Alternative developing proposal for Libervis.com 2008
democrates | Bright and colourful - I | Fri, 2007-11-02 17:06
Bright and colourful - I like it.
Just a thought - would a mascot work, in keeping with the sun logo say a cheeky and rebellious phoenix (phroenix?), with a personality somewhere between zippy and chucky.
It's hard to get instant engagement right. The sun in space would give nice depth, far better than a wall of text and artwork which just says "work". A photo of a person is always good, we relate to that on a most basic level, particularly a beautiful woman. There we go, where are all the women in IT? Set up a section here! Then comes the dating and geek cruises...
Seriously though, the new broader approach looks like a great way to trigger a growing momentum. I'd put art and geek at the top given the mass appeal and greatest fun element. Since the front page would have leaders tempting further into various sections this could include photo o' the week or simply the latest photo posted.
Those are first thoughts for now anyhow, well done.
tbuitenh | Three things first:
1) looks | Fri, 2007-11-02 17:49
Three things first:
1) looks great! But maybe a little bit too much like a link directory.
2) I would like the categories to be in the part of the page the best matching corner is in. If you swap all corners except "community", it will be right.
3) Can I have the svg of the libervis sun? I'd like to draw another sketch. The graphics designer in me wants out 
.
We could give each corner a nice image. Community would be a group of people drinking coffee, Speakers' corner a guy on a soapbox, Art could show some of the art created in it, and Geek... a gnu?
I'd like to note that I remember from the very very very beginning libervis was always meant to be a connection between different communities and different creative minds. We split off our software side into nuxified.org and the mission went to the non-interactive libervis.net, leaving libervis.com only a discussion site. Yes it always was a totally open minded discussion site, but it used to be more. The sketches we're making now are of a new interface for the original concept. If we will implement this, we're going back to our roots. Back in 2004 we were still learning, we didn't really know how to build communities and we actually damaged the original small libervis community while trying to grow by creating new sites. We have quite a few friends who we are still in touch with, but who don't ever post to libervis.com anymore - I assume because it has degenerated from a meeting place for creative minds into yet another discussion site.
Nuxified proves that we do know how to build communities now. It is connected to a few very interesting related sites and communities, and new members flow in every time we do something fun. We can use more or less the same recipe for libervis.com.
The geek corner, and in the future also the art corner, will cause overlap between libervis.com and other libervis network sites. It seems in the past we perceived this as a problem: we forced all the practical free software talk to move to nuxified. This caused a lot of the philosophical talk to appear "in the wrong place", also on nuxified... so we again encouraged that to be posted on libervis.com instead.
Avoiding overlap simply won't work, and we have to wonder why we are trying to do it. Let people write their posts on whichever libervis network site they prefer, and if we think it would fit on another site too, we can offer to copy it to that one. Then it will get traffic from both communities... duplication is GOOD!
Last thought in this post: I would suggest "Have unrestricted fun with..." instead of "Have fun with... in freedom".
libervisco | 1) Agreed, that's cause in | Fri, 2007-11-02 21:38
1) Agreed, that's cause in the image all of them display. In the real page only one would be faded up at a time. Others would be severely grayed out, visible only enough for visitor to know there's something there too.
2) Good idea.
3) I am attaching an SVG source of this (should've done it already).
We could give each corner a nice image. Community would be a group of people drinking coffee, Speakers' corner a guy on a soapbox, Art could show some of the art created in it, and Geek... a gnu?
Sounds great!
I'd like to note that I remember from the very very very beginning libervis was always meant to be a connection between different communities and different creative minds.
Yeah, sort of.. the "Open Source Community Node" and then the "Free Software Community Node", but indeed for a while it was emphasized as a "node", an intersection of people with various opinions and interested as long as they related to Free Software (and later Free Culture). The rest of what you described seems quite right. It's back to the roots indeed.
Avoiding overlap simply won't work, and we have to wonder why we are trying to do it.
It's sort of a "competing with ourselves" situation. If two of our sites are used for the same thing, what's the purpose of the second one, especially when we really want that second one to succeed? I for one think Nuxified.org was a good move and that separation works, even though it did maybe contribute slightly to the desertion of Libervis.com by some, obviously. But that's also obviously not the only factor.
Then it will get traffic from both communities... duplication is GOOD!
I'm fairly sure google would disagree with that exclamation. 
It doesn't like duplicated content, in principle (and sometimes in practice) it would penalize the duplicated page in favor of whatever it perceives as the original, although it may be hard to tell for the bot since the overall design and sidebar content makes the two pages different..
