Closed Bug 485560 Opened 16 years ago Closed 4 years ago

Create a dynamic map of communication channels in the community

Categories

(www.mozilla.org :: Information Architecture & UX, enhancement)

Product:
www.mozilla.org
Component:
Information Architecture & UX
Type:
enhancement
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED INACTIVE

People

(Reporter: davidwboswell, Unassigned)

Details

(Keywords: helpwanted)

To help people find out where interesting conversations are taking place we should create a dynamic map of various channels instead of just pointing people to irc.mozilla.org (for example).
Any early mockups? I know Chofmann had a few lists of channels on IRC and in Newsgroups on his people account. That was a rough first cut. Not sure it's best example to post here.
There's also context-aware IRC channels like on Devmo in the right column: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript
NB: Chofmann's mockups are very early and just a starting point. So, if you don't see your IRC channel in there, we'll have to figure out a way to get them all. I don't think listing them in this bug is best. But, creating a google doc or something might be good. Unless Chofmann is volunteering to maintain the list. Don't think he is...
Component: www.mozilla.org → Webdev
OS: Mac OS X → All
Product: Websites → mozilla.org
QA Contact: www-mozilla-org → webdev
Hardware: x86 → All
Version: unspecified → other
The mockups seem more like a list than a map. We may as well add an IRC link for each row at <http://www.mozilla.org/community/developer-forums.html>.
Great to see this conversation happening. Showing -- and visualizing -- the chaotic communications flow and communities that make up Mozilla seem like a pretty important role for mozilla.org. In terms of mockups, do we need someone to try something more visual: something that *shows* what's happening at a glance and also helps people navigate? A silly example would be a realtime animated tag cloud of important words being used in IRC and newsgroups. People could click on a tag, see all the newsgroups and channels using that tag, and then learn about things that interest them. My feeling is that Chris' list and Gavin's graphs go in this direction, but that we need something more visual. Not sure if there are people around who could mock this up now, or if this is a design challege we could put out there in a Lab-sy kind of way. But feels like we need some visual ideas to think this through.
Note http://feeds.mozilla.com if you haven't already seen it...
For reference, here's another example of a community visualization site: http://pepsicozeitgeist.com/ I'm also copying jboriss on this bug since she probably has some useful insights and suggestions based on the visualization work she is currently doing.
The visualization tool that was used for the Community Map might also be a good fit for this. We could list different channels in different groups and visually represent each according to some stat -- maybe busier channels are larger or in a different color? http://www.mozilla.org/community/
Are any mock-ups made for this. I'd love to code it.
Just saw this is a very very very old topic. Sorry if it's dead.
Casey, this is an old topic, but it's not dead. I think there would still be a lot of value in creating a better way to present information about communication channels. There's not a mockup about this that I'm aware of. Would you want to take a pass at working on something as a starting point? We could then use that to get discussion going again and can bring in some designers to help iterate?
What about some how incorporating it into Josh's http://whatcanidoformozilla.org . I dont think building and maintaing another site/spot is a good idea. Thoughts?
(In reply to Casey Becking from comment #13) > What about some how incorporating it into Josh's > http://whatcanidoformozilla.org . I dont think building and maintaing > another site/spot is a good idea. Thoughts? I agree about not needing to set up a new site just for this. I had thought about replacing the current list of forums with anything new that worked better. http://www.mozilla.org/about/forums/ This information could fit well in other places too.
Do we have a way of dynamically querying the irc.mozilla.org for the information (names, descriptions and children) if we remove it from the wiki? I would like to build something dynamic and not have to worry about updating it. We can pull all the information in from the wiki if thats going to be manually updated. Just wanted to build something that will last.
It would be technically possible to write a program that connected to irc.mozilla.org, grabbed a list of all channels and stored that to some database, but the data would be lacking a simple description of the channel's purpose/focus. A curated wiki page would be a better source of data that could be pulled dynamically.
Ya, I think the wiki age should stay and we can pull the information from that page. Can we plan on that Wiki page staying and i build the code based on that?
For reference, I just did /list on irc.mozilla.org and there were over 500 channels. Many of those channels did have descriptions listed for them (some more useful than others). It may also be useful to list where other conversations happen in the community so we have a holistic view of things. For instance, there are also a large number of forums at: https://www.mozilla.org/about/forums/ FYI, that page is generated from a list of forums at http://viewvc.svn.mozilla.org/vc/projects/mozilla.org/trunk/about/forums/raw-ng-list.txt?view=log The feeds.mozilla.com site mentioned in comment #7 was a nice way to get a sense of where activities were happening in the community but unfortunately that's down now. I think we could probably manually recreate the main places where conversations happen though.
So David your thinking of manually maintaining the list of irc's and descriptions for this page?
(In reply to Casey Becking from comment #19) > So David your thinking of manually maintaining the list of irc's and > descriptions for this page? I don't have a preference for where the IRC channel information comes from -- either the manually maintained wiki page or directly from the IRC server. It probably makes sense to start with the easiest way to get that information and then iterate to make it more dynamic and bring in other communication channels over time.
Component: Webdev → Pages & Content
Product: mozilla.org → www.mozilla.org
Severity: normal → enhancement
Component: Pages & Content → Information Architecture & UX
Adding Ben Sullins to this bug. We talked recently about what we could do if we could have better tracking of communications channels and using that data to make a dynamic map of places where conversations are happening would be a big win.

Closing out this old, inactive bug

Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 4 years ago
Resolution: --- → INACTIVE
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