After reading this thread and looking at what was out there, I with agreement with starks over a need for a better system. For what we want no system exist that caters to everyone's needs.
I propose a set of ideas get laid out, and some people gather to work out the site layout and programming. I started working on my own implementation as well. Its written in ruby on rails, since that is what in know.
Here is my recommendations.
Now how the site will look needs a semi professional design team but the backend can be done by anyone with programming skills.
The Logon
Lets start with the logon. There are some users that have the same name. So I propose the use of the OpenID system. Then have a display name. More then one person can have the same display name but each OpenID is of course unique.
The Profile
When the user goes on they fill out their profile. This is where they list their skills and this is very important to the backend, the group they are in. Of course they can make things private if they don't want things to be shared.
The Database
Now each group needs to be registered like how anidb has it set up. The database could be set up like this.
Coded in rails migration style:
Code:
create_table "groups" do |t|
t.column :name, :string
t.column :irc_channel", :string
t.column :website_url, :string
t.column :description, :text
end
The Associations
of course there are other things like a group has_and_belongs_to_many :members and a member has_and_belongs_to_many :groups
When a ad is posted it belongs_to :group . Now something I was thinking should we allow for more than one position to be advertised in an ad or one position per ad. I suggest on position per ad.
Tagging
Now for projects, if a group needs say a typesetter for 2 projects then that can be allowed in one ad, but the project should be tagged to the ad so one can search for jobs by project or by position. So in rails speak uh... yah now this is where it gets complicated at least for me. I don't want to make a database for every anime we got anidb for that. So we can just tag them like flickr has tagging for pictures. That should do.
Now we can have tags not just for the particular project but types of projects say manga, anime, moderator, channel moderator, web design, web managment, etc... that can be tagged to the ad as well.
Portability
Now having to come to the site all the time for the postings is tedious. Say a user wants to work on a show. They can set an a option to watch for position for that project. It can be emailed to them or they can get a custom xml/rss feed that could be use say in a desktop widget or in their rss reader so they can know when a job opening is available for that project they just have to be on.
Edit: The xml could be used for many things like dynamic banners that can be placed on sites that show job postings. And like a said before widgets. Or whatever you want.
Project Listing
Now for the what andrewlb does. A group has_many
rojects. Then a page can list all the projects a group is doing and another can aggregate all the groups and list them.
The Comments
Now I never talked about user discussion. This is what can make this site fail. As if users are allowed to rate say a group we know what would happen. So comment discussion like how andrewlb has for the the projects can still happen. And of course a forum. I'm still thinking about how user discussion will work out but it is a must if the site is to last.
Well everyone please continue to discuss and tell me what you like or dislike so I can modify this manifesto.