[Bug-gnupedia]Human GNUPedia interface

[Duncan Lock]

        I think that article standards will be(come) very important. I can
understand people wanting things to be open and free but I think it is vital
to decide on some (extensible) standards for articles/ courses BEFORE we
start getting lots of articles that will need, essentially, hand editing to
retrofit later.
        I can see this going two ways: 

        1) Either the GNUPedia becomes a distinct(ive) body of work in
itself 
or 
        2) a collection of links to a diverse collection of stuff (which are
nominally GNUPedia articles) residing all over the web on unreliable
connections, each article having it's own layout and style.

        We need to decide which way to steer things before we end up trying
to steer a juggernaut full of legacy (shudder) articles.
        I would prefer the first option. I'm not sure how you achieve this
if you want submissions from everybody - not just people who know HTML/XML -
people who only know how to use MS Word. For better or worse this is an
awful lot of potential contributors. Just because someone is the world
authority on plankton dispersion (or whatever) doesn't mean they even know
what HTML _is_. I really mean this. Working with computers 24x7 it's very
easy to forget that most people (potential contributors) hate and fear
computers and have only limited exposure to a few pieces of software.

        I think we need some standards for articles/ courses and I think it
ought to be XML based. The only way of getting articles from real people
into this format is to put a techie between the two. I think that the ODP
concept of category editors is a good one but I think in this case their
role may well involve mentoring articles out of people who have no idea
about HTML/XML, who will write their articles in WordPerfect for DOS because
that's all they know. I don't think we will see anything from these types of
contributors unless we can accommodate them. Trying to get them to use HTML
is just not realistic, unfortunately.

        I don't have answers to these questions 9only suggestions) but I
think it is important that we ask them now, even if we don't expect any
articles for a while.

Duncan Lock