"DFEY Central"

[Robert Leverington]

Hello all,

Since we have begun founding the south east branch of DFEY it has become
clearer and clearer that we need a phrase to distinguish between
individual branches of the organisation (e.g. North West, South East)
and the organisation as a whole (North West and South East).  Generally
this would be used to encompass things shared by all branches, such as
the logo and main website (www.dfey.org).

For the time being I have used the phrase "DFEY Central", however it is
believed by me and others that this could be considered somewhat
ambiguous (e.g. it could refer to the Midlands branch, if one were to
exist).

Does anybody have suggestions for alternative phrases to refer to "DFEY
Central"?

Ideas I have are:
    - "Central"
    - "Meta"
Although both of these seem somewhat undesirable.

Robert

[x_rob]

Perhaps just DFEY or DFEY-UK or something like that?

2009/7/13 Robert Leverington <[hidden email]>

Hello all,

Since we have begun founding the south east branch of DFEY it has become
clearer and clearer that we need a phrase to distinguish between
individual branches of the organisation (e.g. North West, South East)
and the organisation as a whole (North West and South East).  Generally
this would be used to encompass things shared by all branches, such as
the logo and main website (www.dfey.org).

For the time being I have used the phrase "DFEY Central", however it is
believed by me and others that this could be considered somewhat
ambiguous (e.g. it could refer to the Midlands branch, if one were to
exist).

Does anybody have suggestions for alternative phrases to refer to "DFEY
Central"?

Ideas I have are:
   - "Central"
   - "Meta"
Although both of these seem somewhat undesirable.

Robert

[Robert Leverington]

On 2009-07-13, Rob Barry wrote:
> Perhaps just DFEY or DFEY-UK or something like that?

Thank you.  These are something to consider, although it would be nice
to have a phrase that can be used to refer to "DFEY" internally without
the acronym "DFEY" on it.

Robert

[Paul Sutton]

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Robert Leverington wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> Since we have begun founding the south east branch of DFEY it has become
> clearer and clearer that we need a phrase to distinguish between
> individual branches of the organisation (e.g. North West, South East)
> and the organisation as a whole (North West and South East).  Generally
> this would be used to encompass things shared by all branches, such as
> the logo and main website (www.dfey.org).
>
> For the time being I have used the phrase "DFEY Central", however it is
> believed by me and others that this could be considered somewhat
> ambiguous (e.g. it could refer to the Midlands branch, if one were to
> exist).
>
> Does anybody have suggestions for alternative phrases to refer to "DFEY
> Central"?
>
> Ideas I have are:
>     - "Central"
>     - "Meta"
> Although both of these seem somewhat undesirable.
>
> Robert
>
>

I did a quick google the following may be useful here

http://www.picturesofengland.com/mapofengland/regions.html

Could be a starting point.

Paul

- --
Paul Sutton
www.zleap.net
Support Open and ISO standard file formats ISO 26300 odf
http://www.odfalliance.org
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[Tim Dobson-2]

Rob Barry wrote:
> Perhaps just DFEY or DFEY-UK or something like that?

Something like this?

[x_rob]

What i have to ask is why we need two seperate Wikis for what is essentially just one group? Why don't we just have one central wiki called the "DFEY Wiki" and then have NW and SE pages respectively. As it stands today all I can really see is quite a bit of duplication. You also run the risk of having a great page on one wiki just completely hidden from people unless they visit both the NW and SE wikis. They web isn't about geographically segregating people.

[Richard Thompson-2]

2009/7/13 Rob Barry <[hidden email]>

What i have to ask is why we need two seperate Wikis for what is essentially just one group? Why don't we just have one central wiki called the "DFEY Wiki" and then have NW and SE pages respectively. As it stands today all I can really see is quite a bit of duplication. You also run the risk of having a great page on one wiki just completely hidden from people unless they visit both the NW and SE wikis. They web isn't about geographically segregating people.

I agree with Rob here, I don't see the point in two separate wiki's

I'm just gonna dump some brief summaries from discussion in #dfey here:

We should have a simple main page which would be written in simple HTML, this could have links to the wiki and a blog. The SMP (Simple Main Page) would just contain a brief statement about who we (DFEY) are and what we do

People thought it would be better to integrate the two wiki's NW and SE. One idea involved making SE wiki the "DFEY" wiki, and gradually integrating bits from the NW wiki, as it appears the NW wiki is a bit of mess.

It was suggested that we should scrap sub-domains such as "wiki.dfey.org" for a simple directory structure "dfey.org/wiki" in order to make things simpler.

Folks weren't certain what to build the blog with, suggestions were: OpenBlag, Wordpress.
It was felt Drupal was a bit overkill for our requirements.

--
Richard Thompson

[Chris Hilliard]

Seconded - we need to form a united front, and thus a centralised site
makes sense - maybe with the structure controlled by annual general
meetings of voted people from each reagon written into some kind of
formal constitution to keep the groups from fracturing too much over
time and weakening our position, and it would also keep the group up
to date.

A constitution though, should be voted on or maybe created on a wiki
for all to edit, but it may need to be started off by someone.

thanks,
badspyro


On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 2:36 PM, Rob Barry<[hidden email]> wrote:
> What i have to ask is why we need two seperate Wikis for what is essentially
> just one group? Why don't we just have one central wiki called the "DFEY
> Wiki" and then have NW and SE pages respectively. As it stands today all I
> can really see is quite a bit of duplication. You also run the risk of
> having a great page on one wiki just completely hidden from people unless
> they visit both the NW and SE wikis. They web isn't about geographically
> segregating people.
>

[x_rob]

2009/7/13 Chris Hilliard <[hidden email]>

Seconded - we need to form a united front, and thus a centralised site
makes sense - maybe with the structure controlled by annual general
meetings of voted people from each reagon written into some kind of
formal constitution to keep the groups from fracturing too much over
time and weakening our position, and it would also keep the group up
to date.

A constitution though, should be voted on or maybe created on a wiki
for all to edit, but it may need to be started off by someone.

I personally think a constitution is a bit much - I think we should play it by ear for the time being tbh :P Maybe if DFEY really gets going then it'd be time for formal structures like that. I can see why we wouldn't want a fractured group like that but I don't think it'll work providing a rigid structure right now before we know what it's going to look like in the near future.

[x_rob]

2009/7/13 Chris Hilliard <[hidden email]>

Seconded - we need to form a united front, and thus a centralised site
makes sense - maybe with the structure controlled by annual general
meetings of voted people from each reagon written into some kind of
formal constitution to keep the groups from fracturing too much over
time and weakening our position, and it would also keep the group up
to date.

A constitution though, should be voted on or maybe created on a wiki
for all to edit, but it may need to be started off by someone.

I personally think a constitution is a bit much - I think we should play it by ear for the time being tbh :P Maybe if DFEY really gets going then it'd be time for formal structures like that. I can see why we wouldn't want a fractured group like that but I don't think it'll work providing a rigid structure right now before we know what it's going to look like in the near future.

[Tim Dobson-2]

Richard Thompson wrote:
> I agree with Rob here, I don't see the point in two separate wiki's
>
> I'm just gonna dump some brief summaries from discussion in #dfey here:

thanks for the summary Richard,

I really appreciate it - sadly not even I can be omnipresent in all IRC
channels. ;)

I've got to run but I will be replying to this thread in detail later
this evening.

Tim

[Isabell Long]

On 13/07/2009, Tim Dobson <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Rob Barry wrote:
>> Perhaps just DFEY or DFEY-UK or something like that?
>
> Something like this?

Yes, I think that DFEY would be fine as a general name.  If we had
DFEY-UK then DFEY-NW  could possibly become DFEY-UK-NW which would be
strange.

Isabell.


--
Regards,
Isabell Long.  <[hidden email]>
[[User:Isabell121]] on all public Wikimedia projects.

[Tim Dobson-2]

Chris Hilliard wrote:
> Seconded - we need to form a united front, and thus a centralised site
> makes sense - maybe with the structure controlled by annual general
> meetings of voted people from each reagon written into some kind of
> formal constitution to keep the groups from fracturing too much over
> time and weakening our position, and it would also keep the group up
> to date.
>
> A constitution though, should be voted on or maybe created on a wiki
> for all to edit, but it may need to be started off by someone.

I think we are some way still from a constitution. I hope so anyway.

Currently, I think that having a formal structure would be completely
counter productive.

I have been thinking about this for a while with public sector funding
in mind and have come to the ultimate conclusion that it's not worth it.

Currently, our structure benefits from the lack of structure most of the
time. If we had finances, regular administration meetings, we wouldn't
be able to be as flexible and as light footed as we currently are.

I'm currently watc^C participating in the administration and running of
Manchester Free Software group - it is very easy, once a heavy
administrative load comes into existance, for key people to forget the
reasons that brought them together. Constitutions don't remedy this in
my experience; they just create a lot of admin for not much ultimate game.

With regards to public sector funding, DFEY has very little requirements
for money.

