[p2pu-dev] Webcraft Technical Priorities (formerly) SoSI News

[Joe Corneli]

> To suggest that the capability to embed content would be confusing is
> difficult for me to comprehend

The thing is, done right, this doesn't need to be an Either/Or debate,
but can again be Both/And.  A simple toggle could move a user between
"Show external content as an embedded resource" or "Show external
content as annotated links".  I didn't mention that before because it
would take a non-trivial amount of work to implement, but it's a
prefectly reasonable and do-able idea.  The general point is that we
have too many Either/Or debates, and suggestions like the one I just
made seem to have "no place" in a workflow based on Either/Or.

> The specific issue of embedding an etherpads is only complicated by the fact
> that it was designed to be a standalone page with an integral chat console
> which might make an etherpad too wide to be embedded gracefully.

More recent versions of Etherpad ship with "nano" and "micro" themes
perfect for embedding.  Stay tuned for even more useful improvements.

> The experience would only improve if the left sidebar were did not take up
> 33% of the page. I raised this specific issue to this list and it fell on
> deaf ears.

Yet another issue that can be resolved in a Both/And fashion (let
users choose between different themes, or include a toggle button that
hides the sidebar - not unlike the standard Etherpad theme,
incidentally).

> Your average user is never going report a problem using a tracker. More
> technical or motivates users should convene a short course to introduce the
> tool and share best practices if you want a group larger than the core dev
> team using it.

And, more generally, until the social platform receives upgrades (in
terms of clarifying workflow, ways to be involved, ways to deliver
tutorials like the one Dan outlined just above, etc.), "average users"
will not be in a good position to peer produce the P2PU resource.