FreeCAD on the web

Have some feature requests, feedback, cool stuff to share, or want to know where FreeCAD is going? This is the place.
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triplus
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by triplus »

In addition to social media coverage this is how mature FOSS projects do it:

http://planet.freecadweb.org/
drei wrote:I do admit I abandoned the idea of the 0.16 release video due to hardware issues, and the video no longer had the original intent after some discussion in the forum. And for that I do apologize.
Finally having proper and official FreeCAD release video done by engaging community would for sure represent a step forward and would likely contribute to more news spread about FreeCAD release around the internet.
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NormandC
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by NormandC »

microelly2 wrote:I use google++.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities ... 2333474646

That community grows 100 persons per month in the last 2 years.
It's fast and easy to use in connection with youtube.
it's a simple way to route people to the freecad youtube video channels and a lot of active freecad forum users are there too.
Unfortunately none of the developers apart from yourself is active on it. Many times I'm forced to tell people to go ask questions on the forum since no one has an answer on the G+ community. Latest example I have yet to respond to (posted 3 days ago): https://plus.google.com/+olivermarks/posts/Syv7cLyDT1H

AFAIK the FreeCAD community was basically abandoned by its owner and left in my care. I go there every few days and there are quite often a few spam posts I need to manage. I don't know if there are other moderators besides me.

Google+ never achieved the goal of competing with Facebook. And Google is known to close down projects they don't feel have succeeded. So, how long will G+ continue before Google finally decides to pull the plug? More and more I am convinced we should not dedicate energy to platforms we have no control on. I believe a Diaspora* presence (or some other libre and distributed social media) would be more suited to FreeCAD's open source philosophy.
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microelly2
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by microelly2 »

NormandC wrote:
AFAIK the FreeCAD community was basically abandoned by its owner and left in my care. I go there every few days and there are quite often a few spam posts I need to manage. I don't know if there are other moderators besides me.
Yes, there are only 3 moderators. And the job is well done. If the job is to time consuming for you I can support too. Let me know.
Google+ never achieved the goal of competing with Facebook. And Google is known to close down projects they don't feel have succeeded. So, how long will G+ continue before Google finally decides to pull the plug?
Google+ is for me a good news ticker with a lot of active groups on areas I'm interested in.

When G+ will stop sometime I only have to change the newspaper. Nothing is older then the message of yesterday. So I'm not worry about the future of any social network platform. Every one has only restricted time, we cannot read all, but getting every day a couple of new ideas will influence our thinking. so we can dance untill the the morning breaks the party. If the caravan moves away we can follow.
As you say sometimes people ask for help in the google+ group, we have to redirect them again and again to the forum. This is the culture of the FreeCAD community. Other may work different. Python has many supporters, OpenCV mostly shows news and the support is done in an extra forum similar FreeCAD.
My idea is to have a photo or a short clip for upcomming functionalities or reusable ideas. Once seen we will remind when the time comes. Then will still have to read the docs and the sources to follow the imporvement prcess fo a feature we are interested in.

triplus wrote:Finally having proper and official FreeCAD release video done by engaging community would for sure represent a step forward and would likely contribute to more news spread about FreeCAD release around the internet.
What kind of video this should be? Do you think about something like the demo reels of blender? Is there an idea of a screenplay or a storyboard?
triplus
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by triplus »

microelly2 wrote:What kind of video this should be? Do you think about something like the demo reels of blender? Is there an idea of a screenplay or a storyboard?
It should be official and made by engaging community. Everything else comes down to sensible opinion management. But it should be started months before FreeCAD 0.17 will be released. Likely it shouldn't be too long and to detailed. It's about having some official promotional material by the time when FreeCAD 0.17 is out. And after it is about using that material for promotion.

Without such material it's harder for FreeCAD to gain presence on the web when new version is made. And we talked about how some developers have their blogs and that there actually is some FreeCAD related content generated on the web. But without having something like planet for FreeCAD this is scattered around the web and likely small margin of potential users actually see the work done. We can't actually expect news related sites to search the web to find some FreeCAD related content can we? Typing in http://planet.freecadweb.org/ should suffice.
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sgrogan
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by sgrogan »

yorik wrote:So I think the first thing required would be all of us to produce more content (for ex. on the feature announcements). That would already solve 90% of the problem. Then making it a blog of some sort would be easy.
I think we have the content. It's a matter of filtering it. We need a "press agent" volunteer. I don't know how many people follow this thread:viewtopic.php?f=14&t=10969 As Yorik has mentioned many times before "It all happens on the Forum" it addresses most of what has been discussed. Most, but not all of the content is drawn from the forum.

