Mini-beta development plan

[Michael Allan]

Dear all,

The attempt to initiate alpha trials + vote mirroring (Open Voting
Network) in Occupy Wall Street is dying in the NYCGA.  If it weren't
for Stephen Coffman's generous help, it would be completely lifeless
already.  As it stands, I doubt it can survive past January 19, which
is the deadline to arrange on-ground meetings in New York as required
under the new NYCGA rules.

So I want to propose another plan.  This one is centered on Votorola
in the short term:

  1. Code a mini-beta.

     The development target is ease of use for small-group
     consensus-making practices of up to 20 participants.  Here are
     the main tasks:

     a) Place the Crossforum Theatre toolbar as a kind of common
        dashboard atop all primary service/tools and pages:

          * Difference bridge: (as it already is)
            http://zelea.com:8080/v/w/D?a=5208&b=5206
          * Votespace:
            http://zelea.com:8080/v/w/Votespace?p=G!p!govn&u=Mike-ZeleaCom
          * Pollwiki: http://zelea.com/w/User:Mike-ZeleaCom/G/p/govn
            
        The toolbar will carry the common controls, especially those
        for navigation among the various service/tool pages.  There'll
        be no actual Crossforum Theatre app anywhere, of course,
        because it's not finished, and also because it's not needed
        for small groups.  We'll pull it in later, as needed.

     b) Improve the navigation controls for the bridge footings.
        http://zelea.com/w/User:Test-bg-ZeleaCom/G/p/sandbox
        (see the doo-hickies floating near top left)

        A bunch of minor changes are needed, and one important one:
        add co-voters.  Differencing among co-voters is very common.

     c) Automate the creation of initial position drafts.

        This is what happens when the user clicks on "My position" or
        whatever and there's no actual position.  We'll query the user
        for creation parameters and confirmation of intent.  We'll
        include an option to cast an initial vote (so there's no need
        to mess with a pin-up in that case).  Then we'll place the
        user on the newly created draft page, with initial content,
        etc, ready to go.

     d) Single sign-on.

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

        This is left either for last, or for another developer to take
        up in parallel.

  2. Conduct alpha trials using the mini-beta release.

     Note these will be alpha trials, not beta.  A core group of
     superusers will push the practice beyond the small-group
     boundaries of the mini-beta, and thus push the development of
     Crossforum Theatre. http://zelea.com/project/votorola/a/xf/

     So Crossforum Theatre remains the platform on which the full beta
     will unfold.  We won't get there in a single leap, that's all.

Please let me know if this conflicts with anyone else's plans. I can't
start for roughly a week, so I'm still open to alternatives.

-- 
Michael Allan

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