get used to when first starting out (I still am), because there is so much you can do with openacs.

your display requirements are trivial as far as implementing -- it's very easy to change the display layer in oacs.

just because you don't understand how cookies are handled doesn't mean it is insecure, poorly designed, or over-complicated.

email addresses on openacs.org are available to other registered site members, but as far as i know they aren't available to anyone not logged in (search bots).

ssl is not an openacs standard.  ssl is a common networking solution that is used for general data encryption.

i'd recommend looking at that book i linked to, and reading more of the docs.  if you'd like to know more about how openacs can help you, post to the forums.  the people in the community are very helpful (i'm kind of bitchy, but everyone else is nice).

i wouldn't complain about your technology preferences if you do want help, at least until you have a better understanding of what is going on and have some solutions to bring to the table.

Yeah, I realize that.  The documentation said something like, "We welcome your comments," so I gave my comments.  Some places are appreciative when people take the time to write up comments, others aren't.

You are right Joel, thank goodness we have Andrew S to set us straight and give us such insightful feedback. Hey, he has already been posting here for two whole days.

Most people would take the hint and realize their ideas were unhelpful, but not Andrew S. He is a real pioneer. After writing a bunch of junk he is hurt to find out that we are not all so appreciative of his feedback.

As Steve Martin would say "Well Excuuuuse Meeeee."

Feel free to intepret this as me being rude.

About performance of this site....

Yes, it's slow. But it has nothing to do with OpenACS itself...this server is having problems. A team of volunteers is working to move it to another machine which will improve performance significantly.

I am glad to hear that you guys appreciate the feedback, and thanks for the info about some of the stuff I mentioned.

By the way, I just received my first spam as a result of registering for OpenACS, just 2 or 3 days after registering at OpenACS:

Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 11:13:59 -0800 (PST)
From: Neophytos Demetriou <> [email address removed after post- crb]
Subject: openacs
To: (me)




__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears
http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/

Andrew,
I doubt that's spam because it came from an openacs user. But actually I don't care, because you will get spam. Email addresses are shown on openacs.org and obviously easily harvested (/directory, google?).

Aldert: that's why I copied that email here.  I mentioned in the original post that I didn't like the way that email addresses are public in the OpenACS forums.

So Neophytos sent you an empty email? Btw, when one member of an online community sends an email to another member, i.e. one to one communication, that isn't spam. Andrew S, you really need a little education.

Every piece of feedback that you have presented in this and other threads are all well known by everyone here, and are actively discussed over and over again. Other features are essentially unchangeable technology choices, and your opinion of them is totally irrelevant to any discussion here.

Be happy that a few of the respondents are being nice to you, you haven't done anything to deserve it. In fact you haven't done anything right since you decided to bless us with your presence a few days ago.

So let me give you a little education:

Instead of saying "I hate Tcl, I don't really see how it fits in...", maybe try: "Can anyone provide me pointers on the how all this fits together, I'm familiar with LAMP, how does this compare?" Instead of saying "I wish MySQL was an option, or the only option", maybe say "I only know about MySQL, can OpenACS run with that?"

So do you really have a question? Or just feedback?

If I hadn't spent the last six weeks looking at other CMS products and working on a very simple cms for my own use, I might think it is hard to find such products. Not. You really don't need to collect a whole laundry list of deficiencies about a choice before you move on.

Spare us all your studied opinion.

Bart, the only thing that email contained was a reference to a Britney Spears video.  I had no reason to think this was anything other than spam.  I was not posting that email here to be vindictive.  I didn't even think it came from a real address.  The only reason I put it here was to show that within a couple days of registering here, I had received spam.  If it wasn't spam, then I guess I was mistaken, but it sure looks like spam to me.

It is good to hear that Openacs will have an option to use screen names only.  That is the first time I have heard this.

Thanks for editing the post to remove the email address.  I was hoping that could be done.  I would not have included the email address if I had known it was a real person's email address.

Andrew,

Thanks so much for taking the time to give us some constructive feedback. I really appreciate it.

I took a few minutes to implement just two of your many good suggestions. I changed "Contribution Instructions" to "How to Contribute", and I added a note that openacs.org is running OpenACS.

Some of the others, such as exposing email addresses, and previwing  when posting to forums, have been addressed in the upcoming 5.0 release.

Thanks again. It's very valuable for us to know what we look like to someone just checking our software out for the first time.

