[Zope-PTK] RE: [squishdot] SquishdotPTK?

[Dan Pierson]

One of the first things that I did with Squishdot was make ZClasses for
Authors and Categories (Subjects).  These classes were carefully designed
(spelled "kludged") to hook into both Squishdot and the email list server we
were using.  IMHO, both of these parts of Squishdot are fundamentally
broken, especially author/email.  You can't change anything without breaking
the relationship to all previous postings.

What I think should be done:

Author should be a reference to an author instance.  Author name and email
should be attributes of this instance.  PTK Members are perfect fits for
this.

Subject should also be generalized.  For instance, it should NOT be the
literal subject text (what if you'd rather see that in German?  what happens
when it changes as the site changes?)  While I currently have it as a
reference to an instance of a subject class (that could be improved a lot),
that may not be the best solution.  I think that this may be just what
ZTopics were intended for.  Note that the reason that Mitchel didn't think
that they were ready for the PTK was that he hadn't figured out a way to
make it easy enough for users to create them.  SquishdotPTK use of them
would be based on a set of ones defined by the site admin, so this isn't an
issue.

I like the idea of Squishdot supporting folder like views of postings based
on sets of one or more subjects (e.g. based on a ZTopic), but I don't like
the idea of this being the only (or even the default) way of looking at
things.  For example, at http://www.control.com/ our per-topic views are a
mixture of Squishdot postings and other content but the center of our main
page is pure Squishdot content of the latest postings.

I agree that a Slashdot level moderation system is highly desireable and
have been planning to have one for some time.  Real Membership is one of the
prerequisites to implementing one -- that's one of the reasons I got
involved in the PTK work when I did.

Dan Pierson, Control.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lance [mailto:odysseus@acedsl.com]
> Sent: Monday, July 03, 2000 2:52 PM
> To: squishdot@egroups.com
> Subject: Re: [squishdot] SquishdotPTK?
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, 03 Jul 2000 09:24:21 Chris Withers wrote:
> > Lance wrote:
> > > Need any help?
> > 
> > I'll never turn down the offer of help, but I'm not quite 
> sure how it
> > could be used right now. If you have any ideas, let me know...
> 
> I have a few ideas, things I would like to have in a Next 
> Generation Squishdot
> (Swishdot?). I think the Subjects concept should be extended, 
> call them
> SquishSections, behaving as Folderish objects within a 
> SquishSite, which would
> contain the SquishItems. There would be a default 
> SquishSection, 'General',
> and
> the user would have the option of adding more. The 
> SquishSection would store
> the number of articles, etc., and each section would be able 
> to have it's own
> manager.
> 
> I think a complex moderation system, perhaps similar to 
> Slashdot, should be
> put
> into place, with each comment having a moderation_level attribute.
> 
> I haven't looked closely at the PTK yet, last time I checked 
> on it, snapshot
> 0.7.1, it looked like they were still changing the API. I'll 
> get a cvs copy
> tonight and take a look at it though. I was starting to build 
> Squishdot from
> ZClasses ( didn't get very far yet). I'm fairly new to 
> python, still trying to
> adjust to it from a Perl state of mind!, but it's coming 
> along nicely. 
> 
> What are your thoughts on a NG Squishdot?
> 
> -Lance
> 
> 
> 
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