[NCUC E-team] SIGs

[Pranesh Prakash]

Joly MacFie <joly at punkcast.com> [2014-01-16 08:35:23 -0500]:
> The biggest loss in my mind in the transition from the ning was the
> deletion of the social networking function that allowed members to
> create pages and create/join groups. 

XMPP allows any user to create ad-hoc chatrooms that others can join (in essence groups).

> You’ll note for example the
> recent thread on ncuc-discuss about Interest Groups, in which several
> African colleagues said they’d like to join an IG on IG4D.  We have no
> means now to just create groups for people who want to work together
> on issues, and no way for members to say “here’s me.”  I don’t know if
> there’s anything that can be done about that, but would like to hear
> from folks who are site enabled.  And if the answer is nothing, then
> alternatives to consider…
> 
> Surely it would not to be hard to kick up a mailman list and a homepage on
> the site. SIG admins could get "contributor" rights on the WordPress and
> perhaps a category?

Mailing lists and indicating them on the website both require admin intervention but it is better for threaded asynchronous conversations.  I think this should also be done.

XMPP chatrooms (i.e., MUCs) don't require admin intervention and are better for unthreaded (synchronous and asynchronous) conversations.  Advertising SIGs internally is simple.  Advertising to the public can be automated by making the chat logs public.  And if we want, we could enable the public (non-NCUC members) join SIG chatrooms too.  But I'm not sure that is a good idea.

-- 
Pranesh Prakash
Policy Director, Centre for Internet and Society
T: +91 80 40926283 | W: http://cis-india.org
-------------------
Access to Knowledge Fellow, Information Society Project, Yale Law School
M: +1 520 314 7147 | W: http://yaleisp.org
PGP ID: 0x1D5C5F07 | Twitter: https://twitter.com/pranesh_prakash
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