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The way to most successfully continue this in the long term,

A careful mix of technical infrastructure/conventions and some, ehm, social engineering may be needed, at least that is my experience from TclURL and PythonURL (both operating for several years now).

Taking care of "how" is trivial. Email, wiki, RSS, newsgroup, whatever. But the other essential ingredient of long term collective participation IMO, is to make the act of compiling/publishing a weekly summary attractive to the person doing it.

Several ways to get there - here are some notes on that:

- Don't underestimate the role of each individual involved in getting long-term activities going and *keeping* them going. Commitment is a human quality, no matter how much we scripting geeks all love to automate everything under the sun.

- Limited investment: rotating participation, so that people can contribute without being sucked into a permanent commitment. There is nothing wrong with doing say 4 weekly summaries, then passing the baton on to others, then coming back to do another round of summaries. It lets those who like to do this become real good at it, as repeat participants.

- A high profile: let community leaders kick off the process, so that things start out with a very high quality and visibility. Setting the standard as well as showing serious buy-in from the leaders. Becoming one of the future contributors becomes a matter of respect and pride. Wanna do something for Lua? Get yourself invited for a round of weekly summaries.

- One person will probably have to oversee the process long term, so that new contributors (they are more like "editors", really) get queued up and transfer their responsibility in an orderly manner.

- Personal visibility: the person currently doing the work "owns" that weekly summary, and gets mentioned by name. Again, pride and professionalism for all to see.

- A fixed format, so the effort remains focused on content, not style. Both TclURL and PythonURL have been using a one-line description plus 1..3 urls per item with great success. It's a pointer to the real information first, and a summary by its choice of description and exact urls second. The mantra is: keep it simple, plain text, concise, easy to skim.

- Strict weekly cycle so everyone knows the summary comes out on, say, Sunday or Monday. Continuity works best when there is a simple and natural pattern. Also makes for very clear commitments.

- Consider adding an email subscription option. With all the activity and noise out there in that digital soup called the internet, I still like to see an executive summary drop on my floor mat once a week, eh, I mean inbox. Yes, even when we have RSS.

Below are copies of recent TclURL and PythonURL posts FYI, both under the superb stewardship of Cameron Laird for many many years now.

-jcw





Newsgroups: comp.lang.tcl
Subject: Tcl-URL! - weekly Tcl news and links (Jan  3)
From: Cameron Laird <tcl-url@phaseit.net>
Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2008 01:01:34 +0000

QOTW: "[I]t's almost always a mistake to change [encoding system]." - Donal K.
Fellows

"... for me it has always been simple: 'Three or more: Use a for.' This is
why we have loops. This is why we are programmers." - Charles Petzold
   http://charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html


   DLTK supports Itcl and XOTcl class browsing:
	http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_thread/thread/eeb53e0f5f8f328e/
There still are reasons to like RamDebugger, Komodo, Eclipse, Elvis, ...
	
   Jeff, Donal, and WavyDavy (among others) explain the hazards to Tcl
   when threads and forking come together:
	http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_thread/thread/90781d253afae197/


Thanks to Arjen Markus for his weekly summary of Wiki action:
 We have a large bunch of pages to cover, so, apart
 from the best wishes for the New Year: let's start!

 What about Tcl 8.5?
 - Write down _your_ impressions of Tcl/Tk 8.5?
   <http:/wiki.tcl.tk/20541> is one personal account

 - Numerous things have changed, but the [expr] command
   has gained a few very nice features. See for instance
   <http:/wiki.tcl.tk/20279>

 - Finding and installing extensions should be even easier with
   Teacup and Teapot: <http://wiki.tcl.tk/17305>

 Graphics, not necessarily the 8.5 way
 - There are numerous widget sets besides Tk (and Ttk) that
   you can use: <http://wiki.tcl.tk/1746>

 - The megaimage package is a fairly new way to handle images
   - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/20112> teaches you how to use it.

