PM Previews

[holtzermann17]

Based on some of the things which we discussed in the Advisory meeting, in particular the suggestion of bringing in volunteers, I came up with an idea for an area of the PlanetMath website which I will call "previews". Each preview would be devoted to a different project, such as, say, book section, preprint area, or centralized bibliographic database and consist of a subwebsite with the following parts:

• The main part of the webpage consists of either a mock-up of the new feature or a demo version if one exists.

• For more information, one could click to pull up a more detailed description of the project.

• There would be a graphic showing a road with milestones and either a person marching down that road or a vehicle travelling on it. Clicking on the milestones would take one to the to-do list for the projects and the position of the traveller would show how much work remains.

• There would be a list of how one can help which would have items that look something as follows:

  "If you're a philanthropist . . ." "If you're a programmer . . ." "If you're an editor . . ."

  which would describe the different ways in which one could help make this project come about sooner. For instance, for the book section, the "philanthropist" section might state that $1000 would license us a copy of InftyOCR, $2000 would pay to hire a contractor, etc.; the "programmer" section might list various programming tasks; and the "editor" section might list various books which have been scanned in but which still require copyediting. Next to these items there would be buttons for people interested in helping to click.

• Finally, there would be an acknowledgement section
  which would thank those how have contributed time, talent, and treasure towards the project to date.

As I see it, such a preview section would serve three related purposes:

1. Show members of the PlanetMath communnity what sorts of exciting and innovative features are in the works.
2. Interest potential donors and volunteers by showing them what their contributions would help accomplish.
3. If the pace of progress on PlanetMath seems too slow, indicate where it is stuck and what can be done to bring it back up to speed.

What do you all think?

[holtzermann17]

I think this is related to the idea of a "semi-formal spec" for PlanetMath that Jamie suggested during the meeting. A few brainstormed answers follow, feel free to add to this list. Things that don't exist yet can have previews built for them. Things that do exist should have user docs.

• PlanetMath is an peer-produced mathematics encyclopedia. (PM Encyclopedia)
• PlanetMath is a collection of peer-produced exercise workbooks and learning pathways. (PM Problems)
• PlanetMath is a place to ask questions and build a shared knowledge base. (PM Q&A)
• PlanetMath is a guide to the mathematics literature. (PM Cross-Index)
• PlanetMath is a collection of public domain or liberally licensed books (PM Books) - Books Preview #37
• PlanetMath is a free/open research repository. (PM Archive)
• PlanetMath is a hub for free/open math projects. (SAGE, Gap, Metamath, Mumble, community meetings)
• PlanetMath is the mathematics part part of an "indie education bundle" (Indie Edu Bundle)
• PlanetMath is a testbed for the Planetary software project. (Planetary, LaTeXML, NNexus)
• PlanetMath is an incubator for websites using Planetary software (PlanetPhysics, PlanetComputing)
• PlanetMath is a nonprofit specializing in mathematical software services, mathematical communication, hypertext research, and consulting (Statprob, NRI, etc.)
• PlanetMath is a Math MUD (killer feature: We need an awesome integrated chat to make PlanetMath into a Math MUD MathHubInfo/Legacy-planetary#350)
• PlanetMath is a math wiki that blends ownership with universal editability using a distributed revision control system (killer feature: use git to facilitate instant revisions MathHubInfo/Legacy-planetary#351)
• PlanetMath is a place to get free or for-fee mathematics tutoring, or more advanced mathematics consulting services (http://metameso.org/~joe/docs/bce.pdf)

[rspuzio]

Here is an example of a preview for the book project.
[...]

[holtzermann17]

Looks great Ray. I'm going to copy this into issue #37 with the tag PREVIEW so we can discuss in more detail there.

[holtzermann17]

Here's a quick summary of the issues I found or made in the Planetary tracker that are relevant to our current list of previews. See individual preview pages for more information.

"What's Next for PlanetMath/Planetary?" Preview

See MathHubInfo/Legacy-planetary#63, MathHubInfo/Legacy-planetary#381, MathHubInfo/Legacy-planetary#88

There are a lot of other basic usability issues collected in this PM ticket: #5 and these Planetary milestones, which are past due: PlanetMath Community and PlanetMath Community 2.

Hypertext and Metamathematics Preview

See MathHubInfo/Legacy-planetary#416

Experimental Math Preview

MathHubInfo/Legacy-planetary#417 is relevant both to formal math and experimental math.

WorkingWiki seems far ahead of Planetary in terms of general support for software-based interaction with content.

Computer Math and KRR Preview

See MathHubInfo/Legacy-planetary#358, MathHubInfo/Legacy-planetary#216. Note that there is already books module that depends on sTeX, but not strongly, see: MathHubInfo/Legacy-planetary#340.

Internationalization Preview

See MathHubInfo/Legacy-planetary#309

Project Orientation Preview

See MathHubInfo/Legacy-planetary#351.

Virtual Classroom Preview

See MathHubInfo/Legacy-planetary#350.

Centralized Bibliographic Database Preview

See MathHubInfo/Legacy-planetary#80.

PlanetMath Outline Series Preview

This is effectively a sub-topic of the Books preview, see #37

Books Preview

Some issues directly related to books: MathHubInfo/Legacy-planetary#340, MathHubInfo/Legacy-planetary#332, MathHubInfo/Legacy-planetary#336, MathHubInfo/Legacy-planetary#341

One issue more related to collections: MathHubInfo/Legacy-planetary#216

General improvements related to Git integration and a build system would probably be useful here: MathHubInfo/Legacy-planetary#68, MathHubInfo/Legacy-planetary#67

Then there are a bunch of OCR- and proofreading-related issues that we need to outline (some of that may also be relevant to Planetary, but other bits should go elsewhere).