[CS-FSLUG] Christian FOSS News/Portal Site

[Josiah Ritchie]

On Tue, 2004-12-14 at 11:47 -0600, Tim Young wrote:
> Yes, CODN.net is "ours" (LightSys's).  I actually take a bit of ownership in a few of
> them, but mostly because we are already working together.  I log on to a number of
> Christian web-sites and post to them as a support role.
> 
> In ICTA they are discussing a lot of complex authentication schemes and stuff.  I
> actually think that simple RSS feeds might just do the trick.  I think that the model
> of sourceforge, newsforge, fresh-meat, etc. would be an excellent starting point.
> Lots of the sourceforge project news information is "cross-posted" to the other sites
> by means of the RSS feeds.
> 
> But there are a few other things that we are trying to find a solution for.  In
> particular there is a need for us to find a way for mission organizations to post
> things like project needs, job positions, etc.  And to have those postings travel to
> a central location, or be distributed to other locations through something like RSS.
> But the missions need to feel the ownership of their data, and not have the overhead
> (or cost) of posting it to multiple sites.  (There are a number of sites for
> short-term-missions that organizations pay to post a short blurb about their mission
> on, and because of the process involved it is difficult for them to keep up).  Once
> they have this process for projects, they would like the same thing for short-term
> missions, and other such things.

Sounds like you are speaking of a site with less of a technical bend and
more of a global ministry news site. Both would be useful, but I think
merging the two might drastically reduce the potential audience and
therefore the potential use.

The concept reminds me of an automation of "CraigsList".

> I think what we are looking at is something that is a cross between newsgroups and
> rss feeds.  We still do not have all the pieces together, so we do not know how to
> describe the whole problem.
> 
> How would a church use such a site? What types of postings might they make?

pastor job postings
equipment needs
service needs
 - Church needs new roof
 - Church needs network consulting

> How about Bible Schools?

Short-term missions postings
 - Missions Boards
 - Projects that overwhelm a small church
faculty-staff positions
news releases - new programs, services

We could perhaps highlight services online like
missionarytechsupport.com and individuals in certain areas interested in
showing churces the proper usage of FOSS. This could connect up with
Don's work on the creation of tutorials and direct to other relevant
resource centers.

JSR/