[uf-discuss] Folksr is here (again)

[Sven Fuchs]

I introduced folksr.de as a first, highly experimental stab at an  
application for distributed votings using the vote-link Microformat  
quite some time ago to this list.

# Distributed votings: folksr is here (again) ...

I've finally come around to resurrect folksr from being pretty  
stalled. I've done a complete rewrite and changed some of the way it  
works to incorporate various learnings from the first, experimental  
version. I've tried to keep things as basic as possible for now and  
omitted everything that I felt is not necessary to get a simple, yet  
useful tool going.

In a nutshell: Folksr aggregates vote-links when the target URL of a  
vote-link has been registered for a voting on folksr.de (i.e. it is  
not required to link to folksr.de to get a vote in). There are two  
types of votings (called 'opinions' and 'polls'). Folksr relies solely  
on OpenID for sign-in.

# How can I get you involved?

I'd highly appreciate your feedback, suggestions, criticism,  
support ... and of course ... participation and help.

I'd particularly like to ask you folks for suggestions and help to get  
some initial "real" votings and usage going.

What could possibly be done to motivate you folks to try folksr and  
publish a vote? What topics would be interesting enough? What else?

# What's next?

Aside from real usage which I think is really the most important thing  
for folksr to evolve now, the next important thing might be to further  
work on the presentation and interface design.

I feel folksr is way to text-laden and doesn't communicate its own  
purpose very well. I will continue to try to improve that. Suggestions  
are very welcome.

Unfortunately, as a programmer, I am pretty much an all-fingers-thumbs  
moron when it comes to logos, graphics and stuff like that. So I also  
very much appreciate every single bit of help here.

Also I plan to add the following features in the near future:

- plugins for some blog engines for pinging folksr about new votes  
when published (Chris Messina suggested the term "voteback" which I  
think is a perfect match, thanks Chris!)
- a timemachinesque history to review past states of votings and  
charts to visualize a voting's history (initially suggested by Brian  
Suda)
- tagging for votings (also suggested by Brian Suda)

# Some links

What is Folksr?
http://folksr.de/about

How folksr works
http://folksr.de/votelinks

FAQ
http://folksr.de/faq

Announcement on my blog (somewhat extended version of this mail)
http://www.artweb-design.de/2008/1/16/folksr-is-here-again-distributed-votings-using-microformats




--
sven fuchs			svenfuchs at artweb-design.de
artweb design		http://www.artweb-design.de
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