Talk:Contributing content
Could the OLPC management please make this page an officially-maintained OLPC page so that if an educator or publisher arrives at this page after entering the url on a printed card the page carries only content of high-quality provenance so that the educator or publisher can quickly gain information of whom to contact and of how to make contact.
- We are trying to make as many pages as possible publicly maintained; for instance, much of the content-sharing, aggregation, and distribution will take place through third party educational and editorial groups -- this should be a well-maintained page, but anyone involved with the content-creation process is welcome to add information to it. Sj 13:36, 6 July 2006 (EDT)
Availability via Download
Will the contributed material be available for public download? Or will you accept only material that are already available for download, and will make available an additional OLPC repository site for it? What license/s will be accepted? Thanks. - User:Raffy
- The licencing is further discussed here: OLPC on open source software however it could be better organized to explicitly cover both software and content licencing.
Language vs Language
We need a way of distringuishing between the language of the material and the content of the material. For example, the Logo Challenges page, which happens to be in Spanish, should be categorized as Mathematics. Walter 16:11, 7 July 2006 (EDT)
There is something wrong with this page
Frankly, this page does not make any sense. Why does it exist?
- The page was started, with, after a start using a placeholder, the text as shown in the following page.
- Please consider the following page.
- That page has the idea of having cards distributed to educators and educational publishers with http://edu.laptop.org printed upon it, with that url such that it was redirected to the Educators page. I felt that a page more straight to the point were needed if educators and educational publishers are to be persuaded to give content to the OLPC project for use in developing countries, so I started the Sharing your content with the OLPC project page for that purpose. In the event the http://edu.laptop.org link redirects to the Educators page, which page is as it is. There are further comments about this on the [[1]] page at this time.
- I still think that the page does not make any sense. First, it does make sense to have a start page targeted to educators with a simple, normal URL that can be publicised in various venues where educators hang out. It need not only be on a business card. Educators tend to be reasonably Internet savvy and were one of the first groups of people to adopt using the net back in the mid '90's.
- But the idea of an educators' start page has nothing whatsoever to do with a page explaining how to donate/share content. You don't find restaurants and stores asking for a $20 entrance fee at the parking lot, do you. In the same way, an educators' start page should focus on educating the educators about OPLC.
First glaring problem is that it contains a mostly empty categorization scheme but there is no discussion of why the categories are this way.
Second glaring problem is that it has a Hindi dictionary mentioned on a page in English that seems to be targetted to all readers. I think that the dictionary more properly belongs on a page of Hindi content or on a page of content to be used in India.
Third big problem is that this page is missing stuff like Squeak. Given that Alan Kay is part of OLPC, one wonders what is going on.
And the final big problem is that this page will never work. How could we possibly fit all software donated to the OLPC on a single page.
- That was not the idea. The idea was to provide clear and precise information about, as the name of the page implies, how one goes about Sharing your content with the OLPC project. It was not intended to be a list of Content already being shared with the OLPC project!
- Then I presume that the content list ended up there by accident.
- >And the final big problem is that this page will never work.
- It would if it were edited so as to fulfil its original purpose.
- >How could we possibly fit all software donated to the OLPC on a single page.
- Well, maybe not on a single page, yet a single page could provide an index page for other pages which together list all software donated to OLPC. Yet not this page!
- A concern is that the excellent idea of the cards and any effort spent in producing and distributing them may be wasted if responsing to the url on the cards simply produces a mountain wall of a learning curve rather than clear, concise and precise information that will encourage educators and educational publishers to give content to the OLPC project: such encouragement including assurances that so doing will not damage their business activity in developed countries.
- You are clearly not a marketing expert. Nor am I, but I have often worked with marketing people so I have a rough idea of what works and what does not work. If you want to sell educators on the idea of participating, then you do not start by putting your hand out and asking them to give you stuff.
- So, the purpose of the page has changed. The flexibility of a wiki allowed it to be started and the flexibility of a wiki has allowed it to be changed!
- It really depends on what is the consensus of how best to manage the idea of the cards. Maybe there should be http://edu.laptop.org redirecting to the Educators page and http://publishers.laptop.org redirecting to the Sharing your content with the OLPC project page, both of those pages being OLPC maintained pages so that the idea of the cards has a chance to work well.
- You don't need tons of URLs redirecting to various pages. I get the impression that you have no prior experience in setting up websites. You would find it very enlightening to read some of the back issues at http://www.useit.com. Things need to be organized logically and kept simple. One of the good things about a website is that links are cheap so they can be placed in lots of places. That's why every wiki page has a list of major links on the left. If a page is important enough it should go there. If not, then use the search tool to find related pages where you might be able to insert the link logically into the content. In this way the wiki becomes an information web that people can navigate according to their needs. You cannot force people to follow your sequence. I get the impression that you think you can force the following sequence:
- receive a business card
- type in the URL
- read the Educators web page
- send email to OLPC asking to donate cool stuff
Possible Fixes
- delete all content in the categories
- make a simple prose page that explains how and why to contribute content to the OLPC
- shorten the page title
- salvage a couple of the category items by putting them on a page of testimonials from people who support the OLPC. Or maybe just keep the testimonial bits on the prose page
- create a page for non open-source content licensed for use on OLPC
- suggest that the various country groups maintain pages with a list of software that has been localised in one of their languages
- create a category for general purpose open source software that has been adapted to the OLPC. This covers stuff like AbiWord and Evince.
-- 20:53, 7 July 2006 user:Memracom