Long ago Dan Ingalls (?) was wondering about the fact that such technical
clever people as Squeakers still use such an archaic tool like email for
their communication. He even spent an eMail on that with the title "How we
discuss things..."

I think that this nice website (in PHP) could open this discussion again,
because it shows that this kind of tools (NUKE was the first?) show that you
can organize more forms of communication on one webpage so you can swith
from tool to tool depending of the situation.

To take that NUKE-PHP as example:
- you can use the template you prefer for this frontpage, even create your
own one.
My favorit template on this moment is: http://www.internetintl.com/ (you can
find it under downloads and then themes.. but first you would need to
install NUKE..)
- the core of Nuke is posting stories on a collaborative website: 
everyone can post a story (not yet with pictures or other attchements like
SWIKI..)
you can even place an embargo on it before it should be published and you
can decide when it should move to the archives.. (choose your category)
Others can comment on these stories and visit the archives for old stories.
- additional modules can be used, like a shared calendar
(http://geeklog.sourceforge.net has an elegant calendar where you can switch
between group and privat)
- you can give people the right to create a simple poll (in the spirit of
SQueak all the users will get that right...)
- You can attach chatboxes, start a threaded discussion, open forums, attach
FAQ, Attach Encyclopedia, attach reviews, integrate Google, create
meberlists, create overviews of weblinks (I do that now in a Swiki) etc..

I think that you show on your page that such a tool could be used for Squeak
also. (use it or rebuild it in Squeak..)

I think that the comments of Goran could be a good 
starting point for rethinking the way we discuss things...

(A last interesting point iof these NUKEs is that you can communicate with
other Nukes and decide which kind of stories you would like to share... (I
did not try this option)



Some small remarks about your choice:
I did recognize the php Nuke style and found in your pages the company that
sells this product: http://www.digibuy.com/cgi-bin/order.html?vbulletin 

Weird that you pay this company for a product that is free. 
Or is that the price you want to pay for tuning a product for the market.
(If you were not a technical person - but you are, because you do Squeak - I
could understand buying this out-of-the-box product.. paying every year $85
dollars..)

Alternative look alikes can be found on: 
www.phpnuke.org 
www.postnuke.com 
http://geeklog.sourceforge.net 
http://nukedownload.com/

Warning: you have to do a little more installation: setup an Apcahe server,
connect an mySQLdatabase, imtegrate PHP...

If you visit http://sourceforge.org you can find install-kits that do this
for you on the fly: you only have to setup the emailserver, bring your nuke
zip-file in the apache publish area and follow some security advices...

(I put all this effort in this endeavour because I like the tool D3E, where
you can place a  structured doocument.. or awebsite or... in the left window
and the start a threaded discussion in the right window: to see an example
go to: www.jime.org
  


-----Original Message-----
From: goran.hultgren at bluefish.se [mailto:goran.hultgren at bluefish.se]
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 11:28 AM
To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
Subject: Re: [ANN] Documentation Website


Bernd Oldenbuettel <bernd at oldenbuettel.de> wrote:
> Hi list,
> 
> I build a little website for Squeak documentation. You will find it at
> 
>  http://www.squeakdoc.org
> 
> The main part of the site is an annotated class documentation, inspired by
the
> PHP website at www.php.net. If you find the pages useful, I might add a
scamper
> version. Or a Squeak frontend. Or a Howto section. Or ...
> 
> Bernd

Beautiful! I like it. I am wondering though, now that there are stuff
popping up everywhere (no particular order and not an exhaustive list by
any means):

http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak - The Almighty Swiki.
http://marvin.bluefish.se:8080/squeakdot - SqueakDot, my little silly
experiment.
http://sqdb.squeak.info - Sqdb is an open database of class and method
comments for Squeak. (snipped from the "What's this").
http://www.squeakdoc.org - Your new site.
http://squeak.heeg.de:8080 - Hans-Martin Mosner's site, which seems like
a real nifty solid repository - though I haven't tried it myself yet.

Ok. Obviously we are going to get redundancy etc which is not a bad
thing per se. But it is good to have a clear view on "what is what",
right? My personal perception:

The Swiki is the current "outside of the image" true source of Hypertext
information on Squeak. It's our common ground for persisting thoughts,
ideas, project info etc. Simple and good.

Hans-Martin's site will probably gradually take a place as a good
repository - perhaps even more important now that "Modules" are here and
it is easier to maintain modules outside of the image. I assume it will
"adapt" to the module system with relative ease.

The Sqdb is an attempt to host comments outside of the image. I
personally don't know if it will succeed - it will definitely require
good tool support IN the image, in order to be used. But it is an
interesting idea nevertheless.

SqueakDot is an experiment in giving webbased services to the Squeak
community implemented in Squeak. Apart from the fact that it is (soon)
an experiment in co-development, the services in the end for the user
are meant to COMPLEMENT other services available. For example, I
personally will not encourage us to add discussions to SqueakDot since I
want the mailinglist to be The Place for that. But voting is a simple
thing that is not easily done on a mailinglist. And there are other such
things.

I would say that the above 4 don't "compete" in any are, at least not
yet! :-)

SqueakDoc though seems to "clash" with Sqdb - but on the other hand,
that's bound to happen I guess. It also has discussion areas - but
perhaps they are mainly focused on discussing the documentation. Anyway
- don't take this as criticism - I like the site a lot! I just want us
to play along the best we can. ;-)

Anyway, just a string of thoughts.

regards, Göran