Anyway, I'm not sure. I suppose we can view the overlap situations the way we look at forks of Free Software.. Even if the result is roughly the same thing, they are two approaches which can learn from one another. It's like a scientific experiment with two differing situations trying to get the better result.. Besides, the overlap should be minimal since, just because people can talk about some technical things on Libervis.com doesn't make Libervis.com a better place than Nuxified for it. It's just a little corner and Nuxified is the full experience based on it..
Gotta think some more about that, but, if we view the new Libervis as think-tank oriented then slight overlap isn't a big problem. If Libervis is the incubator of extra-libervis projects it's bound to have some remains in it once the project becomes separate.
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libervisco | A quick thought about the | Sat, 2007-12-22 03:18
A quick thought about the names of these sections and going witty with them. It appears that, even if we may not always know this, our discussions here occasionally do affect people elsewhere, even helping inspire essays so as we expand to these other practical areas we shouldn't do it at too much expense of what we've got already and this should even be reflected in the way we name our sections.
The "soapbox" part therefore should perhaps be named in a way that implies more respect and valuing of what is being discussed and said in it. I may be nitpicking (and we ARE changing the design a bit so this image might not be used anyway), but I'd just like to share that a term like "soapbox" reminds me more of a "let him get up there and talk his mind out if it'll make him feel better" kind of thing. It's not really serious. It implies a place where you go to when you need to let some steam (or even worse), not to mention the possible memetical relation between "soapbox" and "soap operas". I think we are and should be a lot better than just that.
So let's (try to) expand, spread our rainbow, but the core of what made Libervis.com what it is should be preserved and guarded as the treasure of all Libervis time - and we should continue to build on it. And if it means nitpicking on the terms and images we use to describe it, so be it.
EDIT: And another thing, slightly related.. If we are to describe our articles and discussion section as a "soapbox" I think we're missing the bill in another major way as well. I consider my blog to be my soapbox and Libervis.com forums to be a bit more than that. On my blog I will talk about anything, but on Libervis.com I will talk about what has some relation to freedom and technology as well as the way world around us affects it. And my topics would be more of discussion baits than just expressions as on my blog.
In other words, we have to keep in mind that nowadays everyone can have a blog, so if they need a soapbox they can have it themselves. We clearly need to differentiate our section as something different and more special than that.
Thanks
tbuitenh | This is a work in progress, | Sat, 2007-11-03 10:24
This is a work in progress, and some bits of this drawing are / will be rather time consuming to get right. Still I'd like to show a little...
I'm not really happy about the look of the corners yet. Probably the text in them should be aligned the other way, and they need colored shadows. Also I need to reserve some space for nice photos or drawings... Probably going to use drawings, but we'll see about that later.
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| libersun2.png | 27.57 KB |
tbuitenh | Why the name speakers' | Sat, 2007-11-03 10:30
libervisco | Wow, that looks really good | Sat, 2007-11-03 15:15
tbuitenh | Wait until you see it | Sat, 2007-11-03 16:42
libervisco | Me and Taco were working on | Tue, 2007-12-11 17:44
Me and Taco were working on the design for the front page of the new Libervis when he was here in Zagreb. Here are the mock ups.
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| libersun3.svg | 70.99 KB |
| libersun2.svg | 35.31 KB |
democrates | Well that looks cool in | Mon, 2007-12-17 20:41
Well that looks cool in inkscape, the fades didn't render in Firefox 2.0.11 on Kubuntu, I got flood fills there.
The only thing I would think about changing is the horizontal lines coming off the coloured dots - have them turn to the centre of the sun rather than being parallel?
The symmetry will go anyway unless the four corners have the same number of sub-sections each, and you're hardly going to sacrifice logical navigation of a site which plans to grow in order to preserve graphical aesthetics, just a thought.
tbuitenh | concept rather than design? | Tue, 2007-12-18 10:02
The symmetry will go anyway unless the four corners have the same number of sub-sections each, and you're hardly going to sacrifice logical navigation of a site which plans to grow in order to preserve graphical aesthetics, just a thought.
You have a point there. Maybe the current design in development serves better to make a concept clear than to be used as an actual user interface.
We could simply fill up the homepage with all latest forum topics, color coded by which "corner" they belong to - this would also allow adding a "fifth corner" if we would want to. The libervis sun would still make a nice background image in that pleasant chaos that comes I envision now. I'll sketch something soonish.
tbuitenh | Here we go, the new sketch. | Wed, 2007-12-19 16:49
Here we go, the new sketch. It has some small problems:
- yellow and white just doesn't work, so I had to use yellow background instead of yellow lines somewhere. The alternative is to break the rainbow niceness.
