M
M Griffin
In reply to Gilles Allard and Ken E: With a wiki, you don't have a "secretary". That goes against the whole concept of it. You would have an "administrator" for the wiki, but that would just be whoever controls the server. If it was hosted on ControlWiki, then the administrator would be whoever it is that controls that server. The administrator would hand out passwords, but have no further involvement.
One of the direct participants would tell the administrator who to add or who to remove, and the administrator would just ignore everyone else. Since Ken E seems to be the direct participant with the most interest in this, I think he should be the one in charge of that. As for me, I'm just a bystander who is offering a bit of advice that can be taken or ignored as you wish.
Those people who have passwords would then just edit the contents of the wiki however they wanted to. The idea of a wiki is that you have a group of people who trust each other not to vandalize the contents. Then you just go in and write something and say to the rest of the people "what do you think about this"? Someone else could write an alternate version and that could be debated.
I used this process with several other people to develop a communications protocol. If all you do is send disjointed e-mails back and forth, then things can get very confusing. Instead, you just use the wiki to write what you mean, and let the others edit it or write alternative passages. You can then use e-mails to ask things like "do you agree with section 4 now?". It's rather like having a meeting where you are drawing on a blackboard. Things change continuously, but everyone is working from the same version. It sounds chaotic, but it works quite well in practise.
Another way of doing this is Google Docs. That isn't a wiki, but it does allow collaborative editing of documents. If you're really interested in that, just go and sign up (it's free) and start doing it.
The way the Free/Open Source Software world works is that while you do talk about things, it's the people who come up with the actual code (or drawings) that get the final say on things. It's a lot easier to debate the merits of a design once there is something actually down on paper to talk about. A lot of problems only show up once you start to design the details. So, Curt draws something and says "this is what I think", and Ken draws something else and says "this shows why my idea is better". And since I didn't come up with anything, you can pretty much ignore what I said if you don't agree with it. If the peanut gallery doesn't like the way things are being run, then they're welcome to take what is there and go out and come up with their own design. There's no vendor lock-in, so time will tell in the end who was right.
You can think of it as the ultimate free market in ideas versus the sort of top down political control that prevails in monopolised markets. You compete and cooperate simultaneously, but the best ideas are supposed to win on their own merits rather than through market manipulation and legal trickery.
So, what I think you are looking for is:
1) Collaborative document editing - either a wiki or Google Docs. You probably only need this during the period of the most intensive development though.
2) Some place to host files such as drawings, etc. while you are working on them. You want to make sure that you are using the most recent version as opposed to hoping that what you found in your mailbox is up to date.
3) You're going to need someplace that people can eventually download the drawings and documentation *from* when you are done.
4) You are going to need a web site to promote the project. That would be a page that explains what the project is and what it offers people. If someone takes one of your designs and does a Google search for it, they should be able to come up with that web site.
5) You will need some means where people whom you have never heard of can contact you if they have questions or problems.
6) All of the above should be free, as I don't think there is a budget for this.
The above is how a software project is operated. However, I don't see why a hardware design project couldn't operate the same way. In the end, it's all just digital files. There are lots of free code hosting services, but Sourceforge is the only one that I know of that also provides a web site.
One of the direct participants would tell the administrator who to add or who to remove, and the administrator would just ignore everyone else. Since Ken E seems to be the direct participant with the most interest in this, I think he should be the one in charge of that. As for me, I'm just a bystander who is offering a bit of advice that can be taken or ignored as you wish.
Those people who have passwords would then just edit the contents of the wiki however they wanted to. The idea of a wiki is that you have a group of people who trust each other not to vandalize the contents. Then you just go in and write something and say to the rest of the people "what do you think about this"? Someone else could write an alternate version and that could be debated.
I used this process with several other people to develop a communications protocol. If all you do is send disjointed e-mails back and forth, then things can get very confusing. Instead, you just use the wiki to write what you mean, and let the others edit it or write alternative passages. You can then use e-mails to ask things like "do you agree with section 4 now?". It's rather like having a meeting where you are drawing on a blackboard. Things change continuously, but everyone is working from the same version. It sounds chaotic, but it works quite well in practise.
Another way of doing this is Google Docs. That isn't a wiki, but it does allow collaborative editing of documents. If you're really interested in that, just go and sign up (it's free) and start doing it.
The way the Free/Open Source Software world works is that while you do talk about things, it's the people who come up with the actual code (or drawings) that get the final say on things. It's a lot easier to debate the merits of a design once there is something actually down on paper to talk about. A lot of problems only show up once you start to design the details. So, Curt draws something and says "this is what I think", and Ken draws something else and says "this shows why my idea is better". And since I didn't come up with anything, you can pretty much ignore what I said if you don't agree with it. If the peanut gallery doesn't like the way things are being run, then they're welcome to take what is there and go out and come up with their own design. There's no vendor lock-in, so time will tell in the end who was right.
You can think of it as the ultimate free market in ideas versus the sort of top down political control that prevails in monopolised markets. You compete and cooperate simultaneously, but the best ideas are supposed to win on their own merits rather than through market manipulation and legal trickery.
So, what I think you are looking for is:
1) Collaborative document editing - either a wiki or Google Docs. You probably only need this during the period of the most intensive development though.
2) Some place to host files such as drawings, etc. while you are working on them. You want to make sure that you are using the most recent version as opposed to hoping that what you found in your mailbox is up to date.
3) You're going to need someplace that people can eventually download the drawings and documentation *from* when you are done.
4) You are going to need a web site to promote the project. That would be a page that explains what the project is and what it offers people. If someone takes one of your designs and does a Google search for it, they should be able to come up with that web site.
5) You will need some means where people whom you have never heard of can contact you if they have questions or problems.
6) All of the above should be free, as I don't think there is a budget for this.
The above is how a software project is operated. However, I don't see why a hardware design project couldn't operate the same way. In the end, it's all just digital files. There are lots of free code hosting services, but Sourceforge is the only one that I know of that also provides a web site.