 - This French page presents a little GUI around the UNIX/Linux
   tools find and grep, (the GUI is based on GRIDPLUS2) -
   <http://wfr.tcl.tk/1549>

 A computation or two
 - Fascinated by statistics? This page provides an overview
   of the statistical distributions you can find on the
   Wiki: <http://wiki.tcl.tk/20527>

 - Or do you prefer spreadsheets? Here's a nice page for
   you then: <http://wiki.tcl.tk/20552>

 - And what would computing be without regular expressions?
   PCRE are one particular flavour of REs that some people
   like and others don't: <http://wiki.tcl.tk/9384>

 - One of the underlying techniques for dealing with REs
   is that of deterministic finite-state machines. And
   that technique has its own Wiki page:
   <http://wiki.tcl.tk/16276>

 People
 - Will the combination of signals for our two main senses
   make it a better editor? It seems a nice idea, anyhow:
   <http://wiki.tcl.tk/20585>

 - How do you develop? Is "test-driven development" your
   thing too? <http://wiki.tcl.tk/13327>

 - Now there's a thought! A meeting of European Tclers
   (or better still: a meeting of Tclers on European
   soil) in France? Just one of the topics in this
   monthly summary: <http://wfr.tcl.tk/1554>



Everything Tcl-related you want is probably one or two clicks away in these
pages:
   The "Welcome to comp.lang.tcl" message by Andreas Kupries
       http://www.purl.org/net/tcl-welcome
   comp.lang.tcl is a crucial resource for Tcl practitioners.
   An interesting perspective on its traffic appears at
       http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/about

   The Tcl Developer Site is Tcl's "home base".
	http://www.tcl.tk

   Larry Virden maintains a comp.lang.tcl FAQ launcher.
       http://www.purl.org/NET/Tcl-FAQ/

   The Tcl Developer Xchange is a highly organized resource center
   of documents and software with provisions for individuals to
   maintain references to their own software:
       http://www.tcl.tk/resource/
   The TDX sponsor, ActiveState, also keeps info to convince your
   boss Tcl is a good thing
       http://www.tcl.tk/scripting/

The Tcl'ers Wiki is a huge, dynamic, collaboratively edited repository of documentation, examples, tutorials and pontifications on all things
   Tcl.
       http://wiki.tcl.tk/0
   For the ideal overview of the topics about Tcl most likely to
   interest a newcomer, see "Arts and Crafts ..."
       http://wiki.tcl.tk/969
   There's also a high-quality Wikibook on Tcl:
       http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Programming:Tcl

   ActiveState maintains binaries distribution and development tools
       http://www.activestate.com/Tcl
   along with a Cookbook of Tcl recipes
       http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Tcl

   "La Gazette du Técleux" is an important monthly publication.
	http://wfr.tcl.tk/1159

   deli.cio.us presents an intriguing approach to reference commentary.
   It already aggregates quite a bit of Tcl intelligence.
       http://del.icio.us/tag/tcl

   Cameron Laird tracks several Tcl/Tk references of interest (but
   needs to validate many of the links).
       http://phaseit.net/claird/comp.lang.tcl/

   Years ago, Cetus Links maintained a Tcl/Tk page with verified links
       http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_tcl_tk.html

   "Yahoo! Groups" archives comp.lang.tcl.announce posts--even
   though clta itself is dormant.
       http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tcl_announce/

We're working on more useful archives of past installments.  In the
meantime, an alternative is
 http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_q=+Tcl-URL&as_ugroup=comp.lang.tcl

Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome.

To receive a new issue of this posting in e-mail each Monday, ask
<claird@phaseit.net> to subscribe.  Be sure to mention "Tcl-URL!".
--
Phaseit, Inc. (http://phaseit.net) is pleased to participate in and
sponsor the "Tcl-URL!" project.






Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
From: "Gabriel Genellina" <python-url@phaseit.net>
Subject: Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Dec 31)
Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 15:33:34 +0000

QOTW: "I find the best approach is to use multiple languages." - Roger Binns

"All generators can be re-written with classes using the iterator
protocol." -  Jean-Paul Calderone


   Mutable default arguments revisited:
       http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/33b7b1a1f62c9d91/

   itertools.dropwhile/takewhile might be deprecated:
       http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/8e19a68c0047430a/

   Getting n items at a time from a generator:
       http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/4696a3b3e1a6d691/

A design decision: have an Article class, want a list of all Articles:
       http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/9be37092d1c3c465/

   Looking for a common API for parallel processing:
       http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/57ef7cf6fc5e49b2/

   Why is pythonXX.dll installed in a system directory, and not
   besides the python executable?
       http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/1c165cabaa7208eb/


========================================================================
Everything Python-related you want is probably one or two clicks away in
these pages:

   Python.org's Python Language Website is the traditional
   center of Pythonia
       http://www.python.org
   Notice especially the master FAQ
       http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html

   PythonWare complements the digest you're reading with the
   marvelous daily python url
        http://www.pythonware.com/daily
   Mygale is a news-gathering webcrawler that specializes in (new)
   World-Wide Web articles related to Python.
        http://www.awaretek.com/nowak/mygale.html
   While cosmetically similar, Mygale and the Daily Python-URL
   are utterly different in their technologies and generally in
   their results.

