| | Thanks, everyone, for your thoughts on this. Let me try and clarify the raison d'être of AwakeNetwork and how (and why) I see DhO fitting in.
First, as Daniel pointed out the Dharma Forum Refugee Camp was started by Chris and others during the time when dharma forum fragmentation was rampant. It was an attempt to tone down and have serious, mature, dharma discussions without drama. DFRC, like KFD, and DhO before it, was hosted on WetPaint which, as we all know, is a bit of a train wreck. As a participant in DFRC, I loved the discussions, but like other practitioners, I felt that all the schisms were counter-productive and wanted to see if I could help motivate a change. But also, as a technologist, I felt that the lock-in created by WetPaint and Liferay was simply unacceptable. We needed to own our own data, and be free to use open source frameworks that we can host wherever we saw fit based on cost and performance.
So I created AN as a possible solution, and as others have mentioned, the core of AN based on Joomla (an open source CMS), Kunena (an open source forum based on Joomla), and JomSocial (a not-quite-free social network for Joomla). These three components are the backbone of AN. Additionally, WordPress is integrated into the site so that members can publish articles in a magazine, of sorts, and soon-to-be integrated MediaWiki, for a knowledge base.
Based on the comments here, the important stuff is not so much the code behind it as the organization. So let me expand on that. From the get-go, I envisioned AN to be an umbrella "network" of dharma groups, in part to facilitate an online presence for dharma groups that don't have the technological oomph to get one going themselves, but also to allow disparate dharma groups to have discussions that could be viewed by others in the network, to cross-fertilize and educate people on the various ways in which the dharma is practiced. Far from being dogmatic and intolerant of other practices, the goal was to *foster* and *encourage* those practices.
The way in which AN achieves this is by grouping members. So being on AN is part of the story, but membership only has a few privileges and the real point is to also be members of one or more of the AN groups (of which, currently, there are very few). Being a member of a group opens up the group-specific discussions, and here is the real value of the network in my opinion. You only need to be a member of groups that you are interested in, and if you are not a member, you will not see private discussions in that group. But every group will also have public discussions, and those that appear above that line will be (a) visible to all members of AN, and (b) visible to the outside world, including Google. So using groups, and public/private threads, we are trying to ensure a decent signal-to-noise for all members, as well as address real privacy concerns (such as in practice logs which you may not want to be freely accessible).
I see DhO coming into AN as one, and possible several, groups, depending on what everyone wants. In my opinion, it makes sense to have a couple of groups for the really high-level discussion forks: MCTB-influenced practice, AF, magick/shamanic/power stuff. This allows individuals to decide what segment of the discussions are relevant to them, and filter out the rest. But we can fine tune that if we decide to pull the trigger on this.
Bruno mentioned the AN Boutique, and that stung a bit. Right now, AN runs out of my, and Chris' pocket, with some contributions from members because, even with open source software, hosting is not free. Daniel is very gracious to pay for DhO out of his pocket, and I hope that everyone is truly appreciative of that gift. That said, the Boutique is not a for-profit thing and, indeed, there is not even a cut taken on the items to help with the hosting. We had shirts made up for the BG conference to wear personally, and others that did not go to the conference wanted the shirts too. And since, in CafePress it is just as easy to splash the design on 40 products as 1, the Boutique was born. Lubricant? Really???
Finally (on an unintentionally long-winded post), I should mention the social network. This is currently under-utilized (IMO) but there is a Facebook-like section of the site for managing friendships, sending messages, sharing stuff. Some (like me) are uncomfortable sharing dharma stuff on Facebook proper, and I envisioned this part of AN as being a dharma-specific Facebook, not dissimilar to what Vince is now doing with Google+ and the BG Community. I feel this has a lot of potential for cleaning up some discussions that are better served as simply "status updates" or shares.
I hope this helps, and please ask if there is something that needs more detail. |