- what would be a good one or two word term for free licensed works that are neither art nor software? Things like wiki content, ebooks, etc.
- tiny drawing accidents here and there, but hey, it's just a semi-quick sketch!
- I use a yellow glow to show which tab is open, this may look weird with the different colors, OTOH it's probably unnecessary.
The purpose of the tabs is to show exactly the same page, only with content of colors different than the tab filtered out.
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libervisco | So we're dropping the old | Wed, 2007-12-19 18:05
So we're dropping the old sun idea? To be honest I actually like the new proposal and think it might after all be more functional than the sun, yet it still uses the concept of colors which in turn remind of our sun symbolism.
I like the idea you present above, and also like the sketch itself. I think it may be a winning concept with a few small modifications, biggest of which might be the actual header (I'd like it to be a bit more than just a text "Libervis.com" and a gradient below.. it must look a bit sensational and even more beautiful than the current one.
What may be the biggest challenge with this is coding the filtering mechanism, considering I'm not a coder. The code would basically have to run off a front.tpl.php. Are you thinking of using some sort of AJAX to filter the colors (seems like it would make more sense than refreshing the whole page)?
yellow and white just doesn't work, so I had to use yellow background instead of yellow lines somewhere. The alternative is to break the rainbow niceness.
I think there are plenty of ways to represent a color of the block. It doesn't have to be a border or a background. It could be a decorative bar or a little decorative square of that color - whatever looks and works best.
what would be a good one or two word term for free licensed works that are neither art nor software? Things like wiki content, ebooks, etc.
Well on OTT07 we used "open content". Alternative is "free content".
I use a yellow glow to show which tab is open, this may look weird with the different colors, OTOH it's probably unnecessary.
Might be unnecessary, but then again I think there are more ways to represent that a particular color's tab is open (other than a background).
Overall a very nice idea! And I love the funny ads section. 
tbuitenh | it's just a sketch | Wed, 2007-12-19 22:50
So we're dropping the old sun idea?
This is called killing your darlings . The concept is still there, but it is implemented in a different way.
biggest of which might be the actual header (I'd like it to be a bit more than just a text "Libervis.com" and a gradient below.. it must look a bit sensational and even more beautiful than the current one.
There we go again, I like clean, everyone else likes eyecandy overload. I think I'll play with yellow glow to add some sort of sunrise behind the "Libervis.com". That will be both clean and pretty, and will remind of the good old libervis sun rising from a box. Which will have to be put in the design somewhere as well. Can you give me an svg of the sun in a box?
What may be the biggest challenge with this is coding the filtering mechanism, considering I'm not a coder. The code would basically have to run off a front.tpl.php. Are you thinking of using some sort of AJAX to filter the colors (seems like it would make more sense than refreshing the whole page)?
My thought was tracker or xtracker could probably handle this. If not, it's quite easy to do in javascript, IF the messages can be inside a <div class="NameOfATab">. Remember that little mashup of planet and de.lirio.us called vodka I once made? This would be pretty much the same.
yellow and white just doesn't work, so I had to use yellow background instead of yellow lines somewhere. The alternative is to break the rainbow niceness.
I think there are plenty of ways to represent a color of the block. It doesn't have to be a border or a background. It could be a decorative bar or a little decorative square of that color - whatever looks and works best.
The colored decoration shouldn't be too small, the association with the tabs should be immediately obvious. A colored border is the minimum, colored background is better if it can be made to look good.
what would be a good one or two word term for free licensed works that are neither art nor software? Things like wiki content, ebooks, etc.
Well on OTT07 we used "open content". Alternative is "free content".
However, some regard the term "content" as negative, a synonym of "filler". Personally I don't like the word very much, but I don't know a better one.
I use a yellow glow to show which tab is open, this may look weird with the different colors, OTOH it's probably unnecessary.
Might be unnecessary, but then again I think there are more ways to represent that a particular color's tab is open (other than a background).
Yellow glow FTW, I'll figure out how to make it look good if it doesn't.
Overall a very nice idea! And I love the funny ads section.
I think "giant vampire lizards" might become the first libervis meme, if only others would start mentioning them in funny places too.
libervisco |
tbuitenh wrote:
There we go | Thu, 2007-12-20 04:37
There we go again, I like clean, everyone else likes eyecandy overload.
No I like clean too, but at the same time looking very attractive. I think there are plenty of examples on the web of what I mean. The gradient thing in your mock up (that being only a mock up) reminds me of the old style web sites..
