Software Engineering for Internet Applications - Student Community

Try to make sure that your audience can stop reading at any pointand still get a complete picture. Thus the first paragraph or twoshould say what you've built and why it is important to this group ofusers. This introduction should say a little something about thecommunity for whom the application has been built and why theycan't simply get together in the same room at the same time.It is probably worth concentrating on screen shots that illustrate yourapplication's unique and surprising features. Things such asstandalone discussion forums or full-text search pages can bedescribed in a single bullet item or sentence and easily imagined bythe reader.If you find that your screen shots aren't very compelling and that ittakes 5 or 6 screen shots to tell a story, consider redesigning some ofyour pages! If it makes sense to see all the site's most importantfeatures and information on one screen in your overview document, itprobably makes sense for the everyday users of the site.You have two basic options for structure. If it is more or less obvioushow people are going to use the service, you might be able to getaway with the Laundry List Structure: list the features of theapplication, punctuated by screen shots. In general, however, theDay in the Life Structure is probably more compelling andunderstandable. Here you walk through a scenario of how severalusers might come to the application and accomplish tasks. Forexample, on a photo critique site you might show the following:2961. Schlomo Mendelssohn uploads his latest photograph of hisdog (screen shot of photo upload page)2. Winston Wu views a page of the most recently submittedphotos and picks Schlomo's3. Winston uploads a comment on Schlomo's photo, attachingan edited version of the photo (screen shot of the "attach afile to your comment" page)4. Schlomo checks in from his mobile phone's browser to seewho has critiqued his photo5. Winona Horowitz calls in from a friend's telephone and findsout from the VoiceXML interface that a lot of new contenthas been posted in the last 24 hours6. Winona goes home to a Web browser and visits theadministration page and deletes a duplicate posting andthree off-topic posts (screen shot of the "all recentlyuploaded content")7. ...special attention to online learning communities. Before setting off tosurf, you might find it useful to think about the following principles ofsustainable online community:1. magnet content authored by experts2. means of collaboration3. powerful facilities for browsing and searching both magnetcontent and contributed content4. means of delegation of moderation5. means of identifying members who are imposing an undueburden on the community and ways of changing theirbehavior and/or excluding them from the community withoutthem realizing it6. means of software extension by community membersthemselvesWhen you visit a site ask yourself "Did they author or license asubstantial body of tutorial content?" Look at the ratio betweenpublisher-authored and user-authored content. If more than half ofthe content is authored by users the site is heading away frompublishing and toward community. Note the number of different waysin which a user can post some information that then becomesavailable to other users ("means of collaboration"). See whether thedefault search utility on the site returns results from things likediscussion forum postings. As an unprivileged user it will be hard foryou to determine whether or not the site has provisions fordistributing the content moderation burden or excluding difficultusers. However, you can sometimes make inferences about Element6, whether or not the software can be extended by people who areregular users and administrators of the community but aren't expertprogrammers. If the site is commercial check the job listings to seewhat skills are required. If the site hasn't adopted the abstract URLreligion (see "Basics" chapter) the file extensions may give you a clueas to implementation technology. A ".pl", ".asp", ".php", ".adp", or".tcl" indicates the use of a scripting language, amenable to programextensions by novices. A ".jsp" or the term "servlet" in the URLindicates the use of Java, a language that is intended only forprofessional programmers.3.9 Exercise 3Find the best existing online communities in your subject area. Notehow closely they conform to the six elements of sustainability listedabove. Also write down anything strikingly good or bad about theregistration process and the mechanisms of collaboration, e.g., indiscussion forums, comments on articles, and chat rooms. Look for53