   Just beginning with Python?  This page is a great place to start:
	http://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide/Programmers

The Python Papers aims to publish "the efforts of Python enthusiats":
	http://pythonpapers.org/
   The Python Magazine is a technical monthly devoted to Python:
	http://pythonmagazine.com

   Readers have recommended the "Planet" sites:
	http://planetpython.org
	http://planet.python.org

   comp.lang.python.announce announces new Python software.  Be
   sure to scan this newsgroup weekly.
       http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python.announce

   Python411 indexes "podcasts ... to help people learn Python ..."
   Updates appear more-than-weekly:
       http://www.awaretek.com/python/index.html

   Steve Bethard continues the marvelous tradition early borne by
   Andrew Kuchling, Michael Hudson, Brett Cannon, Tony Meyer, and Tim
   Lesher of intelligently summarizing action on the python-dev mailing
   list once every other week.
	http://www.python.org/dev/summary/

   The Python Package Index catalogues packages.
       http://www.python.org/pypi/

The somewhat older Vaults of Parnassus ambitiously collects references
   to all sorts of Python resources.
       http://www.vex.net/~x/parnassus/

   Much of Python's real work takes place on Special-Interest Group
   mailing lists
       http://www.python.org/sigs/

   Python Success Stories--from air-traffic control to on-line
   match-making--can inspire you or decision-makers to whom you're
   subject with a vision of what the language makes practical.
       http://www.pythonology.com/success

   The Python Software Foundation (PSF) has replaced the Python
   Consortium as an independent nexus of activity.  It has official
   responsibility for Python's development and maintenance.
       http://www.python.org/psf/
   Among the ways you can support PSF is with a donation.
       http://www.python.org/psf/donate.html

   Kurt B. Kaiser publishes a weekly report on faults and patches.
       http://www.google.com/groups?as_usubject=weekly%20python%20patch

   Although unmaintained since 2002, the Cetus collection of Python
   hyperlinks retains a few gems.
       http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_python.html

   Python FAQTS
       http://python.faqts.com/

   The Cookbook is a collaborative effort to capture useful and
   interesting recipes.
	http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python

   Many Python conferences around the world are in preparation.
   Watch this space for links to them.

   Among several Python-oriented RSS/RDF feeds available are
	http://www.python.org/channews.rdf
	http://bootleg-rss.g-blog.net/pythonware_com_daily.pcgi
	http://python.de/backend.php
   For more, see
	http://www.syndic8.com/feedlist.php?ShowMatch=python&ShowStatus=all
   The old Python "To-Do List" now lives principally in a
   SourceForge reincarnation.
       http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=355470&group_id=5470&func=browse
	http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0042/

   The online Python Journal is posted at pythonjournal.cognizor.com.
   editor@pythonjournal.com and editor@pythonjournal.cognizor.com
   welcome submission of material that helps people's understanding
   of Python use, and offer Web presentation of your work.

   del.icio.us presents an intriguing approach to reference commentary.
   It already aggregates quite a bit of Python intelligence.
       http://del.icio.us/tag/python

   *Py: the Journal of the Python Language*
       http://www.pyzine.com

   Archive probing tricks of the trade:
       http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python&num=100
       http://groups.google.com/groups?meta=site%3Dgroups%26group%3Dcomp.lang.python.*

Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here:
 http://www.ddj.com/topic/python/ (requires subscription)
 http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?q=python-url+group:comp.lang.python*&start=0&scoring=d&;
 http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html (dormant)
or
 http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_q=+Python-URL!&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python
There is *not* an RSS for "Python-URL!"--at least not yet.  Arguments
for and against are occasionally entertained.


Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome.
E-mail to <Python-URL@phaseit.net> should get through.

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(approximately), ask <claird@phaseit.net> to subscribe.  Mention
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