Diigo is primarily a social BOOKMARKING app, i.e. for sharing links (bookmarks) of useful/interesting/etc sites with others, and for being able to access them yourself if you are using another computer or device. Bookmarks for CCAC CAPs can be added too, but let's decide on a tag for them (maybe simply CAP) so that all - and only - CAP-related bookmarks can be retrieved in one click on that tag.
Diigo group TOPICS are a secondary feature. It does work like a forum for each group, and it can be one of the tools for publicizing given CAPs, once they are presented online and Diigo-bookmarked, among would-be followers of our Diigo group and for answering their questions. This is very targeted and potentially very useful, also to encourage people to join the general project.
However, Diigo group topics cannot replace the blog in publicizing CAPs, because the blog will reach a wider public. And they are not a very efficient tool for collaboratively prepare a CAP: in the case of "CCAC CAP 3: Repository of Captioning and CART Resources/Technologies", Zehavit and I have decided to have a Skype conversation (possibly + written chat) to agree synchronously on our work flow. Then we'll be able to directly collaborate on her online spreadsheet, or a copy of it, then we'll probably use e-mail too, according to evolving situations.
And the same will obtain for collaborating on other CAPs: the tools used will be determined by the nature of the CAP, the tech preferences of the people collaborating in it, the various situations arising in the preparation.
Only when CAPs are ready to launch can they be bookmarked, and announced in a topic, of this Diigo group. But first they must be announced on the blog, so that they can be Diigo-bookmarked with appropriate tag/s.
Conversely, there is no real reason for limiting the use of this group's topics to announcing CAPs. They could also be used to discuss publicly a theme treated by several sites.
For instance the US nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System on Nov. 11 has been announced in different ways on different sites, with an effort to be accessible to deaf people. This has caused discussions that went off-topic in our private Google Group. But if we bookmarked these pages here with a single common tag - say, EAS-test - we could then also have a topic here for discussing them publicly and more freely.
This wouldn't be a discussion about a CAP, but a CAP might emerge from it, or part of it might come in handy for an existing CAP. For instance, confusion arising by interferences between too many accessibility means interfering with each other might be relevant to the advocacy of closed captioning - which can be switched off by those who don't want captions - as preferable to "open captioning", i.e. captions directly encrusted in the video, which users cannot switch off. Etc.
I suggested Diigo when you mentioned the difficulty to follow all statements that might relate to CAPs in the Google group. I explained that Diigo was a social bookmarking site that allows you to describe the content of socially bookmarked pages by adding tags to the bookmarks. I gave the example of http://groups.diigo.com/group/etcjournal (the Diigo group for etcjournal.com). And you agreed that we try a Diigo group.
When you said you didn't understand what tags were and thought other members of CCAC might not either, I pointed to the "Social Bookmarking in Plain English" closed captioned and transcribed video tutorial .
How come you interpreted these explanations as meaning that a Diigo group might be a forum for working on CAPs I don't know. As I already wrote, though Diigo groups do have a kind of forum with the "topics feature", and though it is possible to add comments to each bookmark, Diigo is not primarily meant for forums.
When you rightly objected that the name for the group must be changed, it only took me 3 minutes to make a new group, move the content from the first to the second one and re-invite people who had joined the former to the latter.
So really, if you think that socially bookmarking and describing pages related to closed captioning and accessibility in an easily retrievable way is of no use to CCAC, I'm fine with deleting this group. Or if you prefer to try it for a little longer, I'm fine with that too.
Thank you for your very complete and clear explanations, Lauren. About your question "At the same time, perhaps you find the CCAC web pages called "Articles and Resources" to be unhelpful?": not at all, they are great resources. So I've bookmarked and tagged these pages here, to illustrate how Diigo tagging can help retrieving particular ones.
In the "Top 10 Tags" part on the right of the main http://groups.diigo.com/group/ccacaptioning page of this group, click e.g. on the CCAC tag to only have links to pages from the official CCAC sites.
If you click on this "+" sign, the results will only mention pages that have been tagged with both the CCAC tag and the related tag. For instance, if you click on the "+" before "articlesandresources", you will get to http://groups.diigo.com/group/ccacaptioning/content/tag/articlesandresources%20CCAC - i.e. "Group items tagged CCAC articlesandresources", i.e. the list of the CCAC's articles and resources pages, with again a list of related tags on the right, and above it a list of selected tags (more about that one below)
If you are interested in CCAC articles and resources about legal aspects, you can click on the + before the Law related tag and you'll get to http://groups.diigo.com/group/ccacaptioning/content/tag/Law%20articlesandresources%20CCAC, i.e. " "Group items tagged Law CCAC articlesandresources", i.e. the list of CCAC's articles and resources pages dealing with legal issues.
