Ok, now here goes. A view things first that go for all these:
You might want to check out the actual frames below first, otherwise all this probably doesn’t make too much sense.
- Login: I put a login window at the end of the form next to the captcha. This is to remind people to log in if they want to be able to edit their content. Now the question is, can people fill in the form and then log in keeping all the fields filled in and stuff?
- Tags: I got rid of the separation between tags and categories. So proposed topical tags are still listed for ticking, followed by two tick boxes with empty fields next to them. The idea is that if someone types into them, they get automatically ticked and a new empty one shows up below that. Not sure if that’s making a lot of sense to everyone, I’m happy to try and explain. For place tags I wasn’t thinking of having category tags, but of having the three (or whatever) most popular ones suggested with a tick box and then another empty field, with more opening up as they are filled in.
- News: nothing was called news before, but it seems to make sense. It clarifies the separation from event / link / insane rant / … and includes all media types. Article very much refers to written text, and it doesn’t seem to make sense to start having a million separate publish forms. Also in the spirit of bringing the fragmented site together, this is all news and this is all stuff that goes into the newswire. To keep things fairly simple, I made a tab system rather than a long form. I hope this doesn’t imply to people they would only be able to publish one kinda media. The main body of the article goes in there, as it’s not really needed for pictures, videos etc. So I guess only one of these tabs has to have something in it. Not sure if this would be working all that amazingly, but it looks a lot clearer and less confusing. Of course all the media types should be included in the appropriate special wires (like videos) Again, if this is not making sense, I’m happy to explain.
- Info bit in the right sidebar: rather than getting rid of the sidebar, it makes sense to have basic information in there, rather than cluttering the actual form. That goes for the Editorial Guidelines obviously, but should include some stuff people keep asking about, like embedding stuff from elsewhere, maybe some info about privacy policy / IP blah, and last but not least some information about what Indymedia is and tries to do. Some historical thing could be nice, the way the stories are always told at presentations. I guess this would have to be customizable by collective, so it’s like a snippet or something maybe.
- License: just for kicks I included a button to let people license their work, as we’ve discussed this repeatedly but never came to a conclusion.
- as for the Zines, I wasn’t sure about that. I still don’t really get why there’s a special publish form for them really (having a zine library is a great thing, but I guess for me it’s still more of an independent project from Indymedia, no offense to Northern England, having said that, having the pdf viewer for uploaded pdf files is pretty cool). If I’d be thinking of another content type, I’d probably include Press Releases. Lots of groups make them after an action and they kinda only half fit into the newswire, it’s more of an own format, and might merrit it’s own publish form. People who are busy spreading the Press Release generally just want to copy and paste the whole thing and not deal with lots of fields that have to be filled in.
Oh, and the bold words in text are supposed to be links, could figure out how to underline or change the font colour. The Typewriter text is explanation that’s not supposed to be on the site, but for better understanding now.
go back to wireframes
One publish form with different faces: Publish News
| Article | Images | Video | Audio | File Upload |
 |
 |
 |
maybe someone who knows more about audio should say what kinda fields they would want? |
yeah, dunno really, I guess this would be used for random stuff, so it’s hard to say |
| no specific changes, except the tab structure of main text body and media uploads. | Added a blurb about the re-ordering (cool feature that’s impossible to find) and added a description box. This comes from thinking that it might allow people to create kinda photo essays. Lots of people have been asking about the possibility of including pics at certain points in the text. Apparently we can’t do that, but we can have some slightly longer text in between pictures. I’d be using that feature for sure. |
Added a few fields that might be useful. The idea of asking people to tell us what aspect ratio the video is comes from out problems with ‘fake’ 16:9 (the ones with the wrong pixel aspect ratio) being displayed all squeezed up as 4:3. Question is if it’s technically possible to encode the video in what’s ticked? |
someone write here what fields they want |
any cool ideas? |
and the other publish forms:
| Links/Other Media | Events |
 |
 |
| major change is having a source field for giving the source and a link field fur the url. ideally this could be displayed in the title as “source: title” (e.g. “Guardian: Chickpea is an Anarchist!”). Also included groups ticking. | There’s mostly a bit of rearranging here, and more foldup stuff. Like for the repeat event thing, I thought it could fold out the way the maps do or the moderation box. Saves space and makes the thing easier to look at and less crowded. Only two upload files, can’t really see what other files people would want, but of course this could be the same as the news publish form. |