/Lars

First let me add my thanks to Andrew the chorus. :)

This question is for Andrew and for everyone else following this thread.

NASA is using aolserver/tcl/postgres for some of thier internal work.  They are not using OpenACS, since they are not building community sites or doing CMS as far as I know.

Would it be valuable to us to work with NASA to write a case study on their technology choice and have that either on OpenACS.org or linked from here?  Would that help people feel more comfortable with aolserver/tcl/postgres, and thus OpenACS?

(inserting a degenerative...)  HA

I assume Caroline is speaking of what Scott Goodwin is working on (maintainer of ns_openssl and a bunch of other AOLserver modules). I think he is switching the sites he is responsible for from Vignette. Anyway, the case study seems like it would be more proof of why you don't need to use OpenACS, I don't see the point. If someone is uncomfortable with tcl/AOLserver/postgreSQL, why would the choice of a currently troubled government agency make them feel better about it?

IMO Scott is a real star in the AOLserver world. NASA is cool and the platform AOLserver/PostgreSQL is unbeatable, but the issue is selling it to non-believers. This problem has existed _forever_. Maybe truth in advertising would be a better method. Maybe a paper examining when you should, and shouldn't use OpenACS. Showstoppers, non-negotiables, etc. There are a lot of products out there that simply waste your time by promising they can do _everything_, while hiding the important information. At least OpenACS.org and the folks here don't try to hide or oversell the product (too much), but some of it is hard to find. The best test for whether OpenACS is useful is, unfortunately, to install it. This is probably the best test for any technology, because you learn how easy it is to follow the instructions. When you run into the inevitable problem, how quickly does the community respond to help you get through it. Does it work as advertised? This also proves that you have the required skills to actually use the platform, because all programs have bugs and kinks which require specific skills to fix or overcome them.

Hi Caroline.

If you have case studies from reputable places like NASA about why they're using OpenACS and how it's working out for them, that would make OpenACS more desirable in my eyes, sure.  The links to .LRN also do that.

A related thing: I have the impression from reading a thread somewhere else in these forums (I think that is where I read that) that the installation of OpenACS takes about a day.  Is that right?  I really don't know how long it takes to do an install -- that would be valuable information to know, and putting it right at the top of the installation instructions would be helpful.

Also, if it really does take a day, maybe the installation instructions could explain why that is and why the installation can't be made to take, say, 15 minutes.  Better still would be to make it actually take 15 minutes.  I think the ideal situation would be for OpenACS to let you do really simple web sites like "hello world" in 15-60 minutes, and take more time to do more complicated things.  If it really takes a day to install, then people like myself are going to perceive that as a big investment of time just to try something out.  More than that and I am going to be very reluctant to try it out.  I don't know if I am representative, but I hate screwing around installing stuff, so that plays a part too -- the longer it takes the more I hate it and the more likely I am to give up.

download, compilation, installation, and configuration took about a half day for me to have one instance of openacs running separate, customized websites handling multiple domains with user registration and management, news, forums, and file management...  even a cheap chat module i wrote in about 15 minutes afterwards.

if you haven't by now, i'd advise actually trying to download and install on a test server.  you'd be surprised how much functionality exists by default, much more than most web application packages i've seen and obviously more than hello world.

in the time it took you to write that question, you probably could have been well on your way to installing your own test site.

Maybe we need moderation a-la /.?  This post is a great 'Troll' candidate, if you ask me...

It's an overgeneration to say that all newbies view such creations in whimsy.  I certainly don't.

I am sorry for any serious offense taken by my statements. Regardless of inferences that anyone here could possibly be wearing shoes that fit too small, I remain trapped by my own foolish paradigms.

Andrew,
I think I speak for the whole OpenACS core team and most of this community when I say that I appreciate your feedback. It is perfectly obvious to me that you have taken great care and time out to make your feedback informative and constructive and that you have done so in a genuine effort to help OpenACS.

I hope that some of the unfriendlier posts in this thread will not discourage you from participating in this community, for they are not representative.

