Core feature set, scope.
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Dougx
Jul 9, 2010, 10:17:56 PM7/9/10
to Wave BB (Debatewise Wave)
Just trying out this wave / groups integration thing, but lets do it
with a real example...
So, I have had a look at the forum overview wave here, and I'm a
little worried.
https://wave.google.com/wave/waveref/googlewave.com/w+HCYtv9p_X/~/conv+root/b+5e6SkA7pA
...so I thought I'd kick off another wave with just some broad scope
and functionality.
From my perspective, it breaks down into four points:
1) We shouldn't waste our time creating another stand alone forum (ie.
phpbb). It's been done.
2) We shouldn't waste our time creating another stand alone wiki (ie.
mediawiki). It's been done.
3) We shouldn't waste our time creating another stand alone blog
engine (ie. wordpress). It's been done.
4) What we should be focusing on is how to use wave as a forum.
Now, wave is, as far as my playing with it can tell, basically a wiki
with an inbox and real time editing.
It's great for working on the same document, saving howtos, sharing
static pages (or pages that don't change much), todo lists and having
small conversations but it really starts breaking down when you:
- Have a large conversation involving lots of people; complexity of
message threads is too high.
- Want to group messages together because they're of a certain topic /
group.
- Want to create groups of users with responsibility levels.
- Want to have administration features for messages.
- Want to have content externally visible.
- Want to find interesting content (you literally have to jump into
each wave to see what it's about).
- Want to make your forum look customized and cool (hey, it's like the
#1 thing I've had to do with every forum I've ever worked on).
I mean, you can -already- kind of use wave as a forum, but for the
reasons above, it doesn't work too well.
I'd break this down into these areas where functionality is lacking:
- User and Group management
- Moderation
- Content digesting
- External content availability
- Visual identity and themes
Now we come to the tricky bit...
There are basically two ways to do this:
1) Use the Wave Data API to create an external site that is basically
a phpbb copy but uses wave as the backend data store.
Advantages: Theming is possible, content digests and external content
availability are easy, it'll be cute.
Disadvantages: No real time collab editing, why not just use phpbb or
another solution?
2) Create a series of robots and gadgets to address the issues above
from inside wave.
Advantages: Uses wave's existing rich editor, search, etc.
Disadvantages: Theming is hard (if possible at all), external content
and digesting is much trickier.
(ok, 3; the 3rd is to mix the two somehow).
It's kind of hard, at this point, to say one way or another what we're
after, because we're still in a drafting sage... so here are some
creative writing ideas of what I'd like to see:
- A threaded comments system (eg.bottom of http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/09/google-china-license/),
that I can drop into my blog as a javascript include. Notice how
commenters have a an icon and a name, comments can be voted up and
voted down. Administrators are specially marked and can remove, lock
or edit posts, or the entire set of comments.
- A forum for finding out about stuff or hanging out, (eg.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=14) where
people can chat using an embedded widget instead of posting 10000+ of
the same question, but that chat history is search able and taggable.
You see people posting and asking questions in real time, and jump in
to help them.
- A group for discussing things (eg. http://groups.google.com/group/google-web-toolkit)
where the traffic volume is very high, but you can actually find posts
you're interesting in by having saved search filters (include and
exclude) by tag, user and followed threads.
- An embeddable, theme enabled forum that doesn't have to be run as an
entirely separate instance to the main site (eg. http://baka-updates.com/
vs http://www.baka-updates.com/forum/), but can be dropped in simply
by running some scripts on your server (robots, etc) and embedding
forums in site pages.
Well, that's it from me; feel free to jump in with any thoughts you
have~
cheers,
D.
with a real example...
So, I have had a look at the forum overview wave here, and I'm a
little worried.
https://wave.google.com/wave/waveref/googlewave.com/w+HCYtv9p_X/~/conv+root/b+5e6SkA7pA
...so I thought I'd kick off another wave with just some broad scope
and functionality.
