Reply To: Focus Fusion Rail Gun

[zapkitty]

Here’s a proposal for consideration along with the background
reasoning.

The primary FFS website: News related to Focus Fusion Society efforts,
Focus Fusion news and LPP doings and fusion power news in general. Also
basic fusion info with an emphasis on aneutronic fusion and its benefits
as a power source.

Background: A needed website upgrade. The CMS in the background will be
a current version of one of the popular non-proprietary engines. Which
one depends on FFS current and projected needs. In reality any such CMS
could handle all FFS needs while being more flexible and easier to
maintain, update and upgrade with our resources than the current EE
installation.

Upshot: Ignas life easier. My life easier.

Built into the system will be a potentially community-enhancing option:
Articles by FFS members. I’m thinking this should be for paid members
(isn’t it about time for me to re-up?) Any paid member can author such
articles and any FFS site member can comment on such. I’m thinking of a
bit more formal take on the “diary” concept. Site members will be able
to add comments to the articles just as they interact in the forums now.

Upshot: Functionally not much more different than the way things are
supposed to be now. That’s why paid members are labeled as Administrators
in the current EE setup: they have publishing capabilities among other
things but do not use it and at least in some cases do not fully
understand their options. So the upgrade will improve things a lot in
that aspect because people will be able to more easily understand and
take advantage of the options made available to them.

On the downside will be the minding of content and other editorial
duties. It will be a bit more work… but it’ll be stuff we’d be doing
anyway if more people were active at this time and we’ll have those same
newly active members to help each other out.

And the forums will still be needed. Needed for site members to have a
platform of sorts and needed for news items, questions, comments or
links that are too short for an article. And yes, needed for continuity.

Upshot: An upgraded forum will be easier to maintain and yet add much
more capability than the default EE forum we use now.

Thoughts?