[Wylug-discuss] Suggestion for website

[Dave Fisher]

On Tue, May 15, 2007 at 11:49:54AM +0100, Chris Brown wrote:
> John had some good comments to make - I will add a link for people to get in
> touch if they want adding. People can add certain categories if they wish or
> the whole lot and we can fine tune from there. If someone is a big fan of
> kumquats for example we might need to specify certain topics from their blog
> - this could be fun...
> 
> I think the blog should be the criteria and will add stuff until objections
> come in. As always, content is the responsibility of the author and
> chruz.com cannot be held responsible etc etc.

As indicated in a previous post, I think we should consider and debate
the implications of this kind of blogging *before* we implement it.

I for one am completely opposed to 'anything goes' on content.

Any viable community or discussion needs to set topic boundaries and
behavioural norms.

Without them, you simply get a cacophony of disparate voices and
opinions, i.e. people talking past each other instead of to each other.

Aside from the fact that the end result pleases no one, it could also
seriously damage WYLUG as an organisation.  

For example, how are we going to persuade schools to let us help them
take-up FLOSS, when all they see on our website is endless threaded
discussion of fruit fetishism?

While I'm on record supporting a wide interpretation of WYLUG's remit
(most things FLOSSy, including Linux-hostile speakers from BSD, etc),
kumquats are a fruit too far. {irony}

Dave