Adding the rss feeds

[Pietro Speroni aka Vilfredo]

Before getting the notes on the proposal (see previous message) we
need to push in the previous change. This was done by Derek, and is
something that was needed from a long time: the rss feeds for the
rooms. It is still not out, and being tested, but it seems to be
working well. The rss on the room is really important, as right now
there is no way with which a person can keep himself updated of new
questions that appear in a room. Each room will have its own rss.

We also made a change on the naming of the rooms. So far the rooms
were written in capital or small letters, but they were considered
equiavlent.
So room Vilfredo, was also room vilfredo, as VILFREDO, as ViLfredO.
Considering that we are using url obfuscation to provide some privacy
this solution is less than optimal. So we changed the DB to
distinguish between upper case and lower case letters.

I am also considering making by default all rooms made only with upper
case letters as totally public. That is there would be an RSS that
includes all the questions in all the all upper case rooms. In this
way Vilfredo can expand and have new rooms that are being published
while also keeping url obfuscation for the other rooms.

To clarify how important is the existence of an rss, consider that
once we have it, we can then connect it with a twitter account, thus
having a post every time something happens. Also rss feeds from
different rooms can be connected using yahoo pipes. So it really opens
up Vilfredo to be followed by the rest of the world.

[Pietro Speroni aka Vilfredo]

The Vilfredo site has been updated. Now there is an RSS feed. At the
moment it is all very temporary. In particular we are still deciding
what to say exactly. And how to make it so that the twitter feed comes
out nice and short.

We are thinking about having the twitter feed come out as:
For proposals:
<NumberGenerations> <TitleQuestion> <NumberProposalsInTheParetoFront>
Past Proposals <bit.ly Link>
For Voting
<NumberGenerations> Vote: <TitleQuestion>
<NumberProposalsInTheParetoFront> Proposals <bit.ly Link>
When Agreement found:
Agreement Found after <NumberGenerations> Gen on: <TitleQuestion>
<bit.ly Link>

Any suggestion?

[Pietro Speroni aka Vilfredo]

The rss as described above has been updated.

It also goes through a yahoo pipes ( pipes.yahoo.com ), to extract the
twitter format, and through twitter feed ( http://twitterfeed.com/ )
gets sent to Twitter (from @Vg2A).

This is an example of a resulting message that was posted on Vg2A:

[15] is there a better phrase than 'open source democracy'? 2 Hints;
Propose at http://j.mp/g7lVYG

You can see the number of generation;
the title;
the number of proposals;
the round (Propose as opposed to Vote)
and the link.

Not bad. For now we are only echoing rss from the common room. But we
might add the other rooms soon. We are also thinking of making any
room that is written all in CAPITAL LETTERS to be echoed. But this
would require us to explain it well, so it is not urgent.