idea: a who's who of the libervis network? + project pages?

Looking at stuff on IBM's developer-works and at World Changing I tend to like the short biographies they put of people with their posts, it makes them feel more real and interesting. A page where a bio coulb be stored for this use, with other information might be usful.

Not sure abote the purpose of project pages, above what something like sf.net and savana offer.

dylunio

tbuitenh: "I think it might be nice to have a page / site where every regular user can put some information (location, education), a short self-description, link to blog, links to projects they're working on, and optionally a small photo of themselves."

dylunio: "Looking at stuff on IBM's developer-works and at World Changing I tend to like the short biographies they put of people with their posts, it makes them feel more real and interesting. A page where a bio coulb be stored for this use, with other information might be usful."

What about a combination of the two? or a way to make a link to your homepage with your name as the link?

Something that we do over at LXer.com(I am the Senior Editor) is, a user can create a forum that is attached to the "host" article. That way the forum always has the link to the article that started the thread at the top of the page and someone can read the article and the thread and "get up to speed" on what is being talked about quickly. We have had threads from articles continue to be posted in months and months after the article hit the newswire.

Regards, Scott R.

Quickly reading over this I think you've got a very good idea here. Something can definitely be done. I like the way it is put on LXer.com so we could do something similar here or on network.libervis.com for it to apply network wide.

About LXer style forum threads, that has indeed worked out quite well. Something that comes close though is simply the commenting system below every published article (or anything actually), although that is only one thread. I'm not sure if it can be done with Drupal to allow multiple threads on same "node" (article, blog entry etc.).

Anyway, this is definitely something to discuss further and implementation of at least the "who's who" section shouldn't be hard at all.

I've seen you were looking for me in IRC tbuitenh, would be good to see you sometime over the weekend. I caught a bad cold and was pretty much hybernating most of today. :\

Oh and welcome aboard Libervis.com Scott! I like your signature.

Yes, sf.net and savannah also offer project pages, but only for software projects, and it's not exactly the kind of thing I'm thinking of.
AFAIK sf and savannah don't offer preconfigured forums that you don't have to watch for spam and hatemail all the time. For us on libervis it's not much work to watch over lots of half-active forums.

But what the personal and project pages I have in mind are meant to answer are two questions:
- who is this person and what is (s)he working on?
- who is working on this project?

It's a much more personal kind of project pages than sf and savannah offer. For the actual software downloads and cvs and such they could link to sf and savannah pages.

I am not sure if it's only me or this thread is talking about a few not entirely related things at once. Maybe it's this darn cold I'm having, but I'm slightly confused.

Here is what I gather from tbuitenhs original idea:

1.) Making a page or site for listing regular "high profile" users and contributors of the Libervis Network featuring their short bio, photo, location, skills and links to projects they are involved with.

2.) Making it possible to extract info from pages describing a certain person and easily import them into a "project page", a homepage of the actual Libervis Network (or Libervis Network hosted) project they are involved with. This would imply that the new site would at the same time be an overview of LN high profile users and a project hosting site ala sf.net and savannah, but different.

Something tells me I didn't get the second one too well.

Scott also mentioned the feature of attaching forum threads to articles (from LXer.com) which is apparently in some way related to the ideas presented here.

Anyway, I suppose I am a bit slow these days. Enlighten me.

Thank you

#2 would be more like freshmeat project pages, but more personal, and with a small forum attached to each project. The forum should be more than just comments on the page, it should be capable of multiple threads in multiple topics).
The project pages don't have to be for software only. Website and advertising campaigns and such should be allowed too.

Alright, that seems like an idea for an entire new site then. It should be doable with Drupal. In drupal everything is either a node or a comment no matter if the node is a forum topic, an article or an image. That means it should be possible to attach a forum to a certain node (in this case project page).

If this would be a whole new site on Libervis Network that has certain expenses in both time and money and it is then required to review points like financial sustainability, growth etc. We need it to attract a substantial number of people with various kinds of projects.

I think, if we will have this, it should be part of libervis.com, the "community node". We could start by extending the user profiles to include possibilities for a non-avatar photo, a self description, a link to a blog and a link to a homepage.

That would be an extensive profile customization. Should be possible.

So, project pages would be featured only for projects part of Libervis Network or projects started by LN members?

I think that is a great idea, a way for us to show what we are involved with. It would work to help people to network. That sounds cool!