Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Community Communications Systems [was Equal Access [was Dropbox Limit Solution

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On May 17, 2022, at 6:00 PM, Henning Mortensen <hmortensen [at] gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> Thank you for your comments and suggestions. I have myself thought that
> there should be a way where all of us techies can work together to provide
> a service for all. I know that there are some good folks that have created
> Gather and I understand that they need to charge for it in order to pay for
> the development.

What I’m wondering about is whether we could form a hybrid software like 
Wordpress that is open source and usable out of the box but it is supported by 
both volunteers and professionals who can be hired to manage sites for people 
and to personalize the software for specific groups and purposes.

That would require a focus on one application so we don’t fracture the energy 
can create competition. I was trying to set up Wordpress to do that but it 
would require more than I know about writing plugins etc. Wordpress is too hard 
for most people to learn. Everything will have to be done from the front end. 
The minute  they see the dashboard, it is already too hard. The people who 
choose to deal with the dashboard are already doing some level of development. 
The others just want to relax. They don’t need added stress in their lives.

> I can't help but think that if a group of techies set up a server in the
> cloud that they could host many instances of the tools that communities
> use. There would be a suite of services such as nextcloud and wordpress
> that the tech-group would support and help communities with.  

I find it difficult to get techies to collaborate. The desire to build it 
yourself seems to come along with wanting to build it yourself your way. I 
still have not figured out the Coho-Us site and it uses Wordpress! Before I was 
trying to focus on Wordpress, I was working on a Filemaker Pro application that 
was very nice but I needed help from others to get it online.

> NextCloud
> encrypts the data so there would be no leakage of data from one instance to
> another. The tech-group would make sure the system is patched and backed up
> but a large part would be creating user guides and how-to's about how the
> systems work. I anticipate that it would cost about $500/yr to rent the
> machines, buy a domain name and pay for storage. If this were divided by
> 100 communities it would only be $5/yr. If communities wanted, we could
> increase that a little bit and hire a professional writer to do the user
> guides. Techies have problems making them user friendly. The techies would
> help developing content but the final wording goes to the writer.

Yup. This could also be a service of Coho-US. But it also faces the same 
problem that every community faces on the question of customization. Commitment 
to go in a uniform direction first and customize later is hard to sell. They 
want the software to do things they way the community currently does things. So 
the integration piece is big. 

> See, you get me talking about this stuff and I find it difficult to stop.
> There is always one more thing to say.

This is good. We need to share information and coordinate efforts until we can 
agree, possibly, on a focused direction.

Sharon