If you now want to explore CCAC's articles and resources pages about, say "advocacy", you can remove the "Law" tag by clicking on the "-" sign in the list of selected tags, and click on the "+" before "advocacy". You'll get to http://groups.diigo.com/group/ccacaptioning/content/tag/advocacy%20articlesandresources%20CCAC, i.e. "Group items tagged advocacy articlesandresources CCAC".
And so on: playing with these + and - signs is a really neat way to narrow down, steer and widen searches, potentially over all the CCAC sites (main, blog, google group) once the blog and google group get bookmarked too
****
Then each bookmark can include a quotation from the page (by just highlighting the text when you do the bookmark, but I often edit the quotedtext before posting, to shorten it) and a comment.
For instance, in http://groups.diigo.com/group/ccacaptioning/content/why-captioning-in-transportation-collaborative-for-communication-access-via-captioning-3601718 , I have included a quotation: "From John Waldo and the WA-CAP in Washington State. An excellent illustration of the sort of captioning inclusion we need in many forms of transportation - ferries, trains, buses, airplanes, cruise ships - copied with permission from this important advocacy site online. (...) Installation of the visual paging system is being done to resolve a lawsuit that the Washington State Communication Access Project (Wash-CAP) brought against WSF in 2008. The suit was quickly resolved in the form of an agreed order signed by the court. WSF has been working promptly and diligently to implement the terms of that order, and deserves our commendation and thanks."
Of course, content of the private google group must not be quoted this way in this Diigo group's bookmarks, but comments and tags can be added in those bookmarks too.
So OK, let's try this group for a further week and then we see?
**** Finally, about http://ccacblog.wordpress.com/, you write "Someone else helped me with the CCACblog - as you know, a free wordpress site. Yet I am not skilled enough to explore that and use it in a richer way, e.g. for a newsletter. At the moment, I don't have time to write new blogs either, which I think are sorely needed in order to build our audience there."
I've done that in mine, http://almansi.wordpress.com/ , via the widget managing page of the admin interface, just as for the e-mail subscription link you already have.
Diigo is primarily a social BOOKMARKING app, i.e. for sharing links (bookmarks) of useful/interesting/etc sites with others, and for being able to access them yourself if you are using another computer or device. Bookmarks for CCAC CAPs can be added too, but let's decide on a tag for them (maybe simply CAP) so that all - and only - CAP-related bookmarks can be retrieved in one click on that tag.
Diigo group TOPICS are a secondary feature. It does work like a forum for each group, and it can be one of the tools for publicizing given CAPs, once they are presented online and Diigo-bookmarked, among would-be followers of our Diigo group and for answering their questions. This is very targeted and potentially very useful, also to encourage people to join the general project.
However, Diigo group topics cannot replace the blog in publicizing CAPs, because the blog will reach a wider public. And they are not a very efficient tool for collaboratively prepare a CAP: in the case of "CCAC CAP 3: Repository of Captioning and CART Resources/Technologies", Zehavit and I have decided to have a Skype conversation (possibly + written chat) to agree synchronously on our work flow. Then we'll be able to directly collaborate on her online spreadsheet, or a copy of it, then we'll probably use e-mail too, according to evolving situations.
And the same will obtain for collaborating on other CAPs: the tools used will be determined by the nature of the CAP, the tech preferences of the people collaborating in it, the various situations arising in the preparation.
Only when CAPs are ready to launch can they be bookmarked, and announced in a topic, of this Diigo group. But first they must be announced on the blog, so that they can be Diigo-bookmarked with appropriate tag/s.
Conversely, there is no real reason for limiting the use of this group's topics to announcing CAPs. They could also be used to discuss publicly a theme treated by several sites.
For instance the US nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System on Nov. 11 has been announced in different ways on different sites, with an effort to be accessible to deaf people. This has caused discussions that went off-topic in our private Google Group. But if we bookmarked these pages here with a single common tag - say, EAS-test - we could then also have a topic here for discussing them publicly and more freely.
This wouldn't be a discussion about a CAP, but a CAP might emerge from it, or part of it might come in handy for an existing CAP. For instance, confusion arising by interferences between too many accessibility means interfering with each other might be relevant to the advocacy of closed captioning - which can be switched off by those who don't want captions - as preferable to "open captioning", i.e. captions directly encrusted in the video, which users cannot switch off. Etc.