Peter, thanks.  I am interested in learning more about OpenACS.  It's been obvious from the beginning that there is some good stuff going on here and that I could learn from it.  I can offer a lot to the OpenACS community in return.  Unfortunately, I am in fact discouraged from participating because I now know that whatever I write will elicit inane responses.  The people writing those responses don't seem to be thinking much about what they write, or about the fact that they are talking to real people, or that for every person that writes something there are probably hundreds that are curious about the same thing but don't ask, or that there is a distinction between being an OpenACS newbie and a computing newbie, or all sorts of other things.  No matter what, they'll just keep yammering on.  This amateurish abuse is really unpleasant to deal with and the underlying insular message will drive away more people than just myself.  On the other hand it's clear that some good has come from this discussion and that a lot of people here have been very professional.  That part of it I have enjoyed.  Anyway, I am curious about OpenACS (and I still do not understand why you guys use AolSever), but it is not worth it to me to deal with so much conflict.

Oh, one more thing -- while many of the responses to what I've written were inappropriate, I do realize that the tone of my posts had something to do with that.  When I wrote the post at the start of this thread, I was focused on getting a clear description of what I was trying to say.  What I wrote may be valuable because it's a factual record of the reaction of someone looking at OpenACS for the first time.  The downside is that I did not focus enough on writing in a way that would be palatable to read.  I now believe that this was a mistake.  This is a mistake that I am prone to making from time to time and I have to be vigilant about it.

(I have no platform that I can install OpenACS on.)

I few comments:

``OpenACS seems to have an active developer community.  That is nice.''

OpenACS has had a very active developer community.  People have choosen to use OpenACS (and contribute to it) because of the design and software used.  Your next statement was not a good idea.

``I do not like that OpenACS uses AOLServer and PostGRE -- I'd feel more comfortable if Apache+MySQL were an option or the only option.  That would give a broader range of hosting options and would instill less fear of security and compatibility problems.''

What do you base this decision that Apache/MySQL should be an options?  Have you looked at the design of the system.  Do you look (or ask) why design decisions where made?  You also fail to mention that OpenACS can be used with Oracle.  MySQL simply does not have the functionality to be used with OpenACS.  Apache is misssing serveral features available in AOLserver that are required for OpenACS.  If you don't like this fact, then why consider the software?

``I hate Tcl, based on past experience using it, and I wish that OpenACS didn't use Tcl.  Also, the role of Tcl in OpenACS is not clear from the top level descriptions -- one probably has to either use OpenACS or read in some magic place in order to understand how Tcl is used in OpenACS.  Maybe a link from the front page at openacs.org to a very high level architectural diagram would help with this.  Maybe there already is such a link and I didn't see it.''

I don't like PHP, but that doesn't mean that packages that use PHP are bad.  The role of TCL is defined by AOLserver.  There is no magic to it.  AOLserver is an application (and some might say an extention) of TCL.  That is one of the features of TCL.  Using TCL, AOLserver was created and OpenACS was built using that server.  This link is made clear by pointing to aolserver.com.

Also remember you are telling people active in the development community that web server and language there are using is bad.  If you feel this way don't use the software.

``The openacs.org site organization is a bit confusing.  I still don't see where I can try out OpenACS as an admin/content author without setting up my own site. This was the first thing I looked for, after the forums.''

OpenACS is really a toolkit.  There is very little way to demo the site but for the user to setup a site themselves.  The installation docs are very good and most people that spend a few hours researching it can install it in about 1-2 the first time.  In general this is my experience with most of the other CMS packages out there.

``The openacs.org front page is too busy for my taste.  Also, I get the impression that the front page has a lot of redundancy.  For example there's a section, "How do I work with OpenACS", and there is another section, "About OpenACS".  The two sections are very similar and therefore confuse people (or at least me) who are looking for things in those sections.  Maybe these two sections could be combined.  In general I think the front page should be about half its current size, or less.''

I find the website no busier than other sites.  While I can undetstand that just about ANYTHING can confuse people.  There are two different sections because while they might have simular information, there are two different topics.  About OpenACS is about the software, while Working with OpenACS is about using the software.

``It might be nice to have an explicit statement at the bottom of the front page of the web site, saying that the site is in fact built using OpenACS -- I wouldn't assume that people realize this.''

I would assume that.  You can also look in the documentation site and view the documentaion 'for this installation of OpenACS'.

``Some of the other pages, including the forums, are much less busy, and I like that.  The site's color scheme is not too garish and I like that too.''

The site is only as busy as the site developers makes it.  Personally if find some of the internal sites a little too sparce for my test but the community content is there.  Since I don't develop the site I don't consider this an issue.

