[RWP] ok people, lets fix the reaaccess site
Bryan Smart
bryansmart at bryansmart.com
Tue Dec 21 23:42:49 EST 2010
Believe it or not, some people have a hard time using FTP. Beyond that, basic FTP doesn't allow for even file descriptions.
Blind online communities use e-mail because the interface is so basic, and the clients are optimized for interacting with a screen reader. Forums are perhaps the easier way to go in terms of technical infrastructure, but using forums with a screen reader is a cluttered experience. Expert users can handle it, but users with moderate experience can't. If you take that approach, what you'll discover is that the experts read and contribute, the users with moderate knowledge will read but will rarely post, and the novices will use it very little altogether.
As you say, Scot, the e-mail list is small, and people aren't likely to participate. My experience with my own projects is the same as you; you need maybe 10 to 15 list/community members in order to get 1 member that has time and motivation to contribute to the project in a primary role. About 1 in 10 actually post to lists on any sort of regular basis, so the bar for contributing via writing/answering questions is lower, but not by much.
For what it's worth, I advise that you stick with the route that makes it easiest for people to obtain info and contribute in some capacity, over all other concerns. When you have 200 or 300 community members, then you can inconvenience a few so that the other can be more productive, but, until then, you must keep the complexity down as much as possible in order to retain people resources.
I suggest a focus on the absolute core needs, and meeting those needs in the way that uses the fewest resources. That sounds obvious, but it is deceptively easy to lose sight of the obvious. Forums take time to setup (which you don't have), and time to moderate (which you don't have, either). A WIKI would need to be moderated/edited, also. Any big site would need to be routinely checked for spam/hacking, software upgraded to patch security holes, and the site (including databases) backed up. Hardly anyone has time for that sort of work on a side project, either. So, starting down that road is going to eat up a lot of time initially, but will require even more time, month-to-month, that won't be dependably contributed. Work will fall behind, and, one day, you'll find that the site will have been p0wn3d by some 12 year old in Dirkdirkastan for the lultz. Then, everyone will be waiting for the site to be rebuilt, backups to be restored, etc.
Put up a simple Wordpress or variant. Don't allow public account creation or sign in. Make a category for ReaAccess releases. Every time there is a release, upload the release, make a post in the ReaAccess category with an announcement plus links to the files, and forget it. The category will serve as a release history/links collection. People can subscribe to a category as an RSS feed, so that's an automatic way of getting release notices out there.
If people write up notes or a guide, they e-mail it to you, you add a static page, and paste in what they wrote.
If someone contributes often, then you manually create them an account on the site and assign them rights to edit pages, but don't let them post to the protected categories (like the ReaAccess releases).
Very simple. No coding required. Little maintenance. Until you have other users on the site, you're the bottleneck for posting new content, but the tme required to log in, crete a page, and paste in text from an e-mail, or add a link, isn't much.
The only bit that is worth thinking about is the maintenance. If you're running the site on a shell account somewhere, then it is on you to play baby system admin with the site. You must patch/upgrade, and you must backup. Someone will seriously hack you one day. That will come sooner if you can't patch quickly after new releases come out. If you don't have a regular backup, then all of the work put in to the site will have been lost. You probably know that, but, in a project like this where the contributions are rare, and the resources for making those contributions are rare, also, the content is worth a lot. If you lose it, it will probably never be recreated.
Being baby system admin for tiny project web sites isn't a great way for spending the limited time of my day. For that reason, I outsource the admin functions. You might want to consider hosting the ReaAccess site on a hosted CMS service. For a little money, you can have all of their banners and other branding disappear. You lose a little flexibility, but, importantly, you can forget about maintaining customizations, patching software, and backing up data. Instead, you only have to think about the site when you're throwing up content.
I say get a simple hosted blog or CMS, put up a bare bones site with the essentials (less to maintain), and let people e-mail contributions to you. Later, add Derek or others as authors on the site. Practically no work required from anyone.
Forums are great, when you're trying to quickly manage conversations between hundreds of users. For a few, though, it's overkill. Same thing for a big web site. When you're little, you must leverage prebuilt bits and pieces to let you get results in a shorter period of time, and with less work. I know that the impulse in a small project is to try to cut every corner and save every penny, but taking that to extremes will actually work against you. If $5 or even $20 will take away a headache like site admin, then pay it. After all, how many hours will you spend if you do it yourself? I don't know what you make at your day job, but, even if you skip out on $40 a year for a hosted solution, and spend only one hour per month working on the site, then you're working for less than $4 per hour. No way I'm putting up with technical headaches for $4 per hour. I'd rather be making twice as much cleaning toilets. *laugh* Ask for people to make $5 donations via PayPal for the resources that you need. They can post to the list when they donate, so there will be a record of the donations. Once you have enough in your Paypal, you buy the service.
Anyway, I don't have the spare time to build the site, and I have a work-related conflict of interest, also, but I hope that this info helps with firming up plans.
Bryan
-----Original Message-----
From: rwp-bounces at reaaccess.com [mailto:rwp-bounces at reaaccess.com] On Behalf Of Derek Lane
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 9:55 PM
To: Reapers Without Peepers
Subject: Re: [RWP] ok people, lets fix the reaaccess site
Well, lets get back to basics.
This mailing list covers the forum aspect, for the exchanging of projects/presets etc. an ftp site somewhere would cover that.
All tha really need be done is to have a site which summerizes the purpose of the program, gives links, and some getting started tips.
