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<H1>Design Goals for the Venice Project</H1>
<EM>Eric J. Bowersox <<A HREF="mailto:erbo@silcom.com">erbo@silcom.com</A>> -
January 26, 2001</EM><P>
<OL>
<LI>A replacement for the CommunityWare/WebbMe conferencing system</LI>
<LI>Java/JSP/servlets implementation running under Apache Tomcat, MySQL backend</LI>
<LI>Multiple SIGs (communities) hosted per server, each with multiple conferences
(and other features); users logged into one server can join multiple SIGs</LI>
<LI>Conferencing functionality similar to CW/WebbMe:
<UL>
<LI>Linear topics composed of HTML messages</LI>
<LI>View topics by new messages/unread/all messages/hidden topics/archived topics</LI>
<LI>Topics can be deleted/archived/made read-only by the conference host</LI>
<LI>Topics can be hidden from a user's personal view</LI>
<LI>Individual posts can be "hidden" or "scribbled" by owner or conference host</LI>
<LI>Posts can be previewed, with spellchecking and HTML formatting</LI>
<LI>Files can be "attached" to posts (up to 1 Mb in size)</EM>
</UL>
</LI>
<LI>Enhancements to existing conference features:
<UL>
<LI>Full text search of posts within a conference</LI>
<LI>Conference-level "bozo filters"</LI>
<LI>Individual posts can be "nuked" without a trace by the conference host</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
<LI>Later, replace other CW/WebbMe functions:
<UL>
<LI>Activity logs</LI>
<LI>Instant messaging and chat (use Jabber)</LI>
<LI>Calendaring</LI>
<LI>Newsletters via e-mail</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
<LI>Features from CW/WebbMe we <EM>won't</EM> do:
<UL>
<LI>Web hosting</LI>
<LI>Web-based email</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
<LI>Blue sky features:
<UL>
<LI>Output uses XML and gets formatted into [X]HTML via XSLT; "themeable"/"skinnable" interface</LI>
<LI>Conferencing/other functionality available via XML-RPC or SOAP calls</LI>
<LI>News page creation (see Slash, Squishdot, Scoop)</LI>
<LI>Member trust metrics (see Slashdot "karma," Scoop "mojo," Advogato distributed trust metric) <B><EM>(Feature indefinitely shelved at the request of the EMinds community)</EM></B></LI>
<LI>User diary pages (see Advogato, Kuro5hin)</LI>
<LI>Moderated discussions (see Slash, Scoop)</LI>
<LI>Collaborative database facility (see Wiki, Everything2)</LI>
<LI>Content management/distributed publishing</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
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