[squeakland] on having two squeakland websites

Timothy Falconer timothy at squeakland.org
Thu Sep 3 06:29:04 EDT 2009


On Sep 2, 2009, at 7:16 PM, Nevit Dilmen wrote:

> As an eToys user you can count me as this "few". I strongly agree  
> with this idea, and believe eToys has been pretty late in this  
> decision. The websites does not necessarily be hosted on seperate  
> domains. But all can be handled with subdomains.
>
> village.squeakland.org,  projects.squeakland.org,  
> forum.squeakland.org, wiki.squeakland.org, blogs.squeakland.org, info.squekland.org 
> ,  www.squeakland.org . etc.
>
>> As with all suggestions, I'm open to ideas, but in this
>> particular case, I'd like some serious community discussion
>> about this.  I'd like there to be solid, compelling,
>> reasons for such a move.
>
>> Here are the reasons I'm against "splitting the baby", as
>> IMO would happen if we make two sites.  I'll
>> distinguish as squeakland.org (official) and etoysville.com
>> (community).
>
> I will not go in details below, one by one as you suggested. I would  
> instead compare eToys with Scratch which is a project launched later  
> than eToys and based on Squeak code.
>
> Scratch has been a huge success perhaps because of it's community  
> website. The community website is not a separate domain as suggested  
> above but is the main site. It includes areas for official  
> announcements but the majority of site is composed of project area  
> with more than 500.000 projects hosted.  The second major part of  
> the site is forum and both use  unified login. Projects are uploaded  
> right from within the application. Projects are shared and hosted  
> with Creative Commons licence which allows recycling and use for  
> educational purposes.
>
> The official areas of the site include blog, downloads,  
> translations, research, info, credits, quotes, news, store,  
> donations, conference, scratch day & learning materials.
>
> The important question to be answered is does VPRI or sponsors  
> behind eToys project have enough financial and man power resources  
> to launch such a major project with huge design, hosting and  
> maintenance demands? And are they willing to do so.


Nevit,

We *will* be launching a public showcase in the next two weeks, where  
users can share directly from Etoys.  This is a major feature of the  
new release.

The debate is about whether these public projects show on a separate  
website or seperate-looking section.

I'm in favor of the Scratch way (integrated as a major part of the  
main site).   Others want the look and navigation to be different than  
the main website, to feel like a separate place than the main website.

I agree that a public showcase has been a long time coming.  Our  
proposal for last year's website redesign included a Scratch-like  
public showcase, with features such as curriculum overlays.   This  
part was cut largely because VPRI didn't feel they had the manpower to  
moderate a public showcase effectively.

Now that control has been passed to Squeakland Foundation, we're  
creating this public showcase as one of our first, top, priorities.

Take care,
Tim





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