Comments please and could do with some help to turn it into a coherent doc for outreach.
Many people ask what is the Open Media Network (OMN)
For activists it might be useful to see it as a rebooting of a “indymedia” project from were it should have been 5 years ago when it died.
A #4opens bounded network motivated by the PGA hallmarks.
At a basic level, Publish once and your article appears in many places linking back to your site/blog.
User stories
Link to um (LINK)
Tech
Its Many websites and a few aggregaters sharing a common open “data soup” built with people to people (trust) based tagging.
From this human community/data network many “new” radical powerful things can grow.
Its builds KISS from the legacy web (RSS) and moves us into the per2per semantic web (GNU social)
Thought (LINK)
Licensing – #4opens
What is ethical aggregation?
Its networking other peoples content in a respectful way to build a network wide anufe to start to compete with the failing #dotcons
* Sections/sidebars of OMN links should be prominently displayed on each members site, preferably on every page if small.
* There should be no no-follow tags on valid links to member sites.
* The content is read (by link) on the original host site, comments are made on the original host site.
* This behaviour can be different for apps were the full content could be read in app. This should be agreed by both partys (can have a opt out tag for this as with many other parts of the network)
* The original source (RSS feed site) is always shown under the content title as a live link
* (Optional) the tags should be visible under the full article
* For apps no adverts should be placed next to CC non commercial full content (with out agreement), fine to have ads on a page next to links.
* A OMN badge is (optional) next to the link section and/or on the site about page – this can LINK to the OMN aggregate that the site gets its data flow from OR to the OMN project site.
If you haven’t realized yet the aggregating hubs/nodes are the new “indymedia” sites
* These can be by subject, country, region or city etc.
* Much of the “centralizing” parts of the IMC network are no longer needed as this is inherently a “open” project, rather than a centralizing project. Sites that would like to see them selves as IMC can of course follow these “unneeded” parts if they desire – this will lead to a “natural” grouping of IMC focused sites with in the “open data soup”.
* Existing indymedia sites can continue “outside” the network as their content can be brought in via RSS if sites are interested in it. Just to repeat nobody has to do anything.
* Posting is generally via individual site/blogs, but can be through existent portal/silos like indymedia or existing group sites such as https://www.opendemocracy.net if users prefer to publish on them.
The function of “nodes” will organically grow
* Publishing sites are the source of content these will likely just input a RSS feed up to the next level.
* Aggregating site, these are subjects, locality etc they will take in feeds from publishing sites and output (trusted) quality feeds to the next level.
* News/link portals will be regional, national, big subject sites, these will mostly get their trusted feeds from aggregating (middle) sites and a few trusted publishing sites.
As you can see from this publishing is the hardiest job as you need to create the content, second is aggregation as the is much work quality controlling and adding semantic data (tags) to the flow of content.
The easeast to setup and run are the “top” sites to add value to these will be more of a challenge. One way could be to create articles of linking overviews covering stores from the flows – this content can of course be feed back into the lower sites.
Every thing links to everything else.
What do these “nodes” do to be part of the OMN?
* They host flows of content based on tags from other OMN sites on subject that interest them.
* This content is brought in vier RSS from external sites and by atompub from OMN sites.
* They can tag/retag this flow of objects to direct it to other nodes/site sidebars.
* Other sites can get taged based flows (with embed codes if needed) from there chosen “nodes”
* (Optionally) they can archive this content if they like.
KISS meta-taging
This will seem stupid to many geeks, lets use simple text “twitter” tags to do the categorization of data objects in the OMN flow.
* @ before a tag means a person, that is, a RSS object with an enclosure that is a file contenting a open “contact” format file.
* # before tag is means a bookmark link to a site, the title will be the link.
(optional) Need a “symbol” for video, audio, photo etc.
These objects are tagged just like any other object and are stored/flow through the network just like text articles.
(optional) Can try having a different publish pages for each format that automatically add these tags?
It would be normal to create a new format to for each part of the OMN and geeks/fashernistas have done this over many times over the last 10 years.
Its KISS “stupid” for good, empowering, “normal” people to work on and create new products/services/connections in a “data common soup”
Geek talk – The future of OMN content flows
What has power is the non branded, non owned, KISS implementation of the #OMN that its not part of the “geek problem” and only tangentially connected to the #fashernista agenda’s.
Move to mobile is key for real growth of atl/grassroots media. This is relatively easy as the will be a “open data pool” of semantically enriched content to dip into for quality new, video and audio content flow for building apps. But content is not king in this case, what has real power is the ability to publish direct from mobiles photos, video, audio and text direct to a node of the OMN (this could also be your source, blog/site/portal) in this we empower a move away from “journalism” on the #dotcons and back onto the “openweb”.
Get people (CMS’s) to publish in “markup” (as well at html/corporate silos formats) so that content can be loaded/displayed natively on aggregating sites/apps in the formating of the aggregate site/app and display cross site comments – all from the original host. In this we are not only sharing links we are sharing content and discussion across the OMN.
There is nothing original in this all the #dotcons are doing this already and the are many open standards (mark-up being one) that allow this. The originality is in the “just doing it” and the KISS implementation of this push.
I don’t see this as radical, though I see the outcome as revolutionary.