Hi Michael,
It seems to me that the "community space" should be structured for continual improvement processes, such as improving docs, demos etc.
A basic set of separate spaces for 1. students(end-users) 2. instruction/presentation(users) 3. administration/management(admins) 4. developers would go far in reducing the effort required to improve documentation, propose changes etc.
The environment needs to be self-promoting, self-regulating, and self-sufficient as much as possible.
I feel OpenACS.org still needs clearer distinction in this area also.
I've been basically lurking the last few months... taking notes for working on docs in each of the different areas. [..starting writing in June.] The informal structure of this environment must be maintained in order to scoop the greatest amount (and detail) of feedback. However, some basic structure (such as sorting by documentation/use) would go a long way to making the environment more useful to those who are not bitten by the OpenACS evangelist bug ie. willing to put out the extra effort to find answers to basic questions.
I have not had time to delve into the dotLRN package, so I'll leave it to you to know if my comment is relevant or not. In the case of OpenACS.org, the environment remains developer focused --a factor that I believe inhibits growth of the system's deployment. Hopefully, dotLRN's environment is more organized to an open learning-environment --which it will be used in-- without being regimented or bureaucratic ie. requiring an intuitive sitemap view from a system development perspective etc.
[Dear readers, this message is not meant as a flame --only as constructive criticism in context with the posts. None of my comments here are new or original, or need re-hashing in the context of Openacs.org. In any case, I'm not in a position at the moment to re-hash them should you want to. Sorry about that! ;) ]
