Filed under: Community Building
Jon Stahl’s Journal talks about a new tool for community building in How Plone Can Become Kick-Ass Community Collaboration Software. Plone is an open-source CMS (Content Management System). In a lengthy analysis, Stahl focuses on key community building features:
Blogging
Aggregation of RSS feeds, with the aggregated items available as first-class content objects.
Integration of “traditional” online community tools content such as mailing list archives, etc.
Discussion Forums
Tagging content
Publishing content out to “social software” services such as upcoming.org, flickr.com, del.icio.us, commontimes.org, etc. Blogging
Aggregation of RSS feeds, with the aggregated items available as first-class content objects.
Integration of “traditional” online community tools content such as mailing list archives, etc.
Discussion Forums
Tagging content
Publishing content out to “social software” services such as upcoming.org, flickr.com, del.icio.us, commontimes.org, etc.
Stahl’s conclusion is that Plone has great long-term community development potential, but apps for the areas listed above are not sufficiently powerful to constitute a robust community tool.
The gradual integration of software seems likely to continue. Blogs are turning into CMS tools. Discussion forums are adding portals, CMS functions, and blog tools. CMS tools are adding forums and blogs. Much of this activity is in the form of third party hacks, ports, and plugins. It’s easy to imagine that in the open source world as well as commercial software big mashups of web publishing and community software will develop. So, keep your eye not just on Plone, but on Mambo, Joomla, vBulletin, etc. Someone will get it right, sooner rather than later.
Add this post to: del.icio.us - Digg it - Stumble it - Furl - Yahoo MyWeb No Comments so far
Leave a comment
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>