Specifications/Communication

IRC Channels

irc channels: Channels should be identified by broad topic (core devel, content, olpc in general, local groups) and by language (olpc-es, olpc-de), with preference to the former. Topical channels should be multilingual. Individual country channels should be merged into the above, since the community is not bound by national borders (and frankly, everyone in the community is interested in what's going on in individual countries; language barriers happen to be the highest limiting factor to very broad shared discussion.

Consolidation (draft):

#olpc
#olpc-help
  #olpc-support
  ##g1g1
#sugar
#olpc-content
#olpc-groups
  #olpc-peru
  #olpc-brasil
  #olpc-argentina
  #olpc-philippines
  &c.
#olpc-europe 

Mailing Lists

mailing lists : should be kept to a limited number with reasonable traffic; with olpc and devel being largest, and with devel and sugar restricted to core and not activity issues.

• posting to lists should be open to non-subscribers, archives public and cross-posting encouraged
• proposed groups: devel, sugar, activities*, library, localization | countries, groups, olpc**

  * possibly splitting into new lists for huge activities (etoys)
 ** general discussion; splitting into new lists by language

Suggestion: most of the following can be merged into the bolded lists.

  devel
    security
    networking
    linux-mm-cc??
  activities (new)
    games
    etoys?
    stirme
    colingoxo
    gasp?
  sugar
    accessibility
  openec
  extras  (new)
    peripherals
    livebackup-xo-cd
  design  (make public)
  library
    docs
  educators (unused)
    research?
  localization
  countries (multilingual),
    peru      [see also olpc-es]
    argentina [see also olpc-es]
    brasil    [see also olpc-pt]
    india

  groups / grassroots (multilingual)
    olpc-chicago
    olpc-philippines
    olpc-indonesia
    toronto-dev
    olpc-za
    colombia

  olpc / open (multilingual, mostly english),
    olpc-open --> olpc
    research --> olpc
    egypt-opensource
    nigeria-opensource
    aop (sigh)
  olpc-es (spanish)
  olpc-pt (portuguese)
  olpc-de (german)

mail/message syndication : move to a {group-membership + feed-subscription} model, where

• community members have attributes such as group membership defining who they are and what they are interested in
• mailing-list addresses have attributes defining what topics they cover, and associated feeds.

Community members should be able to add attributes such as "olpc-office-list" and "cambridge-group" so that they get all mail intended for the specific office list (however that is defined) or for any cantabridgians (all lists for people in cambridge). This will allow for accurate targeting of emails without spamming lists too broadly. We should also have

• a whitelist for known active users, who should not need to pass through any spam filters such as "has this person joined this public list?" to be able to post.