Quick, simple, and... now that i think about it, what the site was when the project first got off the ground.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Chesworth" <scottchesworth at gmail.com>
To: "Reapers Without Peepers" <rwp at reaaccess.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 9:25 PM
Subject: Re: [RWP] ok people, lets fix the reaaccess site
> Hi chaps,
>
> I own the ReaAccess.com domain and hosting, and am holding my hands up
> looking pretty guilty as I write this. There was talk of a wiki-based
> system here a while ago if you recall? I thought that a sensible move
> would be to make the domain a forum because:
> A) It's easier to post knowledge to that than to a wiki, so after a
> while people could just cherry-pick the best topics and make them
> sticky.
> B) it would encourage a sense of comunity between users, perhaps more
> sharing of example projects/templates/whatever.
> C) Most of the action happens in the forum at reaper.fm, it seemed
> right that we should fall in line with that model.
>
> Having thrown BBPress onto the domain, I moved job/house/had some huge
> real life changes to grapple with which totally got in the way of
> finishing up, and as Brian rightly says, it's slipped further and
> further down the things to do list. Before reading this thread, it was
> buried in the cluttered corner of doom I reserve for avoidance. This,
> obviously, is not good enough.
>
> I checked the domain today and was incredulous at the amount of spam
> that has been racking up in my absence, in spite of several anti-spam
> measures being installed. After a bit of research into BBPress, it
> would seem that it too is at something of a standstill, so as neat and
> stripped down as it is, it probably isn't the right basket to put our
> eggs in.
>
> So, this is a call to arms. Do we have amongst us a techie type who
> can get the framework in place? Personally, I'm still taken with the
> idea of a forum, but anything is preferable to what's there now. I'd
> do this myself, but real life is still far too hectic. I can and hope
> always to be able to meet the other commitments I've made to the
> ReaAccess developer, but they are my strong suit, hence they take far
> less time than the webbie stuff in which I'm a bit of a newbie, all be
> it a keen one.
> Hosting-wise the payments are taken care of, you'd have 5 MySQL
> databases to play with, PHP, Apache2, could probably get shell access
> if I request it, and more bandwidth per month than you could shake a
> stick at. Appreciation-wise you'd have a comunity of 50 upward mailing
> list members, which means somewhere between 5-10 actual contributors
> if previous projects are anything to go by.
>
> As an insentive to get things off the ground, I can tell you that
> Ivan, the dude that makes all this happen is very close to a new
> release. We've got good stuff happening with sends/receives/the master
> track amongst other perks such as multiple and non-contiguous
> track/item selection. It's a round off the edges type release, but I
> think you're all going to like it. It would be super awesome if we
> could get some momentum back as a comunity and keep Ivan enthused,
> because once he gets going he works like a demon.
>
> Any takers? Feel free to email on or off list, the choice is yours.
>
> Thanks much, and sorry once again for falling so far behind with the
> state of the domain. I assure you that I haven't been sitting on a
> beach sipping cocktails.
>
> Scott
>
> On 12/22/10, Derek Lane <derek at pdaudio.net> wrote:
>> I'd be willing to help in any way, if it let the reaaccess team
>> spend more time developing
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Bryan Smart
>> To: Reapers Without Peepers
>> Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 6:04 PM
>> Subject: Re: [RWP] ok people, lets fix the reaaccess site
>>
>>
>> Right now, the site is a Wordpress. That's fine if a single person
>> wants to maintain the entire site. It isn't as easy for a team of
>> people to collaborate on a Wordpress site, though. The best that you
>> can do is to add several people as authors, and give them permission
>> to post articles in certain areas of the site. They can't update any
>> of the site structure, or perform any other large scale edits.
>>
>>
>>
>> It's obvious that the ReaAccess people don't have the time to work
>> on the site. They can either let the site be another obligation that
>> they can't meet, dragging them down, or they can deligate part of the
>> work to others in the community. In the first case, the site will
>> only be updated irregularly and in spirts, if ever, and it will be
>> harder to attract new users to your project. If the second, then you
>> need to put a system in place for deligating the tech writing
>> projects.
>>
>>
>>
>> If you have the time to rearchitect, then it would be better to
>> create a site based on Drupal or Joomla. That would give you lots of
>> options for passing out responsibility of different areas of the site
>> to different people. You can, for example, create authors that can
>> only write in their assigned section. However, you can also create
>> users to serve as editors.
>> Editors would be trusted users that can write or edit in multiple
>> sections.
>> They'd take most of the editing/approval/site admin tasks off of you,
>> while not being able to edit the core functionality of the site.
>>
>>
>>
>> If you don't have time for any of that, then, at minimum, you need
>> to create some users on your Wordpress site as editors, Give them
>> assigned sections, such as FAQ, getting started documents, etc, and
>> add widgets to the sidebar and archive references in the main body of
>> the page that would display content that has been created in their
>> sections.
>>
>>
>>
>> Anyway, unless you're making lots of money, you can't come up with
>> resources to do it all internally. You either must learn to spread
>> the work around, properly supervised, or get buried under the
>> mounting to-do list.
>>
>>
>>
>> Bryan
>>
>>
>>
>> From: rwp-bounces at reaaccess.com [mailto:rwp-bounces at reaaccess.com]
>> On Behalf Of Derek Lane
>> Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 4:36 PM
>> To: Reapers Without Peepers
>> Subject: [RWP] ok people, lets fix the reaaccess site
>>
>>
>>
>> The developers of rea access are some amazing people. Their work
>> is solid, and, at least for me, itlets me be very productive in tasks
>> from tracking/mixing to mastering/restoration.
>>
>> The problem is, the reaaccess site is broken. So it keeps the
>> community from growing due to the fact that the actual project isn't
>> available as a link, anywhere on the site.
>>
>> If someone could fix reaaccess.info, I'd appreciate it.
>>
>>
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ---------
>>
>>
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>
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