If you'd like examples of some good modern yet clean site designs (including headers) there are plenty on CSS Remix and Best Web Gallery.
My thought was tracker or xtracker could probably handle this. If not, it's quite easy to do in javascript, IF the messages can be inside a .
Not sure about xtracker (it just lists the recent stuff from a particular category, roughly described), but yes anything can be pulled out of the database and put into a div or anything you like. In fact, the current "latest discussions" block on homepage is done this way. Hmm.. so only thing left is to adapt those kinds of things and apply some ajaxy magic to it..
The colored decoration shouldn't be too small, the association with the tabs should be immediately obvious. A colored border is the minimum, colored background is better if it can be made to look good.
Alright, good point. I think some trial-and-error will be in order, but we'll figure something out.
However, some regard the term "content" as negative, a synonym of "filler". Personally I don't like the word very much, but I don't know a better one.
Eh how did I forget of that. Indeed, I agree. Alternative might be "written work" or something like that..
I think "giant vampire lizards" might become the first libervis meme, if only others would start mentioning them in funny places too.
Who knows. 
It has to have an easily recognizable use-case though.
Btw, I've attached the Libervis.com logo SVG which contains the sun coming out of a box.
Thanks
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libervisco | I wish you'd read this.
I | Tue, 2008-03-25 17:39
I wish you'd read this.
I think "serious" section doesn't have to be a section in itself. When categorizing I think we have to have a basic criteria according to which we categorize, and in this case I think it is the topic. So the community section has community building as it's major general topic (and everything that goes with it, like socializing). The computing section, which within the context of the present concept of Libervis 2008 I'm thinking of simply renaming into "technology" (tools we use to do something, including mostly computers at this point, but at some point could include playing with nanotech, robots, various techno hacking etc.) has this geeky tinkering with technology as its main topic.
The art section has expressions of feelings through audio-visual creations as its main topic (music, movies, paintings and photos etc.) while the debate section has "everything else" as its topic, which would then be subdivided into various sub-topics that we can have "deep" discussions on (politics, philosophy, business etc.).
So the "serious" section, with the wiki content and ebooks etc.. I think what would be in it could actually fit any of the other sections, depending on what this particular serious content is about. We could have a block that links to a particular relevant categories of this kind of content. For instance if we have a wiki page on how to create a completely Free Software powered robot that connects to the internet and can talk to visitors of a site (hey, you never know), then the link to this would be in the block belonging to the "technology" section.
What do you think?
(Btw, I'm still in the process of figuring out how best to converge this concept of presenting the site as sliced up in this way.. that also fits the current concept of Libervis.com as the central think-tank/incubator for Libervis Network as an entity that pursues responsible (and more specifically freedom-respectful) technology use.)
tbuitenh | The reason it looks a little | Thu, 2007-12-20 09:44
tbuitenh | In the latest sketch, | Sat, 2007-12-22 12:37
In the latest sketch, "speakers' corner" already got renamed to "debate", because there are no literal corners anymore. So I believe this is a moot point.
However, I do think you're considering the term "soapbox" to be rather negative, which it isn't. A soapbox is a discussion platform (pun intended) that anyone who has an opinion and who knows how to put it into words is welcome to use. No elite, no closed think tank, everyone who has something to say (well, something more developed than "u suk") can join.
And the link to soap operas... well maybe some non-native speakers of English will make this mental connection, but then again English is not my native language and to me a soapbox and a soap opera have as much in common as a horse and a telephone do (or something). You may be worrying too much.
That said, we do indeed have fierce competition from blogging services. In the early days strangers sent us articles about all kinds of things (mostly politics IIRC), now those same strangers probably have their own blogs. I hate to say this, but maybe the time of discussion forum websites is over. That concept is "web 1.0" .
We did once try to start a libervis blogging service, but that didn't really work out.
Have you also noticed that all that "web 2.0" stuff encourages selfish and narcissistic behavior? Everyone has their own blog, their own social network site profile, their own photo stream, their own kitchen sink. Where did the communities go?
We can't be winners in that game, because our mission is to provide services to a community rather than to individuals. The nuxified model works nicely: one comes asking for help, and later pays back (forward?) by helping another. "Paying forward" may be THE key to community building. How do we port this concept to a more abstract site like libervis.com?
libervisco | Hm yeah I might have pushed | Sat, 2007-12-22 13:04
Hm yeah I might have pushed it a bit out of proportion, but anyway "debate" seems cool.