``This site openacs.org is really slow.  When I post something in the forums, sometimes I have to wait up to a minute in order for the post to be stored.  When I search for something, it takes forever for the search results to show up.  Simple navigation around within the site also seems sluggish, although not as slow as posting in the forums.  Are all OpenACS sites so slow?  I am fearful that if I use OpenACS, my site will be as slow as openacs.org.''

I find slashdot.org extermely slow, does that mean every site running slashdot.org is slow? No.  The site is slow because of server problems.

``My first, probably uninformed impression is that the cookie security is unnecessarily complicated.  This makes it hard for me to determine whether the scheme is good and makes me distrust the security.  (Those are my reactions, justified or not.)''

Then take the time to userstand it.  Ask question if you must.  Distrusting things simply because you don't understand it is not a productive way to ask people questions about it.  Using this theory my mother would distrust the brakes on here car because the theory behind anti-lock brakes is a bit complicated for her.

``I do not like that openacs.org has the user name and password sent in clear text (I started another thread about this).  I wish that it used JavaScript client and server nonces.  I do like that there seems to be a standard OpenACS solution for the cleartext name/password problem: having login information sent over SSL.  This is much better than requiring the entire site to be done over SSL, and much better than doing nothing.''

I don't like sites that use javascript, because I generally run browers that don't support it or disable it.  Using SSL is a less intrusive option.

``When I searched from the forums, I expected the search to be done only over the forums, not over the whole site.''

Granted that is an issue but most of the current content on the site is the forums.  This helps to provide the best possible information to a users query.

``I think that many new users are gonna be confused about the relationship between OpenACS and dotLRN -- it'd be nice to have a few words clarifying this when dotLRN is introduced on the front openacs.org page.  Also, I could have sworn that somewhere I saw something that said that "dotLRN" was preferred, but I see ".LRN" all over the place at openacs.org.  (.LRN/dotLRN seems to me to be a terrible name.)''

There is a history between .LRN and OpenACS that still hangs around on the content.  This should be cleared up.

``You might change "Contribution Instructions" on the front page to "How to Contribute" or something that sounds a bit less demanding.''

Grammatically I find Contribution Instructions more pleasing.  Once again that is personal choice.

``I hate that when someone registers at openacs.org, their email address is visible to the world and there is no way to change this.  I don't think it's anyone's business what my email address is.  If someone registers at openacs.org, they have to worry about spam, and also about loss of anonymity.  Users could be allowed to contact each other without knowing each other's email address, by letting users send email from the openacs.org site without knowing the destination address of the email.  Users could exchange email addresses later if they wanted.''

Where is the email address visable to the world?  The email address is visable to the community (a registered user).  This is part of a community site.  Your comments are based on speculation.  I know server people that setup openacs only email address and have not received spam from openacs harvesting.
But you failed to understand what OpenACS is about.  If you wish to change the rules on the site you are free to do so.  You have the code you can change it.  If you don't like the way YOU see the site don't sign up or use an invalid email address.  Just like any other site on the 'net.

``It'd be nice if the forums had a WYSIWYG editor.  I also miss an explicit "preview" option when posting.''

WYSWIYG editors are very browser specific.  I've never found one that works on lynx.

Preview options is a matter of choice.  You could always code that into OpenACS if you want it.

Your feedback is apperciated but I don't think you approached it correctly.  You commented that you don't like basically everything that makes OpenACS run.  You then make comments that are really related to your personal taste.  OpenACS may not be your cup of tea.  There are serveral Open Source CMS projects out there that might be better suited for you.  That is the beauty of Open Source, you have the choice.

Your comments seem more like a Linux users describing why they don't like FreeBSD.  Maybe you wording or writing style didn't come through but I fail to see where the community can benefit from your feed back.

Perhaps you might want to choose your comments differently and/or explain yourself better?

Good idea Talli, I'm laying down my weapon now and backing off.

The point is not whether MySQL is better or worse than PostGRE.  The point is the user experience: a lot of users will not use OpenACS because they have no system that will run OpenACS.  LAMP-hosted systems are common.  Maybe systems that can run OpenACS are common too, but I cannot recall seeing many hosting companies advertising that they run AolServer + PostgreSQL or Oracle.  This is why I think that many people will say that they are more comfortable with the LAMP setup than the AolServer + PostGre/Oracle setup -- LAMP systems (and Windows systems) appear to be more common, so much so that the AolServer+PostGre/Oracle setup seems unusual and therefore is susceptible to eliciting a reaction of, "I don't understand this and therefore don't trust it as much".  Wrong or right, I think you are going to run into this a lot, and to blame it on the person who is interested in your product is to ignore what will be a common reaction.  At least, that is how it appears to me.  If I am wrong, then maybe you could thank me for my feedback and patiently explain why, instead of calling me ignorant and saying that I need to educate myself before coming back to talk to "us".

