Meta-Tool

[Martin Häcker]

Hi there,

> First off, we're nowhere near a common registration protocol. While I
> very much like Mike's attempt to define a common vocabulary and a set
> of requirements, this actually just shows how much more work needs to
> be done here (and, I feel, that we shouldn't over-engineer this in a
> first iteration).

You know what? I would just go with using plain OpenID at the start and just restrict the voting engines to just accept OpenIDs from specific servers (i.e. in the Pirateparty case just openid.piratenpartei.de).

Then later in the next iteration add more data to the open id authentication. That to me would be the simplest thing that could possibly work.

> Judging from yesterday's minutes of the Berlin LD
> squad, they seem to have put any OpenID work on ice pending the
> evaluation of LF in Berlin. This essentially means that we'll not have
> an concrete use case for registration in a little while. Setback.

I'd like to point out that we are short on people with Experience with OpenID - so if somebody steps up and helps us get this off the ground, we would very much appreciate this.

> As for your proposal for creating a Grand Unifying Platform, I think
> you should really start to consider the difficulties involved in this.
> Let me again state that I do appreciate the idea, but I don't want to
> build the framework before knowing what kind of LD does actually work.
> At this stage, none of the platforms involved have yet gathered and
> maintained any social momentum.

:-) Hey, you darn realist you.

I think it is pretty important to have a vision as to where we want to go. Of course we will try to build carrier aircraft that can fly first - but it really helps to share a vision of where we ultimately want to fly - so I wouldn't be too negative about Thomas. I for one completely share his vision. (Even though I'm also realist enough to know that it probably won't come to pass for quite some time, and that in the meantime I will very much be cautious of everybody who tells me that he already did it.)

Its like this: You need a vision to guide you - best if it is one that you know you cannot yet reach.

Then as  soon as it suddenly becomes possible, you need to search for a new one. :)

Thats how you can motivate people like me to invest their (sadly much to sparse) free time.

> This is all just meant to explain why I think we should focus on a
> shared discussion on individual technical issues, but why I won't
> invest any resources into a Grand Unified Platform while I don't see
> an actual use case (i.e. a likely adoption by many groups).

One use case I like and that could be very achievable is to think about exporting hot topics and topics currently in deadline so those could be aggregated elsewhere.

That is something we could pretty much standardize just now (RSS for example should be good enough for this and now).

One little peace of the vision at the time. :)

Best Regards,
Martin