I think everyone actually has fierce competition from the blogosphere in general. I am not sure it really weakens the community spirit so much as it exchanges one way of conversing with another. Blogs have comments which allow for discussions. Often there are "messages" in form of blog entries that go back and forth between various people's blogs. And in the FOSS communities we know that blogs are often used in a whole discussion process. Just think of "open letters" and various commentaries which really aren't islands for themselves but reactions to something that's going on in the community.
I'm thinking best way for Libervis.com to adapt to this is to be part of the blogosphere itself while also being among the valuable aggregator of other relevant blog content. I suppose this is where the "elsewhere" column in your mock up comes into play. Although it might be renamed to something that makes it a less "us and others" or "here and elsewhere" thing, but more as us being comfortably part of this bigger whole.
I think forums still have their place depending on the topic. Nuxified and other support forums are an example, and I think that there is some value in them as a discussion platform too, but at least as just an add on. In any case I think there is a core community here which may keep the debate section alive and well.. Heck we sort of did it so far, and managed to even achieve something with it. Meanwhile other sections will add further value to the site.
I hope this isn't too tiring for everyone, but on Libervis.com it wouldn't be the first time to propose a whole slew of ideas in a multitude of threads when the brainstorming wheel starts to turn. At some point, perhaps just now, we might as well hit the sweet spot.
So.. based on the discussion in a previous proposal I had a nice chat with Taco (AKA tbuitenh) on our IRC channel (#libervis on irc.freenode.net) in which we've both basically cornered ourselves continuing on the thread of a truly open discussion site without an agenda.. First, we wouldn't make a really big difference from what we already are in essence. We would only change the presentation.. and then what? We are still a site that lives ONLY on perpetual discussion and occasional article that comes from it. How long before we are all simply saturated by this?
In the last thread I was talking about us being open from the beginning, but also evolving our thinking. Many times ideas that were posted as part of this process involved calls for making this place more than just a discussion place, but rather a place to express creativity, to have fun *doing* something too! That component has been largely lost.
So.. this proposal is based on the idea of getting this back, and doing it big time, the way we never thought of before.
The new Libervis.com would then be divided into four major sections:
So, as mentioned, Libervis.com as you know it would largely fall into the "speakers' corner" because it is all about debates, articles, speaking your mind on digital freedom. This corner is what many ongoing thoughts share in the previous thread can apply to.
The other three corners would, however, be largely new. Community corner for socializing, discussing community building ideas etc. Art corner would be for art enthusiasts and creative people who share their art as free culture, including music, drawing/graphics, photography and movie making. Geek corner would be about Free Software, programming, web development and digital technology at large.
This said there are two very important things to note that apply to all of the above:
This makes Libervis.com a central star of the Libervis Network, a workshop of ideas and innovation which then emit new projects (services, products, campaigns, anything).
And here is a picture that portrays the homepage for this new Libervis.com:
There is also a Taco's original concept drawing available here.
This is just a mock up and the final version should look much more attractive. A lot of CSS may be involved in creating this. Not all of the pointers will be visible the same way as presented on the picture so it would look much less like a clutter.
In essence, four corners represent four main sections of Libervis.com. Each sun ray represents a subsection in one of these corners. The exact hierarchy of subsections is yet to be determined, but we are looking to make it 3 per each, so as to fit 12 sun rays as depicted in the picture.
When one hovers over a pointer to the sun ray it will fade up, making the ""Have fun with.. " part fade down.. We can also make the corner to which a subsection belongs to be highlighted when that subsection is selected. Overall it would be quite a fun homepage.
We can still have a footer section below this whole construct display a couple or so blocks with latest interesting content just to make the homepage a bit more attractive to search engines and visitors looking for a quick survey, but this graphical construct would be at the center.
We can also have themes for the homepage that can be switched with a click on a link, or changed randomly. I could then make a "space" theme in which the sun would actually be a sun in space whose rays are being selected to represent various subsections of the site, with which you can have fun with.
The whole focus on "fun" as the keyword is because fun is something most people are attracted to and which is often a driving force behind what many people do. Freedom is fun. It's not just for long bearded philosophers. With freedom you can have more fun than when you are restricted.
So.. the obvious slogan presented in the homepage is: "Have fun with _enter your preference_ in freedom."
Wanna discuss philosophy? "Have fun with philosophy in freedom." Want to draw and sharing your art as free culture with others? "Have fun with drawing in freedom."
Ideas and opinions welcome!
-- Thank you Taco for helping carve this idea.
Life's not read-only. So.. I keep writing.