Andrew, the point is that if you don't understand or appreciate why OpenACS uses PostgreSQL rather than MySQL, then you're not even vaguely competent to issue a technical critique of OpenACS. And whether that's wnat you intended to do or not, that's certainly how your post came across to me, and I think to many others as well.

To beat the dead horse some more (sorry, Talli): Andrew S. clearly is much brighter and more knowledgeable than, say, our friend Divya. However, his original "feedback" was in fact neither questions nor even suggestions, but a technical critique, and most unfortunately, an un-informed technical critique at that. When you offer a technical critique you are implicitly asserting that you know enough about the subject at hand (e.g., database backed web sites) to give the critique at least some validity. Most importantly, you have to know what you don't know.

Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case in Andrew S.'s original critique above, and thus was dismissed out of hand by many readers here. A critique (as opposed to questions or suggestions) by the uninformed is simply arrogance with nothing to stand on, and not useful to anybody really.

Now, I'm being a bit too harsh here, as some of Andrew's comments - for example, specific new user impressions of openacs.org - could indeed be easily turned around into useful questions and suggestions.

Note that you need not completely expert in all ways for your critique or argument to have some validity. For example, Eric Raymond's The Art of Unix Programming has at least a few statements which I happen to know are just plain egregiously wrong, and worse, he leaves those statements completely unsubstantiated. (E.g., various silly comments on Tcl not working for any project with more than 2000 or so lines of Tcl code; utter nonsense, and easily disproved by example.) But there is enough other good info in that book for me to not dismiss it and its author out of hand, and for me to think it does have some value and is worth reading, despite a few obvious failures under my own technical spot checking.

But any writer has to earn those "bys" that the reader gives him when he says something the reader knows is incorrect, and especially when the author doesn't explain his reasoning, but just asserts his opinions unconditionally.

Now, from all known reports, compared to the "industry average", the OpenACS toolkit and community are both unusually smart in the degree they use and understand the RDBMS. So it would be nice if, as a community, we were especially good at spreading RDBMS education via articles, etc. (And I happen to think the same is probably true for other tools like AOLserver and Tcl, but the FUD and misunderstandindg out there about the RDBMS is so much more obvious, that the the RDBMS is by far the best, clearest, most unquestionably true example.)

This however, is hard, and a lot of work. Ben Adida's and Philip G.'s old articles and books may be all we've generally got, but at least they are pretty good! But the more high quality white papers, case studies, articles, etc. we can point to from a FAQ to help inform potential new adopters, the better. Something for us to think about anyway...

Andrew S, you're asking for it. So... "flame on" for anyone that wants to waste time telling a CS professor why an ACID-compliant DB with transactions and a procedural language is a "nice thing".

talli

Is this thread really closed? The bug report above indicates this thread has been 'closed'.

I agree that this thread has run its course. The action to actually close a thread on OpenACS.org should not be take lightly. In fact, without the ability or will to actually remove the offending participants (of which I was one, I admit) from starting new threads, the action might backfire.

In a public forum, a poster is their own worst enemy, or their only savior. In a long lived community like OpenACS.org, many of us will eventually say something we shouldn't, or something we later regret. Personally, I do this all the time. Others can point out my defect, that is their right, and maybe their obligation.

We had an OCT discussion and re-opened the thread ... one of our site admins closed it arbitrarily because he thought it was getting out of hand then asked for an OCT decision immediately afterwards.  I'm not sure that having the OCT decide rather than the community at large do so but we did, after all, choose to reopen it.

Tom - thanks for acknowledging that you got a bit carried away  in this thread.  Lord knows I've done so a time or two :)

Well, let's not get our knickers in a knot too quickly, OK?  The person who closed the thread had good intentions, just shut it down while asking for a decision since there'd been a stream of really pointlessly nasty posts.

The OCT doesn't consider itself to be a bunch of site moderators.  But I'm curious ... if you write a TIP and we don't approve it - does that mean we are? :)

1. I started the "close forum" domino with my post.

2. I am really glad we have this code now.

[I am acting as a TA in a course in Heidelberg, where forums are key, threads of this length are the rule, and being able to close threads makes sense (e.g. when a thread drifts off into a hole). This at times taxing thread provided the context to clearly communicate this need by posting it as a feature request, so I did.]

