[cumbria_lug] UserGroup...

[Jen Phillips]

Generally sounds like some good thinking. Here are a few comments, biased 
toward my Dad's hillwaking requirements, because I know a bit about that.

On Wednesday 21 April 2004 8:22 pm, Schwuk wrote:
> by breaking the features down into components (or modules), they
> can easily be turned on or off, and new ones added.

Definitely a good thing! Most of the simple CMSs we've looked at seem to say 
"Here are your three core features which you must have" and if those three 
aren't the specific three you want, then it's really not that good.

> Ground Rules:
> =============
>   - All HTML generated will be XHTML 1.0 Strict (preferably) or
> Transistional (as a fallback).
>   - All cosmetic changes will be handled through CSS
>   - Usability and Accessibility are the watchwords of the day

All three of them seem pretty reasonable, especially the last one!

> Features:
> =========
>
>   - Users
>   - Discussions
>   - Articles
>   - Events
>   - Library

There's one thing I'd like to see on that list, and that's some kind of 
picture gallery or photo album. Dad wants to be able to put up pictures of 
the last walk, and I'm sure other groups would make use of being able to put 
up pictures of their last event, too.

> Articles can take two forms:
> All users can create Articles. There should be an optional approval
> queue, and optional restriction of who can create which types of articles.

So, it would be possible for Dad to be the only one to be able to add new full 
articles in one part of the site, but anyone could add summaries in a 
different section? Am I understanding it right? If I am, it sounds pretty 
good.

> Formatting of the articles has also concerned me

Easy is a good thing. Plus, I doubt many people will really need anything 
particularly fancy, so I don''t think it really needs full HTML or anything.

> http://www.mozilla.org/editor/midasdemo/ ) might help here.

Hey! It's just like using MSWord! Even my dad could manage that!

> Another feature I've been kicking around is self-moderation.

I think it might be a nice feature to offer, but not a priority. Most small 
groups can pretty much self-moderate by just having to be around each other. 
Plus, if there are functions for moderators to ban people anything more is 
unlikely to be needed until you get into something really big.

> Events:
>   - Location filtering

Again, I think this is something that would be quite nice, but not really a 
priority. Most groups are pretty local, and few people would really object to 
knowing there was something going on that they couldn't get to.

I hope that helps the thinking :-)

On the whole, it sounds really quite good. I look forward to seeing how it 
develops.

Hugs,

Jen