From my perspective, it breaks down into four points:
1) We shouldn't waste our time creating another stand alone forum (ie.
phpbb). It's been done.
2) We shouldn't waste our time creating another stand alone wiki (ie.
mediawiki). It's been done.
3) We shouldn't waste our time creating another stand alone blog
engine (ie. wordpress). It's been done.
4) What we should be focusing on is how to use wave as a forum.
Now, wave is, as far as my playing with it can tell, basically a wiki
with an inbox and real time editing.
It's great for working on the same document, saving howtos, sharing
static pages (or pages that don't change much), todo lists and having
small conversations but it really starts breaking down when you:
- Have a large conversation involving lots of people; complexity of
message threads is too high.
- Want to group messages together because they're of a certain topic /
group.
- Want to create groups of users with responsibility levels.
- Want to have administration features for messages.
- Want to have content externally visible.
- Want to find interesting content (you literally have to jump into
each wave to see what it's about).
- Want to make your forum look customized and cool (hey, it's like the
#1 thing I've had to do with every forum I've ever worked on).
I mean, you can -already- kind of use wave as a forum, but for the
reasons above, it doesn't work too well.
I'd break this down into these areas where functionality is lacking:
- User and Group management
- Moderation
- Content digesting
- External content availability
- Visual identity and themes
Now we come to the tricky bit...
There are basically two ways to do this:
1) Use the Wave Data API to create an external site that is basically
a phpbb copy but uses wave as the backend data store.
Advantages: Theming is possible, content digests and external content
availability are easy, it'll be cute.
Disadvantages: No real time collab editing, why not just use phpbb or
another solution?
2) Create a series of robots and gadgets to address the issues above
from inside wave.
Advantages: Uses wave's existing rich editor, search, etc.
Disadvantages: Theming is hard (if possible at all), external content
and digesting is much trickier.
(ok, 3; the 3rd is to mix the two somehow).
It's kind of hard, at this point, to say one way or another what we're
after, because we're still in a drafting sage... so here are some
creative writing ideas of what I'd like to see:
- A threaded comments system (eg.bottom of http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/09/google-china-license/),
that I can drop into my blog as a javascript include. Notice how
commenters have a an icon and a name, comments can be voted up and
voted down. Administrators are specially marked and can remove, lock
or edit posts, or the entire set of comments.
- A forum for finding out about stuff or hanging out, (eg.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=14) where
people can chat using an embedded widget instead of posting 10000+ of
the same question, but that chat history is search able and taggable.
You see people posting and asking questions in real time, and jump in
to help them.
- A group for discussing things (eg. http://groups.google.com/group/google-web-toolkit)
where the traffic volume is very high, but you can actually find posts
you're interesting in by having saved search filters (include and
exclude) by tag, user and followed threads.
- An embeddable, theme enabled forum that doesn't have to be run as an
entirely separate instance to the main site (eg. http://baka-updates.com/
vs http://www.baka-updates.com/forum/), but can be dropped in simply
by running some scripts on your server (robots, etc) and embedding
forums in site pages.
Well, that's it from me; feel free to jump in with any thoughts you
have~
cheers,
D.
David Crane
Jul 10, 2010, 3:36:47 AM7/10/10
to wav...@googlegroups.com
Also, perhaps we should create a Feature List Wave. This can be blue sky features for now and we can prioritise them later. But it might give us a sense of who wants what - and where the demand lies.
From my perspective, I don't think there's enough benefits of your option 1) to make it worthwhile to create something that just uses Wave as a backend data store and IIRC Google is planning to allow Wave to be skinned at some point (could have got that wrong though).
Love the idea of a Javascript include that people can drop onto the bottom of their blogs. Companies such as Plurk and Disqus prove that even big organisations want to use third-party commenting systems. And the forum as you describe it sounds very powerful too. In fact, I really like your ideas and think it would be great if we could build even some of them.
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