3. How this addition is used long term in THIS community is a very different question *that the way this discussion has developed answers*. We do not need to vote on this, because we all got the message: some people have an issue with closing a thread on openacs.org, so we do not close threads in the future. It is as simple as that.

4. We all know openacs.org is at times a testing ground for new little additions like this and once the dominos started... Apologies for the twisted knickers.

Talli I agree that this is not a technical issue and I do not think it is something that should be voted on. Starting now precedence and social pressure will take care of it (and I am sure the OCT got the other message too).

Carl

P.S. Closing a thread, that as you mentioned above "should die", is not in the same class as deleting messages or banning a user (both functionalities exist, but precedence rules in both cases). I repeat: You have made it clear to everyone that closing a thread in THIS/OUR community is something that SHOULD NOT happen (now that we can) and I have not heard any objections so let us leave it at that.

"2. I am really glad we have this code now."

Yes. In one of my online courses (philosophy/world-religion), the instructor used this function (in webct) at the end of each week.  The last word was the function of a deadline, otherwise most of the threads could have continued endlessly.  Maybe a timer function could be added to dotLRN's thread close function?

Talli, I agree with much of what you state, but also think that a tip is unnecessary at this point. Politics is about the  interplay of (real and imagined) power and does not result in solving anything. Clearly, Furfly currently has the power to pull the plug on the server, but would that wouldn't kill openacs.

Do you see any way that adding more bureacracy or constraints could hinder positive work in other areas?

Here's one. Marketing is about economic warfare. In the context of LAMP and CMS systems, openacs is a revolutionary technology and community.  OpenACS evangelists battle tactically with technology and marketing. In the case of marketing, sometimes it is best to not be completely transparent until decisive action is taken (a principle surely older than Sun-Tzu's Art of War).

Similarly, perhaps some social issues are best discussed in private. A private discussion was held, apparently as an attempt to come to an informed place before taking any action.  Intelligent action is a wise process by anyone's hand.

Torben, I gotta say your post makes no sense.

It's a zen statement aimed at nothing in particular, yet everything related to the topic all at once. A conversation with myself?

I'm not sure where you're coming from or what you're trying to present.

I was addressing the creation of a TIP without thorough consideration to its impact. Above are some reasons to reject a TIP that demands fulldisclosure of operations.

The burden of technical (and other) competence remains, regardless of level of disclosure in the decision process.

I thought to recommend writing a TIP asking the OCT to ignore TIPs that are not related to technical / implementation aspects of OpenACS, but they do manage operational decisions.

from TIPno.2: TIP stands for "OpenACS Improvement Proposal." A Proposal could be anything that changes the OpenACS codebase, best practices, or web site, significantly enough to need a stamp of approval.

The relevance of the issue seems to depend on how "web site" or "best practices" are defined. I'm stopping my particpation in this pre-TIP discussion with this post. TIPs away! =)

Closing the thread was, IMHO, a tiny mistake. I want to stick out my neck again and speculate as to the cause: irc narcosis. Yes that is right, or call it email narcosis if you want. I believe that there is general consensus at OpenACS.org that discussion is supposed to happen on the forums so that decisions that are made have a history behind them.

There are a series of recent sitings of irc narcosis. A few months ago, the tagline for OpenACS.org was changing by the hour based mostly on discussions taking place on #openacs. Several times, in bug tracker and on the forums, discussions were included by reference from #openacs. This is kind of like saying "While you were away...", or "We already talked about that...". But the result is a tiny fraction of the OpenACS community convinces themselves that a consensus decision has been made and acts, or just assumes everyone else agrees with them.

I'm not talking here about the OCT which had some kind of quick meeting to discuss the issue. Where else were they supposed to get this done? The proper place was probably on the closed thread. That is kind of like requiring them to meet in a room where the electricity is off to discuss getting the electricity back on. The OCT was elected by the community, so they do in fact represent the community view. The TIP process clearly wasn't designed for this type of issue, but I believe that the OCT definitely was the responsible body for handling the matter. Handling it quickly, actually before any of the participants had a chance to notice, was more important than the exact process involved.

By the way: I am unsubscribing from this thread now.  People can contact me directly if they want.