Getting a better sense of community - gallery based groups

[Nicu Buculei]

Máirín Duffy wrote:
> 
> So one of the things we've discussed every now and then is having some 
> kind of gallery system set up (beyond the wiki which isn't quite 
> equipped for this) where we can share our work and comment on it, where 
> the community can easily browse and comment on it, and (nice bonus) even 
> have an RSS feed of artwork the general community can benefit from.

YES!!!!

> Tonight I started investigating some options we have towards this. A 
> great solution would be to have an install of the art.gnome.org software 
> or have something custom-built for us, but I don't think we have the 
> resources for something like that right now. So I've looked around at 
> some other options:
> 
> 1) Have an art-specific Fedora planet feed -
> 
> It would be something like http://art.planet.fedoraproject.org and it 
> would be a feed for artwork, not general blog posts. (E.g. you could 
> syndicate your deviant art portfolio feed or a flickr fedora art album 
> feed to this.)

I was to lazy to act, but one of my old ideas was to run such an 
aggregator even on my own server.

> Whichever other option we go with, it should produce suitable RSS feeds 
> so we should probably do this anyway. Send me your feeds (art, not blog) 
> and I'll make the request to set it up.
> 
> 2) Set up a Deviant art community -
> 
> So I set one up and played around with it, take a look:
> 
> http://fedora-art.deviantart.com/
> 
> Disadvantages:
> - the RSS feeds don't actually embed the image, they only provide a 
> link. (does anyone know if it embeds the image for paid subscription 
> accounts? I'd be willing to donate the $$ if so.)

This is a real problem. Yes, one can pay for one subscription for the 
group but I guess the other members will like to have their own usable 
feeds.

> 3) Flickr community
> 
> I gave this a try too, take a look:
> 
> http://www.flickr.com/groups/fedora-art/

Definitely: I hate you!
Today I had to promote the RHM article at the first hour but can't do 
that because you give me a lot of work wih investigating those groups 
and communities you created :p

> Disadvantages:
> - theres a limit per month on how much you can upload per user account 
> (I think it's 50mb/month.)

I think we can deal with 50MB

> - flickr is focused entirely towards photos. while i read their terms of 
> service and made sure that it was okay for us to use for our purposes - 
> people won't be able to search for our artwork using the UI because it 
> seems they block non-photos from that according to their policy.

I remember reading  some time ago about flickr disabling accounts where 
the majority of the content is not photos. It may be true or not, but I 
think we do not want to use flickr against the will of the owners.

> 4) Set up a version control repository -
> 
> Disadvantages:
> - high technical barrier to entry

indeed, no version control

> 5) Something else?

I have a few more ideas:

6) picassaweb.google.com - it can be used by artists, give RSS feeds 
with thumbnails but does not have groups. It can be used if we go with 
only a planet aggregation.
Major disadvantage: it support only jpg, not even png

7) the Infrastructure project plan to offer hosting space, 
developers.fedoraproject.org and people.fedoraproject.org: use this 
space and host our own solution

ccHost is what we are using at http://openclipart.org - the software 
have a lot of features: users, feeds for everything, comments, ratings. 
Is not very mature in my experience but is sponsored by Creative 
Commons. Can be configured to use a lot of file types, including SVG.

8) again, in our own hosting space run an instance of Gallery 
(http://gallery.menalto.com/) - I don't have any experience with 
installation or administration, but from the website it seems it 
recently it gained support for RSS feeds

-- 
nicu
Cool Fedora wallpapers: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro/wallpapers/
Open Clip Art Library: http://www.openclipart.org
my Fedora stuff: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro