How you can help Mises.org

[David Veksler]

http://blog.mises.org/17653/how-you-can-help-mises-org/

Periodically, people ask me how they can help Mises.org. I don’t mean financially, or academically, but how to improve the Mises.org website.

Actually, we could use a lot of help from people with the right skills. While it may seem that Mises.org is run by some giant shadowy corporate conglomerate on a huge budget, it turns out that most corporations actually are not fans of capitalism. So rather than a huge government-size organization, Mises.org is run by a small team of contractors and volunteers who barely have time to fight spam bots and spam blogs and help people reset their passwords. With our full-time jobs and all the distractions entailed in keeping the website going, it’s difficult to find time to create great features for the website for the million visitors who view over 2.7 million pages every month.

Why help Mises.org?

• Mises.org makes a difference for millions of people.  Every 24 hours people view 500,000 pages (and download 230GB) on Mises.org (see screenshot) and change their fundamental ideas about man, economy, and the State.
• Mises.org thinks long term.  Whereas politicians only care only about the next election,  lobbyists care about a few narrow issues, and (most) companies about the next few quarters,  Mises.org is building the groundwork for the next 50 years.  Our content is open, free, distributed globally and designed to influence academia and public debate on a fundamental level from unique, radical, and fundamental perspectives.

Here are some skills we could really use:

• Creative: Creative art and web designers who can create amazing new interfaces
• Tech Support: Technically competent tech-support kind of people
• Coders: .Net/C# programmers
• A/V media: Audio/visual media experts
• SysAdmins: System administrators for Windows and Linux
• Project Managers: “feature owners, ” cheerleaders, and organizers for the development effort
• Testers: People to test new features and track down bugs

If you want to help us, join the Mises.org Development Group so you can see what we’re working on and what kind of issues we deal with.  Then, read the Mises Wiki Development page to get an overview of Mises.org development resources.  If you have any questions or specific comments, send them to:webm...@mises.org

[Nero]

David,

I'm passionate about the Mises mission and I'd love to help out.  My skills range from the "tech support" type people you mentioned. But I'm also very comfortable (I hate saying "expert") with A/V.

I was a sr. level technology expert at Disney (until very recently) for almost a decade and did everything from building huge email systems, secure public websites, build the top selling Blu-ray discs on the market, and co-write new technology specifications (I'm partially to blame for the copy protection on Blu-ray and the Blu-ray 3D specification so send your hate mail to me).  I've also run several of my own websites and domains for years.

I'm not trying to brag, I'm just trying to give you an idea of the type of things I've done (http://www.linkedin.com/in/nicknero).

I'd love to help out however I can!

n

[David Veksler]

Hi Nick,

I have a project for you:

Can you investigate the Mises.org media section and suggest how we can improve our A/V formats and/or media players and/or the overall media experience?  It's very important that we do this to increase our media participation.

To see what we have now, visit http://mises.tv/

Let me know what resources I can provide for you in order to make this happen.

Thanks!

---
Regards,
David V.

My PGP key: http://rationalmind.net/david/DavidLeoVeksler.txt

[Bill Millikin]

I am not a Windows user, rather I use Linux and Firefox as my desktop.  Although there are not zillions of us, there are millions of us.

The reason I mention this is that the first thing that happens when I click to watch a video on mises.tv - I'm told to install Silverlight..

End of game.

I am unable to watch your video presentations.

I STRONGLY request that you make yourself industry compatible so that all users everywhere can watch your videos.

Thank You...

Bill Millikin
Mansfield OH USA
===

[David Veksler]

Bill, I completely agree with you.  Even though I am mostly a loyal Microsoft developer, I use OS X.  Unfortunately I was not the one to develop the new media interface and I don't have time to convert 200GB of Mises.org media with all the mundane daily requests and tasks I have to perform to keep Mises.org running.  And I do this in my spare time, since being webmaster of mises.org is just a hobby for me. 

Now if I had some help...

---
Regards,
David V.

My PGP key: http://rationalmind.net/david/DavidLeoVeksler.txt

[Bill Millikin]

Thanx for the response, David...

WIth the availability of YouTube videos of most if not all of these presentations, is it possible in that server/software to modify the page configuration to embed the youtube link as a video option?  That wouldn't even require converting the videos - as that's already been done.

I think I may be able to help with that, even.

BUT - thank you for the courteous and helpful response.

BTW:  Did you find an alternate Linux sysadmin, yet?

Bill Millikin
===

[David Veksler]

[Michele Gambella]

Hello,

I'm am passionate about the Mises project and I'd love to help you
out. I am already in charge to develop the Mises Italia project.
I am a drupal developer in particular, and a LAMP stack developer in
general.
I know some about how to administer Windows and SQL Server too..

