Mini-beta and redesign of Crossforum Theatre

[Michael Allan]

(see bottom for proposed revision to plan)

Thomas von der Elbe said:
> Beautiful! Finally the thing, which really binds all the parts
> together.  Imagining it is one thing, but to see it in action and
> play around with it is a lot more (at least for me). :-)

Same here.  I think we have a good base.  We can go almost anywhere
with this.  It gives us license to dream.  :-)

> One thing: on a position page imo the name of the author is not
> prominent enough. It is even hard to tell, that you are on a
> position page and not the poll-page. If the author has no account in
> the wiki it is almost invisible. And if he has one, he only appears
> in a very small size below the page-title. Therefore the username in
> the top-right of the new trackbar gets the attention but it is
> sometimes the name of another author (to whom the current draft is
> compared to) ---> confusion. Now how to have a title in the track?
> The poll-name shows up there already. How to make it a really clear
> title like: Poll: G/p/sandbox | Author: ThomasvonderElbe? And maybe
> even further to have it say in votespace: Poll: G/p/sandbox |
> Votespace? And in the diffbridge: Poll: G/p/sandbox | Diff-Bridge?

Maybe you were looking at a page that changes the display title?
http://zelea.com/w/Property:Display_title

I don't think we should do that any more.  It's confusing, as you say.
Here's a position draft that doesn't change the display title.  It
clearly belongs to Frank-FlippityNet and the poll is Sys/p/sandbox:
http://zelea.com/w/User:Frank-FlippityNet/Sys/p/sandbox

> > I think we need pure graphics.  If we could distill the essense of
> > this http://zelea.com/project/votorola/s/gwt/scene/vote/_/3.xht
> > and transfer it to the drafts and difference bridge, that would be
> > ideal.  The overlapping radials make beautiful use of space.  One
> > glance and you know where you are in the tree.
> 
> But how could you in a minivotespace without names, know who is who?
> Just by the position of the symbol in the circle? I don't think this
> is clear enough. Or what do you have in mind?

There's a lot of tension in the space requirements.  Maybe it's better
to let that tension pull the visual into two pieces, each of which can
then use space as it wants to:

 (1) A votespace track where space is squeezed into a minimal,
     horizontal view (track).  It sits more-or-less permanently on
     stage on all pages.

 (2) A dedicated votespace view that makes maximum use of space.  It
     appears on stage only when requested.  It obscures most of the
     scene (but not quite all) becoming itself a temporary scene.

We could defer (2).  It's partly coded already, but is difficult to
finish and not actually needed for the mini-beta.  We would then be
free to go gangbusters on (1), which is relatively easy to code, and
which we need ASAP.  So I was thinking of a revised plan:


REVISED PLAN FOR MINI-BETA  (proposal)
--------------------------

The development target is still ease of use for small-group consensus-
-making practices of up to 20 participants.  The basic stage and link
track (a) are already deployed.  Here are the main tasks remaining:

 (b) Votespace track.

     A navigable view of votespace.  It focuses on a single actor,
     showing his/her voters, co-voters and candidate.  The focus is
     shiftable in single steps (up, down and across) to anywhere in
     the forest.  This track replaces the navigation controls of the
     in-draft bridge footings and also appears on non-draft pages.

         (i) Mock up votespace and pollspace tracks.

             The pollspace track is needed for (iv), where otherwise
             the link and votespace tracks would be non-functional.

        (ii) Code the votespace track.

       (iii) Code the pollspace track.

        (iv) Stage the home page.

             This is for purposes of showing off.

         (v) Stage the mailing list archive.

             This will be neat.  The stage will parse each message and
             the tracks will light up accordingly.  There is always an
             actor; there is sometimes a poll and/or difference.

     With this, the mini-beta will be ready for seasoned alpha users,
     its look and feel more-or-less final.  The remaining tasks are
     primarily for the benefit of new users.

 (c) Automate the creation of initial position drafts.

     This is what happens when the user clicks on "My draft" and
     there's no actual draft.  We'll query the user for creation
     parameters and confirmation of intent.  We'll include an option
     to cast an initial vote (because the drafting tools are optimized
     for co-voter collaboration).  Then we'll place the user on a
     newly created draft page with initial content, ready to go.

 (d) Single sign-on.

     Implement a single login that covers all servers (pollwiki,
     vote-servers, etc.) of the local network cluster.


What do you guys think?

-- 
Michael Allan

Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
http://zelea.com/