Open Forum Project

   CYTOPATHNETHomePage  >  About CYTOPATHNET  >  CYTOPATHNETeers  >  CommunityChallenge  >  Open Forum Project

We are trying to engage the global community to take a more active role in the future development and sustainability of CYTOPATHNET. The Open Forum Project is a step in that direction to try to provide an avenue for global users to actively participate and provide feedback.

Background information

CYTOPATHNET is the premiere site for cytopathology related information for the global community. It has been live since late 1995 and has a large following of users worldwide. In its early days, the activity and participation by end-users was brisk. However, it has dissipated to the point of being primarily driven by one individual, myself, which is not sustainable. It is unclear what all of the reasons are for this trend, but they are most certainly multifactorial.

Solution

An Open Forum Project is being initiated to open up communication with our online community to encourage active participation and feedback of how to improve CYTOPATHNET. This undertaking is also continuing with the concept of an open community based on the willing participation of volunteers who feel a responsiblity to the global community to give just a bit in turn for what they have received.

This will include

• Re-organizing Advisory Board
• Some form of "Kudos" system for participation
  • CE/CME credits
  • Recognition awards
  • Other
• Content areas
  • Restructuring of content focus as may be needed
  • Adding more courses on CYTOPATHNET Campus
  • CME opportunities with Medscape or other party
• Changing some of the default settings to more intuitive settings (what most people would use)
• Creation of Open Access Journal Publication system
• Whatever you think is needed.

 
People who have spent time on this site are who we need input from. If you don't have computing skills, don't worry. If you have a good idea, someone will code it!

People

• JSullinger
• Admin (of course, that is still me )
• You?

Steps

1. Decide how we will coordinate (hopefully utilizing trackers)
2. Recruit contributors & facilitate input.
3. Scanning all tracker items on the wishlist and identifying & prioritizing the ones that relate to this project.
4. Get as many as possible of the items done, in order of priority (see below importance vs easiness).

How to determine priorities?

There will always be more ideas & feature requests than people available that can work on them. In this context, how do we choose what to do first?

Let's try

1. To involve more people so we can get more done.
2. To focus on things which affect the most people. So let's fix things in transversal features before things that are specific and not everyone uses.
3. Pick all the low-hanging fruit first (Do the easy stuff)
4. To be pragmatic

Let's avoid

1. Trying to be perfect. There are diminishing returns to investing more & more time on something. Perfection is the enemy of good enough (Voltaire). It will always be possible to improve later on.
2. Being dogmatic about "how it was done before". Yes, we want to respect the past.
3. The temptation of adding new features. The goal here is to re-organize and expand upon what we already have. It's a low-risk operation.

Timeframe

Wishlist

To add things to this list, you can create a new tracker (you must be logged in) or edit an exisiting tracker item. In both cases, please make sure to click the checkbox "AdminUIRevamp" project.

Please base your suggestions on how CYTOPATHNET is done, using Tikiwiki. You can test 1.10 here and get your copy here.

All items on this list will be evaluated, but not necessarily treated.
incorrect filterfield

Broad ideas for the future

Next steps would be to implement Tikiwiki 1.10 when available, due to improved editing functions. Creation of Open Journal using open source software and idea of open publishing concept. Creation of sister site/s on various topics of interest, ie. GYNEPATHNET http://gynepathnet.org. Need more global focus to attract all users. How to sustain a site of this type based on volunteers and concept of open collaboration. Is it sustainable?