Posted by 
leiger on 1267925493|%A, %e %B %Y, %H:%M
I am involved in a couple of communities, the most obvious one being the Wikidot Community. One thing I've noticed is that without creativity, a project will get boring very quickly and eventually fall apart altogether, as the main contributors lose interest.
Over the past 6 months, Wikidot.com has added numerous new features to it's arsenal, giving developers even more powerful tools to use. Without a doubt, the last half-year has seen not only the greatest number of changes, but also the addition and upgrade of some of the greatest features. The ListPages module was completely upgraded, we now have a CSS Module, and we were given Data Forms and Private Categories.
One thing remains constant, however. Each and every one of these features was first designed, with massive community input, on either the Wikidot.com Blog or on the Projects Forum. Each one of these features first required a creative mind to come up with the idea, and similarly creative minds to continue to modify and improve on it's implementation.
The Iron Giant template site project was a resounding success when it first launched. Several templates, all of very high quality, were submitted to the site by the community. However now, months after the site's launch, no new templates are being added to the site.
What is needed is for someone to be creative and to come up with a new template idea that hasn't been done yet.
I am also a member of the CycloDS Evolution community. My main website, titled "CycloDS Revolution", is dedicated to this Nintendo DS flash cartridge. The device allows users to store all of their games on a single device, instead of carrying multiple cartridges around with them.
As any complex piece of technology can be expected to have, the CycloDS has its own Graphical User Interface (GUI). Members of the community are able to design their own themes for this GUI. One of the major problems I have as a theme creator is a lack of creativity. I may decide that I want to create a new theme, but I always stick to the designs that have worked for me in the past. I find it hard to experiment with new techniques, and my themes are never quite as good as they could be as a result.
Creativity is key. Without it we risk ourselves becoming satisfied with the same thing over and over again. Wikidot needs a constant stream of useful features, and a constant stream of new sites that test the boundaries of those features. Otherwise interest will dry up and the user-base will start to fall away.
We need more Iron Giant template sites, that take heavy advantage of Data Forms and Private Categories.
What is creativity?
How do you do creativity? :)
In which way would templates take advantage of data forms and private categories, either by themselves or tandem?
— hartnell KMF
"Early in life I learned that I was a firestarter. When I learned that I could light fires of passion I became a pyromaniac. My greatest desire is to set the world on fire." — Shawn Hartnell
Creativity is a mental and social process involving the discovery of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts.1
It's a process of actions, not an action in itself.
Now you're asking me to be creative ;-)
Data Forms could be used to improve the blog template, particularly when the 'tags' and 'file' field types are supported. A new user would be able to post to their blog using a Data Form instead of using the usual editor. Pagepath could probably be used in the blog template in some way to organise blog posts, though tags do that well enough as it is.
Private Categories can be used, at least as a starting point, to hide admin pages. The Forum Management page could be moved to a category that only the administrator can see.
Hmm… I should probably start making some of these changes tomorrow ;-)
★ Read my blog ★ STE - Offline Wikidot Editor ★ Learn Java! ★ Wikidot Help & Support ★