[OSGeo-Discuss] Membership map, querying the wiki and more...

[Alex Mandel]

Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) wrote:
> I'm always looking for more ways to summarise statistics about OSGeo and
> was reminded recently about some of the good work shown here - a map and
> a member list based on wiki categories and properties:
> 
> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Category:OSGeo_Member
> 
> It's not a definitive list but is nice work, I'm not sure who to pat on
> the back - good job!
> 
> I've been trying to get to a place where I can get a list of Members,
> charter members, list of chapters and their members, projects and the
> members of their steering committees, etc.  Not so easy.
> 
> One way I like to present things during talks is by using graphical
> representations of the OSGeo ecosystem.  Some of you have seen the
> Freemind Mindmap approach I used before.[1]  I've also been able to
> start to pull wiki pages and their links to other pages out into a
> similar mindmap format.  See this test page for experiments based on my
> user page [2].  Memory and other issues prevent from doing too much more
> online in real-time though, and the tests might fail, but you get the idea.
> 
> These use the Semantic Mediawiki extension which also provides a
> powerful tool for querying the wiki.  You can add properties to pages
> (which I haven't explored yet), but even without them you can query
> across Categories.  Here is one example of querying for all the pages
> tagged as "OSGeo Member" and also related to a "Local Chapters" [3]. 
> And a more refined search that only shows User accounts that are tagged
> as member pages and also with Local Chapter tags [4].  Bit of a
> mind-bender but pretty neat when you see what it is really doing.
> 
> I'm wondering if we can get more out of the wiki using these fancy
> tools, without a lot of manual leg work.  It leaves me wondering if a
> simple form-based, user/member tracking tool might help - so members can
> simply select which projects/committees they are on, providing a simple
> record for generating reports from.
> 
> What do you think - is editing the wiki a higher barrier then filling in
> some forms?  Would it feel more "official" if you had to fill in a form
> and click "become an OSGeo Member"? :)
> 
> p.s. You can also output RDF though I haven't used it for much yet, and
> not sure it is really working [5]
> 
> [1] Slide 8 & 9 show mindmap:
> http://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/community/presentations/20070925-Victoria/OSGeoCommunity.html
> 
> [2] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Test_Graphs
> [3]
> http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php?title=Special:Ask&offset=0&limit=500&q=+%5B%5BCategory%3ALocal+Chapters%7CCategory%3AOSGeo+Member%5D%5D&p=format%3Dbroadtable
> 
> [4]
> http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php?title=Special:Ask&offset=0&limit=500&q=%5B%5B%3A%2B%7C%7CUser%3A%2B%5D%5D+%5B%5BCategory%3AOSGeo+Member%5D%5D+%5B%5BCategory%3ALocal+Chapters%5D%5D&p=format%3Dbroadtable
> 
> [5] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Special:ExportRDF/
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A bit of a side trek but have you considered running the wiki logs
through code swarm. I've been contemplating if we should run code swarm
on all the project svn's as a PR tool for the projects and osgeo as a
whole as it would highlight just how many people contribute.

http://code.google.com/p/codeswarm/

Alex