The backbone organisation needs mailing lists and a web presence - yes
the domains do cost money, but I'm confident that as long as someone
wants to keep the group running there will be someone willing to pay the
domain renewal fees. I doubt anyone thinks we should pay a web designer
to produce us a website etc. Mailing lists come free and (mostly) spam
free thanks to the FSF and IRC currently comes free thanks to freenode.

The DFEY-NW local group currently needs all that DFEY needs, but that is
  currently all covered. It also needs a place to meet, friendly to
 >18's, offpeak, in Manchester city centre with free wireless.
Currently, I know I can call on substance.coop & the BBC to provide us
with this sort of thing and there are several other people I would try
if that didn't work.

The DFEY-SE local group has identical need to DFEY-NW, the only
difference being that things have not progressed as far yet.

For things such as leaflets, posters, t-shirts and 'trips' to events
etc. I'm fairly certain there will always be someone willing to cover
the cost (within reason!) at least at the moment.

Once we have at least four local groups, this should be reconsidered,
perhaps a bit sooner, but for now, I really do think a formal structure
is undesirable.

Discuss.

Tim

[Tim Dobson-2]

Please see comment inline:

Richard Thompson wrote:
> I agree with Rob here, I don't see the point in two separate wiki's
>
> I'm just gonna dump some brief summaries from discussion in #dfey here:
>
> We should have a simple main page which would be written in simple HTML,
> this could have links to the wiki and a blog. The SMP (Simple Main Page)
> would just contain a brief statement about who we (DFEY) are and what we do

I do think a having a simple well thought out home page is key, I think

I'm not really sure why to have a blog though. Writing regular updates -
what would anyone write about - who would write it.. :S
If we have a blog with the detailed information, why have the simple
main page which is different?

> People thought it would be better to integrate the two wiki's NW and SE.
> One idea involved making SE wiki the "DFEY" wiki, and gradually
> integrating bits from the NW wiki, as it appears the NW wiki is a bit of
> mess.

Yeah, we can do that. I don't mind really.
Manchester Free Software group suffers from using the groups.fsf.org
infrastructure because one can't get an RSS feed of changes just to
their bit of the site; this could become problematic as things grow.

I would like to clarify that I do see the different local groups as
fundamentally being separate from each other. It is really cool if
people 'get it' and go out and meet other young people from other
geographical areas.

But if technically mind young people can meet other technically minded
young people from their area and chat to each other about how to do
stuff, freedom at school and technology in general etc then that's
probably a lot easier.

> It was suggested that we should scrap sub-domains such as "wiki.dfey.org
> <http://wiki.dfey.org>" for a simple directory structure "dfey.org/wiki
> <http://dfey.org/wiki>" in order to make things simpler.

Subdomains do offer a nice umbrella though to people who would like to
use the flag but want to do their own thing - I don't see this as being
unreasonable.

Personally, I was thinking that local groups, might like to have their
own individual web presence.. maybe using say *.dfey.org as the domain
for a shared VPS etc.

> Folks weren't certain what to build the blog with, suggestions were:
> OpenBlag, Wordpress.
> It was felt Drupal was a bit overkill for our requirements.

I know it's tempting to think of technical ways of implementing this (I
have several more suggestions!) but I think for the time being, it would
be much more beneficial to design a site around the content rather than
the content around the site.

I'm going to reply in a separate email along the lines of what I was
thinking of...

Cheers

Tim

[Robert Leverington]

On 2009-07-13, Tim Dobson wrote:

> Richard Thompson wrote:
>> People thought it would be better to integrate the two wiki's NW and
>> SE. One idea involved making SE wiki the "DFEY" wiki, and gradually  
>> integrating bits from the NW wiki, as it appears the NW wiki is a bit
>> of mess.
>
> Yeah, we can do that. I don't mind really.
> Manchester Free Software group suffers from using the groups.fsf.org  
> infrastructure because one can't get an RSS feed of changes just to  
> their bit of the site; this could become problematic as things grow.

MediaWiki has watchlists so you can see an RSS feed of changes to just
the pages you are interested in.

Robert

[Tim Dobson-2]

Robert Leverington wrote:
> On 2009-07-13, Tim Dobson wrote:
>> Manchester Free Software group suffers from using the groups.fsf.org  
>> infrastructure because one can't get an RSS feed of changes just to  
>> their bit of the site; this could become problematic as things grow.
>
> MediaWiki has watchlists so you can see an RSS feed of changes to just
> the pages you are interested in.

OK. Cool. I wasn't aware of this and I don't think they were either.
I'll pass that on!

Thanks Robert for clearing that one up!