reworking or replacing /library

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Mike Harman

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Joined: 7-02-06

Aug 19 2007 05:48

OK so if we reorganise history, thought and library content types into one "article" content type, and rework history and thought indexes to be more portal-style - linking to other portals and generally being a bit more comprehensive for browsing through, then we won't have a library any more as such - since the library content that's about historical events will be in /history and the theoretical content will be in /thought. Anything that's not directly linked will fall through the cracks and only be available via an /articles or /latest list of everything, or going via tags - but that happens with nearly everything now.

So, I reckon we should replace the library index with a navigation guide to the site, basically a catalogue. Basically a completely reworked version of: http://libcom.org/explore

This will have - links to search/advanced search/google site search/firefox plugin - maybe technorati as well.
Links to tag lists (I reckon we can re-work the tag clouds to use tabs so you can get different ones on different pages, also it should be possible to make views that work like tag clouds so we can make more useful ones).
Then a decent-working alphabetical directory.
And a working google maps as well.

Stuff like that. Main thing is to try to get the respective elements looking decent, then make a panel which draws them together so they're easily accessible from one page - then we can probably remove the /library link from the top menu, and stick this new panel under the explore link.

How's that sound?

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Joined: 1-10-03

Sep 1 2007 10:38

Yeah, I like the idea of the library as a general catalogue of stuff on the site and the history section being a series of portals on different events/topics. I'm slightly worried about the idea of making /thought just a list of links to other articles though. I know that at the moment the thought section is pretty shite but the idea behind it (providing introductory texts on different theories we like or don't like as well as simple libertarian communist ideas on everyday issues) is essential to the site in my opinion.

I mean, if I was a young Leninist struggling with the contradictions within it and you pointed me to an online version of 'The Bolsheviks and Workers Control' and some other stuff by Bakunin I might find it a bit much, read my nice and easy Chris Harman pamphlet on why anarchism is rubbish and leave it at that. I think we'd need to keep the easy intros very accessible on the site somewhere.

That said though, each portal could have an introductory text/s to get people started so I guess that might be alright. My main issue is that I don't want to lose the element of libcom which staggers the level of political development you need to have to use the site.

Mike Harman

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Joined: 7-02-06

Sep 1 2007 17:03

Quote:

I'm slightly worried about the idea of making /thought just a list of links to other articles though. I know that at the moment the thought section is pretty shite but the idea behind it (providing introductory texts on different theories we like or don't like as well as simple libertarian communist ideas on everyday issues) is essential to the site in my opinion.

No reason we couldn't have an "introductory texts" block in the thought index - which then links to a (hopefully much improved) version of the current one. I think the main thing is putting an extra layer or so where needed before we get to the tag indexes so people don't get lost.

Quote:

I mean, if I was a young Leninist struggling with the contradictions within it and you pointed me to an online version of 'The Bolsheviks and Workers Control' and some other stuff by Bakunin I might find it a bit much, read my nice and easy Chris Harman pamphlet on why anarchism is rubbish and leave it at that. I think we'd need to keep the easy intros very accessible on the site somewhere.
That said though, each portal could have an introductory text/s to get people started so I guess that might be alright. My main issue is that I don't want to lose the element of libcom which staggers the level of political development you need to have to use the site.

Yeah there should be a short text intro for each bit - linking to the relevant tag intro. Reckon the tag intros should eventually look a bit like wikipedia pages in terms of structure since people are very, very familiar with those now. We can also have a list of them in their own right (better than the current one of course since it's an eyesore).

Steven.

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Joined: 27-06-06

Sep 2 2007 09:25

alright catch - so what you agree with stuff being split between thought/history now?

i'm not really worried.

i agree with all that, except i think we should keep the name + link library, cos it's our best known and best liked feature. the library page though acts like a portal to everything else - a decent explore - might as well include news there too, otherwise it'll be confusing. as the site gets older some news+history stuff will start to overlap anyway.

tag intros cause problems in that they are sticky at the top of feeds to external sites too. can we stop this?
e.g. here:
http://radicalhealthcareworkers.wordpress.com/

Mike Harman

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Joined: 7-02-06

Sep 2 2007 10:06

John. wrote:

alright catch - so what you agree with stuff being split between thought/history now?

Not really - I'd rather change everything to one type with a couple of hours database headache then convert 1000s of articles one by one for the next 2-3 years. We've still got gallery to import, book pages to tidy up - both of which have to be done manually.

We can differentiate most history articles in views by the fact they include a region (and other tags) if we need to - that ought to be enough I think. Also with portals a lot of the differentiation will be done via navigation which is how it should be.

Quote:

i agree with all that, except i think we should keep the name + link library, cos it's our best known and best liked feature. the library page though acts like a portal to everything else - a decent explore - might as well include news there too, otherwise it'll be confusing. as the site gets older some news+history stuff will start to overlap anyway.

Yeah definitely - that's what a library actually is so makes sense to me. News should be included in tags + ways to find things yeah.

Quote:

tag intros cause problems in that they are sticky at the top of feeds to external sites too. can we stop this?
e.g. here:
http://radicalhealthcareworkers.wordpress.com/

I think sticky is sticky is sticky.

We might be able to do something like make an "intros" block top centre - so the top of feeds have that block, and the article changes depending on the url. Bit of php magic to do that though of course but iirc there's a module that simplifies it. Also that means intros can be formatted completely differently (like a bigger image and stuff) - so they'd look way, way better. Also have to make it disappear or put something acceptably generic in if there's no intro of course.