I certainly agree some consolidation could be a good thing. What
I am wondering about though, is the possibility of truly using the linuxaudio.org as a portal. In order to
do this I think several things would be needed from my standpoint....
See http://portal.linuxaudio.org
1. A centralized basic information about all applications (wiki already
in existance, good start)
http://apps.linuxaudio.org
has all apps that have been a part of Dave’s website. They can be also
sorted according to jack/ladspa/whatever support and entries are open to
community contributions. There were a number of people here very vocal how they
would not contribute to a wiki that was password protected. Well, it hasn been open
access since its introduction little over a year ago, yet we had little or no
contributions since. It would be nice if we would be as determined about our
contributions as we are about our preferences, no?
2. A centralized repository of general linux audio information(ie
What is realtime, why/when should you use it, FAQs etc.)
http://lowlatency.linuxaudio.org/
(yes, it could be much better, volunteers are always welcome)
3. A centralized place to go for announcements from all projects at
once...
http://lists.linuxaudio.org
we are hoping to also implement
forum.linuxaudio.org
- This would likely entail using a RSS feeds for all members of the linuxaudio
consortium, and subscribing to those feeds to be displayed on the news
page. I am sure there is a better way, but this is what sticks out to me
at the moment, filtering of the announcements might be necessary. I
suppose another option would be to utilize the linux-audio-announce mailing
list instead so as to have a natural filter preventing things like general
informational posts.
Linuxaudio.org main page has RSS feeds.
4. I am not against a centralized forum either, however I think app specific
forums and websites are still a good thing, which leads to the next point
couple of points...
5. Tight integration between all of the above. On the wiki we have links
to the forums for those peices of software, or from the FAQ/Info sections links
to the forums, or from the Forums to the wikis, with the news announcements a
link to the wiki for the software the announcement is about, etc.
This is in progress but again, most of the
work you’ve seen so far has been the fruit of maybe half-dozen people
including myself.
6. A single login for linuxaudio... And I don't just mean linuxaudio.org, but all member projects if
possible. This is the one most difficult to implement, and probably most
contreversial, but would allay some of the problems that Dave and others have,
which is having to sign up for hundreds of forums with logins to remember
etc. Having one place to go for that would be great. This could tie
into the centralized forums, by having direct links to each of the projects
individual forums, if applicable, and auto-login. OpenID is making good
strides in this area, but as I mentioned I do expect this to be the most
contreversial of my suggestions I suppose, along with still being the most
difficult to implement.
See above. Some users complain about
having to log in so we left it open for the sake of greatest possible target
audience.
Best wishes,
ico
But the goal with these would be to provide a single portal, from which you can
get all levels of help by utilizing all the availiable resources out there.
Seablade
