Re: [GMG-Devel] Mediagoblin usage scenario? Any advice?

[Christopher Allan Webber]

Heya Jason,

It sounds like MediaGoblin is a good fit.  Most of the things you've
described we already do or are working towards... with the exception
that I don't know what "clip to mediagoblin bookmarklet" is.  We have a
pretty robust plugin system now, I think if MediaGoblin needs to be
customized a bit to your needs, you can look into plugins for such
things?  New media types are certainly possible; the ability to build
new ones is a core part of MediaGoblin's design (and now even more
flexible because in the next release media types will be plugins).

Hope that helps, definitely curious to see what you end up doing with
this!

 - Chris


Jason Li writes:

> Hi,
>
> My friends and I are doing some work on archiving internet memes, and
> I was wondering if (and how) Mediagoblin would be a good platform for
> us. Aside from asking you all for some advice, I'm hoping that this
> email will also help everyone as they're design the system in the
> years ahead.
>
> So we run a recently-launched group called The Civic Beat (beta
> website here), and one of the tasks that we've begun to do internally
> within the group is to archive certain internet memes. By internet
> memes I mean "viral" internet phenomena, primarily images but also
> includes text, tweets, videos. Our coverage focuses exclusively on
> social-political memes from around the world, which also happen to be
> the type that disappears quickly (especially in censored-internet
> countries like China). Though in general, memes often become hard to
> find weeks later even on the uncensored internet – tweets are hard to
> find after a while, and Facebook content is pretty ephemeral in
> general.
>
> We wish to archive for two reasons:
>
> To create a lasting record (in the vein of the Internet Archive)
> To create a group collaboration space for our team to
>   upload/annotate/comment on media artifacts
> To create an open platform for meme creators to get credit for a piece
>   of media and open license their works
>
> Right now, Mediagoblin is our platform of choice for the following
> reasons:
>
> It's an open source platform that allows independent organizations to own the 
> data 
> It promotes Creative Commons usage.
> It has plans to support other file formats: PDF, etc.
> Each media object has tagging, license and description support
> Content sorting by collections + uploader/user + tagging
> Multiple user support
>
> It's also worthwhile to mention that we did look at other options –
> Evernote, Storify, Archive-It (the Internet Archive's own tool for
> others), Pinterest, Tumblr, Wordpress, Dropbox... the list goes
> on. And we haven't 100% committed to Mediagoblin yet – we're still
> fielding advice (including here) on whether Mediagoblin is right for
> us. We do have a .lazyserver instance set up here though.
>
> And here comes the part that I'm hoping is the most interesting for
> you all – our wishlist of features, in no particular order:
>
> Clip to Mediagoblin bookmarklet – While this is probably too far
>   outside the original Mediagoblin mission, as researchers this would be
>   an incredible tool for us when making image archives.
> Multiple custom fields for each media object – In our case, we'd like
>   to have, say, separate fields for creator (in case one of us
>   researchers uploads an image created by someone else), source URL,
>   date, and maybe countries be a separate tag class (i.e. separately
>   inputted and displayed but still clickable to view all from country)
> Support for other media types – text, tweets, videos
> Easier to setup, easier to modify templates – I've set up our instance
>   in this case, but I'm pretty much a n00b when it comes to sysadmin
>   duties. (I've documented my process here.)
> A "frontpage" that shows recent submissions, featured content, recent
>   comments, etc. (I'd be happy to contribute some hours to this as a
>   designer BTW, though my coding abilities don't go far beyond CSS.)
>
> So in terms of advice, I was wondering if you all think:
>
> Mediagoblin is a good platform for our use case – I admit our needs
> are a bit strange :) Our wishlist sounds too far off the mark – it's
> kind of a red flag if what we want is at odds with what you all
> want. Granted it's not going to be a perfect overlap.
>
> Also please let me know if it is okay that I've emailed the dev
> list. I'd be happy to send these emails to other places in the future
> – it just seemed the best venue from what I could tell for now!
>
> If you've made it this far down... thanks for reading!
>
> Best,
>
> Jason Li
> hongkonggong.com
>
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