My idea. Critisism wanted.

[sugar]

I update all my boxes every 3 months or so. I thought it would be a good idea to blog my experiences during update, even if it was only to keep a record of what I'd done that update. Its a little overkill, though. Then I found an article on Joomla, and I had a better idea, or well I thought.

So while playing around with Joomla, only my laptop I've created a website that I can

0 - Register and sign up
1 - Edit my profile (location etc), as well as an avatar.
2 - Post the output of lspci -m, emerge --info and cat /proc/cpuinfo, so others can see what hardware I have.
3 - Blog about what I'm doing on my computer and what problems I have
4 - Be able (as the administrator) to put selected blog posts onto the news section

So, I thought, if I wanted to be able to see if anyone else had the same hardware/baselayout/systemconfig, then I'd be able to track the cause of problems down a little easier.

Also, I thought I'd put Google adsense on it, and create a charitable trust here in NZ, so any money earned off clicks would help offset the cost of the domain and hosting. Any profits would be paid to the Gentoo foundation, FSF, Joomla foundation, and all books kept for the trust will be audited annually, and posted online for inspection.

Furthermore, if it took off, then I could expand it for other distributions.

I would be willing to pay for it to get started. But would anyone be interested? and what would make you more interested?

*Note, I haven't thought of a domain yet. I was thinking www.rtfmdumbnoob.com
*Note2, I see that in the sticky thread for 'friends of gentoo' there is a similar idea. I think that it has different scope.
*Note3, I don't have any experience in this, so it will be a steep learning curve!

[deadstar]

The idea sounds great.

But bear in mind it would be a security nightmare for anyone taking part. A site like that would be a hackers dream - a complete blog detailing your system in every way, shape and form. Keep IP and domain names addresses WELL hidden, and only let registered users view the info (and ask a lot of questions during registration!)

Otherwise, I can certainly see the benefits. Haha imagine using in a Myspace sort of way - you could find your 'perfect match' to ask questions to. Or have I gone off track?
_________________
Hysteriagaming.co.uk is now DOT COM! New design, forum, articles, the works! http://www.hysteriagaming.com

(\ /)
(O.o)
(> <)
This is Bunny. Copy Bunny into your signature to help him on his way to world domination

[sugar]

[cwest]

I like the idea
Really sensitive information, like IP's, could be filtered out and be replaced with xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx for example automatically, with alternatively a new tag ([IP][/IP]?) to force it to not filter out the tagged IP. Domain names, the posters should remember themselves to be careful about ...

Perhaps integrate this with a HW-DB? One-click search and browse of selected hardware.
_________________

[deadstar]

Slightly off topic: Just installed that Joomla thing, it's the best thing since sliced bread! Cheers for mentioning it
_________________
Hysteriagaming.co.uk is now DOT COM! New design, forum, articles, the works! http://www.hysteriagaming.com

(\ /)
(O.o)
(> <)
This is Bunny. Copy Bunny into your signature to help him on his way to world domination

[MrUlterior]

It'd never work as a blog or even as a wiki because of the lack of granularity for the information stored. For example a full text search of a blog post is utterly ineffective in determining whether or not it's relevant to a problem someone may be experiencing. All it guarantees is that the post mentions your search term, and NOT whether or not the problem experienced is actually related to the particular search string.

For example: I have a problem installing MySQL 4.1.x, but I have an nforce2 mobo & create a post with my lspci output describing my MySQL woes. Now someone else searches for "nforce2 network problem", it will match my post even though it has no relevance.

So basically what you describe will be about as efficient as PHPBB with a custom "new's frontpage" highlighting reccent/relevant stuff. This begs the question, what will the system you describe offer that can't already be done right here on the gentoo forums with a little perseverance?

The only way I see that this would work would be with a custom application that stored and indexed all relevant information in a highly granular fashion -- this would be exposed via a wizard type web interface allowing a user to find relevant posts.
_________________

"Misanthropy 2.0 - why be racist in the digital age?" - Dave Bell
http://xs.mw

[moolin]

[deadstar]

Err... I made a post just after MrUlterior... and it didn't show up?

Anyway, the gist of it:

Best form to take would be a downloadable "official [insert project name] script" which, whenr un, will collect a catalogue of info and upload to your profile after a username/password request. With some sort of clever database system, the info could be categorised correctly for searching.

Again, back to my security point, this kind of information being available to the pubic could cause a few problems.

But I STILL think it's a great idea, and would work with a LOT of effort.
_________________
Hysteriagaming.co.uk is now DOT COM! New design, forum, articles, the works! http://www.hysteriagaming.com

(\ /)
(O.o)
(> <)
This is Bunny. Copy Bunny into your signature to help him on his way to world domination

[sugar]

[MrUlterior]