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It struck me that the wealth of knowledge available right here is quite extraordinary.
A lot of professional IT, web developers etc, and also an incredible amount of creative ability and SEO ability.
Seems to me that it would be quite a fun thing to do a community based project organised amongst the users of this forum. In other words, build a website - and get everybody (that wants to be) involved.
Haven't thought about any subject matter, but I like the "authoritative" approach. If anyone has any real bright ideas, I would guess they wouldn't want to share them.
But perhaps something simple like a directory based resource?
Wiki strikes me as a useful tool for collaboration on that kind of scale. Would take a fair bit of organisation, but can you imagine the level of expertise that would be available?
What do you think?
TJ
webmasterworld has to be the only place on the web where you access the site, register as a member then ask any question related to computers or www and have an answer within minutes :) thats what makes a great community.
It would be fun to build something together, but can you honestly see it working? to many strong minded indevidualy to agree on the major points :)
I want to do this. No I want to do it. I think it should look like this, no this is much better :)
Colaberation on a massive scale has to have it's downfalls.
When you organise people into groups, inevitably there will be those that say "I'd rather be in/I would be more productive in group X and not group Y", but that's just a case of management. You can't please everyone all the time, and as long as everyone accepted that and gave their best shot at the task in hand, there wouldn't really be a problem.
It would be fun to see if in colaboration we could produce a site that hit a PR8 or PR9 as an exercise in the SEO skills and good website building skills that everyone is learning here.
I'm sure there would be no shortage of content writers.
TJ
I was thinking of something completely different, although as yet unknown!
And while this forum is a good way of building content within a site, it doesn't give people hands-on experience in building and optimising websites, just content.
TJ
What a good idea. I have a few suggestions.
Perhaps the project could be split into three distinct areas.
1. A Directory (or whatever) to provide information etc based upon knowledge already available and everyone can contribute.
2. Experimental project area - where each group of like minded individuals could test specific theories on SEO (or whatever) - that might reduce the friction. They could build prototypes to prove theories and produce real world results that could be published (publicly or privately) for others to benefit from.
3. Leadership. You must have a strong and experienced leadership team to handle projects like this - otherwise you will create a giant MESS! Enthusiasm, skill and intellect are not usually qualities I immediately associate with "order and stability".
Today the web, tomorrow the universe!
Quote from star-wars meets hitchikers guide:
"Hand me the light-sabre plate captain"...
Arguing in a forum is a much better pursuit of truth and authority than trying to get everyone here to collaborate on a web design project.
After all, who wants to work with all those Fluid Layout CSS fanatics!
(I wanted to say wackos, but that wouldn't be nice.....)
I have been very grateful for the help and support I have gotten here in certain subjects. I "pay back" by contributing in other areas where I do have more expertise. I have found this works very well.
dave
That wasn't actually where I was coming from - I seem to have misled some of you.
This website caters for that admirably, there is little that could be improved on by way of a complete redesign of a similar resource.
I was actually thinking about a site for something *completely* different (don't ask me what though!) but utilising the information known and gained from here, and the knowledge base available from the human resource that is here to build a site, about something, and prove the theory.
I understand the argument against large scale management, but I don't believe it's impossible. The benefits of large scale input is the ability to produce a lot of content, possibly on a wide area of subject matter, and a lot of seo.
If, for example, a basic theme or style could be agreed upon and each individual contributor creates pages in that theme or style on a particular subject matter related to the main title or theme of the site.
Then we colate all of that, proof read it, each individual SEO's their own pages and we build a large content site and promote it - see how high we can get the thing in the SERPS and PR.
I think it would be an interesting exercise/experiment.
TJ
But you have to come up with a solid idea first and then we can all argue about its merits...
lol
OK, thinking cap on......
Directory structured resource about anything and everything related to computing seems like a starting point. It has to be something wide. Also, why not start in a competitive market....
TJ
By "you" I assume you mean the royal "you" as in "we"?
TJ
Now now - we're not always after the truth. ;) Sometimes we just like to hear ourselves talk regardless of what comes out. But as you noted, working with us fanatics (be it css liquid layout, W3C standards, PHP over CF, XHTML over HTML, or what-have-you fanatics) would make the task rather challenging.
After all, who wants to work with all those Fluid Layout CSS fanatics!
Wait until CSS3 - just you wait. You'll be eating those tables! ;)
In all seriousness - there are just too many views here - and there always has to be someone in charge.
You are not the first to suggest such an idea, and I'm confident you won't be the last.
We have discussed these ideas behind the curtain many times and have always come to the conclusion that it isn't something we want to do. The amount of time and energy it takes to keep this place running smoothly is quite large. Adding such a project would just be too much to handle.
I have been perl coding like CRAZY for hours and hours since I read all of the cool stuff here. Talk about inspiration! ;-))
What comes in my mind:
Development is faster than analysis. I can look only at a few subjects out of many to keep me up to date.
I've (and you have, I suppose) worked hard to find out some essentials. Do I / you really want to give everything I / you know away for free? Appetizingly prepared, ready to use?
I admire places like this to communicate about all these questions. I admire the logics of a forum structure. You always get answers, but mostly no deep knowledge is given away like a construction manunal. I / you have to be engaged to understand the subject. And so it works.
Finally: why building such a killer website? To prove what?
Do you mind that's egoistic?
Boy, ain't that the truth! I sat on a committee once to design a website for a multi-million organization. Even having been part of the committee, I can not fathom how final decisions were made. The final design was/is a travesty. Thousands of dollars were wasted on a site that violates almost every tenent of usability, and just looks ugly to boot.
The best site design's come from small teams who are familiar with each other and share a common goal.
WBF