Just give me some inputs, about how I can help out, whatever it
is... :)

See you!
Michele

On 12 Lug, 17:54, David Veksler <da...@rationalmind.net> wrote:
> http://blog.mises.org/17653/how-you-can-help-mises-org/
>
> Periodically, people ask me how they can help Mises.org. I don’t mean

> financially <http://mises.org/donate.aspx>, or academically, but how to

> improve the Mises.org website.
>
> Actually, we could use a lot of help from people with the right skills.
> While it may seem that Mises.org is run by some giant shadowy corporate
> conglomerate on a huge budget, it turns out that most corporations actually
> are not fans of capitalism. So rather than a huge government-size
> organization, Mises.org is run by a small team of contractors and volunteers
> who barely have time to fight spam bots and spam blogs and help people reset
> their passwords. With our full-time jobs and all the distractions entailed
> in keeping the website going, it’s difficult to find time to create

> great<http://mises.org/media>
>  features <http://mises.org/daily/?action=list> for the website for the

> million visitors who view over 2.7 million pages every month.
>
> Why help Mises.org?
>

>    - Mises.org makes a difference for millions of people.  Every 24 hours

>    people view 500,000 pages (and download 230GB) on Mises.org (see

>    screenshot <http://wp.mises.org/blog/24hoursOfMisesOrg.png>) and change

>    their fundamental ideas about man, economy, and the State.

>    - Mises.org thinks long term.  Whereas politicians only care only about

>    the next election,  lobbyists care about a few narrow issues, and (most)
>    companies about the next few quarters,  Mises.org is building the groundwork
>    for the next 50 years.  Our content is open, free, distributed globally and
>    designed to influence academia and public debate on a fundamental level from
>    unique, radical, and fundamental perspectives.
>
> Here are some skills we could really use:
>

>    - *Creative*: Creative art and web designers who can create amazing new
>    interfaces
>    - *Tech Support*: Technically competent tech-support kind of people
>    - *Coders*: .Net/C# programmers
>    - *A/V media*: Audio/visual media experts
>    - *SysAdmins*: System administrators for Windows and Linux
>    - *Project Managers*: “feature owners, ” cheerleaders, and organizers for
>    the development effort
>    - *Testers*: People to test new features and track down bugs

>
> If you want to help us, join the Mises.org Development

> Group<https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/misesdev> so

> you can see what we’re working on and what kind of issues we deal with.
>  Then, read the Mises Wiki Development

> page<http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/MisesWiki:Development> to

> get an overview of Mises.org development resources.  If you have any
> questions or specific comments, send them

> to:webmas...@mises.org<//webmas...@mises.org>

[Vasily Kabanov]

I've just found time, downloaded and had a quick look at the web site and the database.
It's the database side which I consider myself most useful immediately (as I am not involved in web development on a regular basis), so I primarily looked at the database. There seems to be a room for performance optimizations, but the database is so small that probably it will be difficult to notice any performance improvement right now. Attaching just one simple function to replace SplitCVS with examples showing potential gain.
I am wondering if you would be interested in database performance improvements considering the above.

Apart from performance, there's a potential for development process/deployment improvements, I think.
I understand that currently all database work is done directly in the database (e.g. if a new version of a stored procedure is developed it is altered in the actual database, probably manually and there's no control of what's there). In my experience I found that it's much better to consider SQL code a proper source code (under source control) and deploy it properly; i.e. SQL objects' home should be SQL source code (in SVN) and not a concrete database. Every object, same as every class in C# should live in its own source file. In this case one can easily see what changes were made to the object and when, apart from other advantages.
These individual files can be combined ("compiled") into various "deployment" scripts (e.g. upgrade, install or even uninstall) which deploy the whole thing transactionally, and all that's needed to deploy new database version is to execute single script file.
This would also require adding database versioning infrastructure, so that older version cannot inadvertently downgrade more recent version.
After being implemented all this saves heaps of time and allows to concentrate on productive work.
Would you be interested in implementing these things?
Also, I have not understood yet how code changes are made, especially to the database. Do I just email SQL code to you? Can anyone commit .NET code changes into your repository?

[K. Chris C.]

I can act as a Tester and Tech. Support--mostly MS desktop and Apple OSes.

I have some training-wheel PHP and MySQL experience and that is about all in programming and DBs.

I also have a LogMeInRescue account that I use in my business. If need be I could share this with a few trusted Mises.org IT support people.

Let me know.

Thanks,

Chris

[Steven Douglas]

I am also committed to the Mises mission, and can help in the following areas:

• Creative:  I am a graphic artist and designer. I can design and create original art, and also skin new interfaces. 
• Tech Support: I am technically competent, so count me in there wherever needed 
• Testers: - I am a great troubleshooter - not an original coder or programmer. My coding skills are atrocious, but I am adept at testing and isolating bugs in existing code. 

[David Veksler]

Bill: we already support YouTube embeds and use them extensively.  But the usability needs improvement.