GNHLUG web site / wiki - suggestions wanted

[Ben Scott]

Hi folks,

  GNHLUG has a website: http://www.gnhlug.org

  It currently takes the form of a wiki, run by the TWiki software
(http://twiki.org).  I'm wondering what people here think they might
want or would be useful in terms of the GNHLUG website.

  I'm deliberately leaving question this open-ended so that good ideas
are not left outside the box.  At the same time, though, I would ask
that comments please have some thought and relevance behind them.
Something more than just "I like foo" or "I saw a site running bar" or
"baz has some cool features" or "fum sucks".  Cool features don't help
us if they don't apply to us.  Talk about why and how we can use
things.  Also consider practicality; we don't have the manpower to
write major things from scratch.

  Here are my thoughts:

  We do have a lot of knowledge (meeting summaries, tech notes, etc.)
that seems well-suited to an online editing system, and I think wikis
are a great way to do that.  So I think we should keep having a wiki.

  As a wiki user, I find I like MediaWiki much better than TWiki.
TWiki is slooow; MW is fast.  I like most of MW's wiki syntax better.
Things like the recent changes and history viewing are much better in
MW.  Edit summaries and talk pages are super-good ideas.  I think
WikiWord auto-linking is a bad idea; I much prefer [[explict free
linking]].  It reads easier, it looks better, and it doesn't overlink
things (try and have a TWiki page that mentions MythTV or PostScript a
lot -- it ain't pretty).

  Do others have any preference on wiki software, or something instead
of a wiki for online editing?

  Whether the "home page" should be a wiki page is another question.
Everybody seems to think that manually editing a table of events in
wiki form on the home page isn't the best way to do things, but I'm
not sure what would be better.

  The blog format (especially a news blog like Slashdot) might align
better for the home page.  Blog entries and meeting announcements do
share a lot in common:  Most entries have similar data, they're
chronological, and the roll over with time.  At the same time, I
really like the dual order we have now (upcoming, going forward in
time, first; past, going back in time, second) and I'm not sure blog
software can give us that.

  A calendar program might be good, but is there anything that would
let us have the non-calendar info we also want on the home page?

  Ideally, something that knows all about our format
(who/what/when/where, multiple chapters, sometimes repeating speakers
and presentations, announce before and notes after) would be very
cool, but I kinda doubt there's anything out there that does all that.

  I'd love to hear from people on this.  Thoughts, comments,
suggestions, criticisms, etc., welcomed.

-- Ben