[Cc back to openguides-dev since this has a wider scope]
On Tue, Jul 01, 2008 at 02:15:47PM +0100, Kake L Pugh wrote:
On Tue 01 Jul 2008, Dominic Hargreaves dom@earth.li wrote:
[...] essentially the point was made that there is still a nasty fork between RGL and london.openguides.org [...] I therefore decided it was best to get the latter back up as soon as possible, if nothing else so the content could be taken from there and put on RGL.
There seems to be a bit of a misconception here, which is bothering me. RGL was never intended as a fork of - or a replacement for - the Open Guide to London.
It's simply a website run by me and Bob, for the pleasure and convenience of us and our friends, which happens to run on the OpenGuides software. It's not any kind of democracy, and I would be quite unhappy if anyone attempted to turn it into The Official London Open Guide Wot Anyone Can Have A Say In.
Okay. I misunderstood then. I was basing my remarks on Ivor's unhappiness with not being able to access the content he'd previously put into OGL; that is probably conflating things somewhat.
I mention this not out of pettiness, but because I think it's important for the OpenGuides project that the OpenGuides team aren't seen as asserting any rights or expectations over the content or ownership of the things people choose to do with our software.
Fair enough. Although we do have some duty/interest as a project in promoting certain qualities (for example, quality of data, openness, accessible/suitable for all-comers) in the guides we promote. When OGL was down, it was referring visitors to RGL, and RGL is also promoted on the project home page. Given your above comments, would it be better to remove the link from the project home page? (I'm really not asking this in an incendiary fashion, I really do want to know people's opinions).
I am also concerned about the possible confusion resulting from offering people two London guides, without explaining how they differ.
Re adding OGL content to RGL - can I ask that nobody decide to be "helpful" and start doing this, please. RGL is a separate thing to OGL and is run and structured in a very different way.
I think it would be useful, to avoid confusion, to explain a bit more about this. Maybe a page on RGL itself (apologies if this is already there and I missed it).
Clearly there is a balance to be struck between independence and the ability for people to use the software how they like (which I strongly support) and providing a unified resource for people to get information about their locality in (see also my dreams about having a central portal site). We should aim to support both these goals.
Dominic.