How to best broadcast this I don't really know. IMHO part of the strategy (the major part) should be to draw people here.
@joyas if you see this what do you think?
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triplus
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by triplus »

sgrogan wrote:I think we have the content. It's a matter of filtering it. We need a "press agent" volunteer. I don't know how many people follow this thread:viewtopic.php?f=14&t=10969 As Yorik has mentioned many times before "It all happens on the Forum" it addresses most of what has been discussed. Most, but not all of the content is drawn from the forum.
Yes i feel that we established we do have FreeCAD related content scattered around the web. As for the content from this forum i feel it was always here and i never seen any news sites referencing forums. Not just when talking about FreeCAD but in general. As for volunteer i feel that we already have that. FreeCAD development related blog writers and social media "administrators". What is missing is bringing all this together. Now as on how to do that i already mentioned how mature FOSS projects do it. Here is one example:

http://planet.ubuntu.com/

Therefore the FreeCAD content that is already made can be easily accessed and after social media comes into the play. Such content as it is easy to find is therefore reblogged, retweeted and shared on social media sites. Or occasionally reused on some news site. Therefore currently this bridge between FreeCAD related content that does get generated and social media exposure is missing. FreeCAD forum isn't that bridge to bring it together as if it would be that would already happen in the past.
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sgrogan
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by sgrogan »

triplus wrote:Everything else comes down to sensible opinion management.
;)
I don't disagree on principle But
http://planet.blender.com/
http://planet.gimp.com/
http://planet.inkscape.org/
.planet is not utopia, if I understand correctly it's an aggregation of feeds. Feeds from where?
If @drei or someone else want's to take a swing at it I'm all for it. Maybe it's time for "try it and see"?
a-freecd-manual wouldn't have been so successful as a totally open collaboration. Both approaches are valid.
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triplus
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by triplus »

sgrogan wrote:
triplus wrote:Everything else comes down to sensible opinion management.
;)
I don't disagree on principle But
No that opinion management remark was about situations that may occur if you engage community in creating official release video. That is different users to see it differently on how it should be done. But then again this things do usually get sorted out if the time frame is "few months". But forget about things like the call to make official release video by engaging community as i was here long enough to know it won't happen any time soon. ;) The only such move i can remember ATM was made for screen shots and all sorts of occasional contributions are made there.
http://planet.blender.com/
http://planet.gimp.com/
http://planet.inkscape.org/
.planet is not utopia, if I understand correctly it's an aggregation of feeds. Feeds from where?
Well yes that is the good part about it and you asked the correct question. From where exactly indeed. As currently nobody really knows where to look for. But then again if we only look for participants in this debate @microelly2 and Yorik do write blog. I am sure there are others.

Some more reference on how it is done:
https://planet.mozilla.org/
http://planet.kernel.org/
http://planet.debian.org/
http://www.planetplanet.org/
If @drei or someone else want's to take a swing at it I'm all for it. Maybe it's time for "try it and see"?
Yes but at what? Is the problem we don't have content or is the problem content isn't easily accessed and nobody really knows where to look for?
a-freecd-manual wouldn't have been so successful as a totally open collaboration. Both approaches are valid.
I just read somebody made 138 comments and that i guess could take some serious opinion management.

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=16534&start=40#p136072

But i guess that is a good thing in the end? ;) There is absolutely nothing wrong when taking individual approach but there should be more official FreeCAD community engagement projects out there. I will conclude this debate from my side for now and focus on what this thread is about and what i think we learned from the debate:

Content is being made but there is a missing link between the content and greater social media exposure.
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by cox »

I know I am regurgitating old wishes here, but when it comes to filtering content from the forum to go to a planet blog, a up-voting or(suggest for publish) button on forum posts could help identify candidate posts. This could eg. be automated where the top post goes in every day.

Button/tags that would be valuable for me is:
Suggest for publish.
High educational value.
etc.
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NormandC
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by NormandC »

phpBB does not support this natively. Yorik has said adding plugins to it is a nightmare so...

Maybe we should consider moving to a more modern forum platform (we've talked of Discourse in the past) but that is another debate that comes with a whole new set of problems...
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