Hi Hannes,

This post requires a longer answer. I think it's worthwhile to say something
about my point of view on where Squeak People is positioned and how it
relates to the larger community. First of all, communities are ultimately
about people and communication. They form around certain artifacts but the
community lives by the people and by the way they communicate.

My interest is not only the evolution of the artifact (Squeak) itself. It is
equally about how the community evolves, interacts and moves forward. One
might rightfully say that Squeak People (we need an abbreviation for that
... any ideas?) does not directly contribute to the artifact itself, as no
code is generated on that site, no tests are written, no image partitioning
taking place. At least not directly.

But if we look at Squeak People then we can see a couple of things that are
very important for the overall community. First off, it has a very low-level
entry. If you're interested in Squeak you can join and express your interest
in Squeak simply by "being there". Yes, you can do the same by subscribing
to the Squeak mailing list, but the tradeoffs are different - two megabytes
of email per month and no real gratification for your involvement. Squeak
people, however, lets you be part of the community immediately, with no
strings attached and it gives you immediate gratification (through being
rated by people knowing you). Interestingly enough, in the two days of its
existence (let me check...) about 50 people joined some of which I had never
heard about.

Secondly, Squeak People is a different medium. Very different indeed from
either the mailing list or the Swiki. The form of expression differs quite
rapidly which lets you say certain things "in the context" of the community
(such as the diary or an article) which are hard to say in the same way on
either the mailing list or the Swiki. And I think there's a need for this
kind of medium, I really think that Squeak People fills a gap in our way of
communicating within the community.

Thirdly, the networking effect (who rates whom, who works with what) which
is being established on Squeak People happens on a social (rather than a
merely technical) basis which -again- is something that we really didn't
have before. For example, can you say who uses a certain package within the
community? Can you say who knows whom in the community? Hardly so. But
Squeak People has the chance of establishing this social network by giving
us a chance to (for example) see who is working with/on what project. Which
in turn makes it easier for us to find people sharing similar interests,
identifying potential collaborators or making up our mind of who a
particular person might be.

Having said this, let me respond to a few individual parts from your
message:

> More experiments at this time? Is this the answer? Probably not.

As always, this really depends on the question asked. Methinks you're
looking only at the technical (artifact-related) issues and I wasn't. The
experiment here is in the social domain more than it is in the technical
domain. If it works out (and I strongly think so), then we can integrate the
social and technical aspects much better.

For example, look at the projects page at Squeak People. Here, you have a
way of making it public (to the entire community) that you use or develop a
certain project. Is this helpful in making technical decisions? I very much
think so. For example, knowing how widely something is used in the community
may well affect what is being shipped "by default" with a Squeak image.
Also, if I would be looking for collaborators on a project I would most
certainly start with people using it. There are many social aspects that can
be modeled at Squeak People which can help to resolve technical issues.

About Swiki abuse:
> Abuse is nearly a non-issue; incidents are quickly reverted 
> and that is boring for people who want to abuse the swiki.

That is true on the scale of the community but not on the scale of the
individual. If someone messes with "my pages" I'm pissed off. It's NOT a
non-issue for me even if the community helps to restore these pages. And
yet, the inability to model my trust in a way that allows "the community" to
extend and change the pages I am making is what leaves 90% of the pages to
be unlocked. Wouldn't it be much more convenient if we'd have a model of
access to the Swiki that reflects the opinion of the community? Say, certain
pages (such as front or download) can only be changed by a "master" (as
expressed by the community as a whole not an individual) whereas others may
require other levels of trust? At the very least, isn't it reasonable to say
that someone who is going to change these pages should at least be part of
the community? Squeak People can enable us to model these levels of trust
and I am very excited by this particular aspect since it extends vastly
beyound the Swiki.

> > Not sure I understand this. Personally, I think the site 
> > _is_ an enhancement of the existing processes.
> 
> In which dimension? Where does it fit in? What does it replace?

See above. I don't think it "replaces" anything (except maybe a few
announcements which may be posted at Squeak People ... but then I am not
sure if we would have seen them on the mailing list) but it sure is an
enhancement in the communication processes in the community.

And finally:
> As we begin to have these exciting Squeak solutions
> why go back to other stuff?

Not "back" - forward! To me, Squeak People has the ability to become the
"outward face of the Squeak community". E.g., where today you are basically
left alone somewhere inbetween Squeak.org, Squeak-dev, Squeak-Swiki, and
SqueakMap, Squeak People has the ability to become the "social entry point"
for the community. What does this community do? Read the articles on Squeak
People. What do people do? How do they think? Read their diaries. Who is
working on this project? Who is using it? Check out the projects page.
Someone replied to an inquiry from me but does this guy actually know what
he's talking about? Check their rating, see what other people think.

If I think ahead a little, the combination of Squeak People - Squeak Mailind
List - Squeak Swiki - SqueakMap looks like an excellent combination of all
of the various aspects of Squeak. They're all around Squeak and its
community, all a little different and all helpful in their own way as well
as in combination with others.

Cheers,
  - Andreas


> -----Original Message-----
> From: squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org 
> [mailto:squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org] On 
> Behalf Of Hannes Hirzel
> Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 10:03 PM
> To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
> Subject: Re: [ANN] Squeak People
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Andreas Raab wrote:
> >>I agree with Stephane, what is the intention of this thing?
> > I guess Cees' intention is simply to experiment with "just 
> another" approach
> > to community sites. Couple of things I like about it (and 
> why I think it's
> > going to be successful):
> > * It's really simple to use and very intuitive
> > * It has a model of trust which seems really nice[*]
> > * It is very clean in its presentation and simple to read 
> for anyone new to
> > Squeak
> 
> More experiments at this time? Is this the answer? Probably not.
> 
> We need negotiations for focus; TFNR is attempting to find more 
> maintainers/stewards for the different areas. We should wait for
> their final report.
> 
> > [*] If the trust model works out I could imagine that we 
> use authorizations
> > derived from the site - e.g., something like "for the front 
> page you have to
> > be certified journeyman or higher". Doing this would (I 
> think) almost
> > immediately block any of the abuse we see on the Swiki today.
> 
> Abuse is nearly a non-issue; incidents are quickly reverted 
> and that is 
> boring for people who want to abuse the swiki. A better 
> organization of
> the data / structure is surely of higher priority. A new 
> platform could
> be a valuable asset for this (porting the data to SmallWiki?).
> 
> The problem is not the abuse, the problem is that it is hard to write 
> tests, hard to disentangle the image, hard to write 
> documentation and so 
> one.
> 
> Progress with 3.6 has been very encouraging and why not just continue
> that way? I think the people involved have been doing a excellent job.
> Lets get this BFAV process running at full speed!
> 
> > Not sure I understand this. Personally, I think the site 
> _is_ an enhancement
> > of the existing processes.
> 
> In which dimension? Where does it fit in? What does it replace?
> 
> As a summary: I was away for some time and I'm surprised and 
> excited to 
> find Squeak in such a good shape!!! It is amazing what one finds on 
> SqueakMap. Today I set up a SmallWiki site; it was extremly easy.
> It is exciting to have a wiki I can easily transfer from
> a Mac to a PC with basically nil setup and and configuration efforts.
> And the whole wiki is a real object (one root, composite pattern).
> 
> As we begin to have these exciting Squeak solutions
> why go back to other stuff?
> 
> 
> Cheers
> Hannes
> 
> 
>