I suggested Diigo when you mentioned the difficulty to follow all statements that might relate to CAPs in the Google group. I explained that Diigo was a social bookmarking site that allows you to describe the content of socially bookmarked pages by adding tags to the bookmarks. I gave the example of http://groups.diigo.com/group/etcjournal (the Diigo group for etcjournal.com). And you agreed that we try a Diigo group.
When you said you didn't understand what tags were and thought other members of CCAC might not either, I pointed to the "Social Bookmarking in Plain English" closed captioned and transcribed video tutorial
How come you interpreted these explanations as meaning that a Diigo group might be a forum for working on CAPs I don't know. As I already wrote, though Diigo groups do have a kind of forum with the "topics feature", and though it is possible to add comments to each bookmark, Diigo is not primarily meant for forums.
When you rightly objected that the name for the group must be changed, it only took me 3 minutes to make a new group, move the content from the first to the second one and re-invite people who had joined the former to the latter.
So really, if you think that socially bookmarking and describing pages related to closed captioning and accessibility in an easily retrievable way is of no use to CCAC, I'm fine with deleting this group. Or if you prefer to try it for a little longer, I'm fine with that too.
Best
Claude
In the "Top 10 Tags" part on the right of the main http://groups.diigo.com/group/ccacaptioning page of this group, click e.g. on the CCAC tag to only have links to pages from the official CCAC sites.
You get to the http://groups.diigo.com/group/ccacaptioning/content/tag/CCAC page that lists them all, and on the right, there is now a "Related tags" list, with a "+" sign before each tag.
If you click on this "+" sign, the results will only mention pages that have been tagged with both the CCAC tag and the related tag. For instance, if you click on the "+" before "articlesandresources", you will get to http://groups.diigo.com/group/ccacaptioning/content/tag/articlesandresources%20CCAC - i.e. "Group items tagged CCAC articlesandresources", i.e. the list of the CCAC's articles and resources pages, with again a list of related tags on the right, and above it a list of selected tags (more about that one below)
If you are interested in CCAC articles and resources about legal aspects, you can click on the + before the Law related tag and you'll get to http://groups.diigo.com/group/ccacaptioning/content/tag/Law%20articlesandresources%20CCAC, i.e. " "Group items tagged Law CCAC articlesandresources", i.e. the list of CCAC's articles and resources pages dealing with legal issues.
If you now want to explore CCAC's articles and resources pages about, say "advocacy", you can remove the "Law" tag by clicking on the "-" sign in the list of selected tags, and click on the "+" before "advocacy". You'll get to http://groups.diigo.com/group/ccacaptioning/content/tag/advocacy%20articlesandresources%20CCAC, i.e. "Group items tagged advocacy articlesandresources CCAC".
And so on: playing with these + and - signs is a really neat way to narrow down, steer and widen searches, potentially over all the CCAC sites (main, blog, google group) once the blog and google group get bookmarked too
****
Then each bookmark can include a quotation from the page (by just highlighting the text when you do the bookmark, but I often edit the quotedtext before posting, to shorten it) and a comment.
For instance, in http://groups.diigo.com/group/ccacaptioning/content/why-captioning-in-transportation-collaborative-for-communication-access-via-captioning-3601718 , I have included a quotation:
"From John Waldo and the WA-CAP in Washington State. An excellent illustration of the sort of captioning inclusion we need in many forms of transportation - ferries, trains, buses, airplanes, cruise ships - copied with permission from this important advocacy site online. (...)
Installation of the visual paging system is being done to resolve a lawsuit that the Washington State Communication Access Project (Wash-CAP) brought against WSF in 2008. The suit was quickly resolved in the form of an agreed order signed by the court. WSF has been working promptly and diligently to implement the terms of that order, and deserves our commendation and thanks."
and a comment:
"Originally published at http://www.hearinglosslaw.com/2010/11/articles/washcap-1/washington-state-ferries/ferry-system-to-install-messagedisplay-system/ - check hearinglosslaw.com for further bookmarking."
Of course, content of the private google group must not be quoted this way in this Diigo group's bookmarks, but comments and tags can be added in those bookmarks too.
So OK, let's try this group for a further week and then we see?
****
Finally, about http://ccacblog.wordpress.com/, you write "Someone else helped me with the CCACblog - as you know, a free wordpress site. Yet I am not skilled enough to explore that and use it in a richer way, e.g. for a newsletter. At the moment, I don't have time to write new blogs either, which I think are sorely needed in order to build our audience there."
You already have an e-mail subscription link on the right column of the blog. What you or the other person might perhaps add in the right column is links to the RSS feeds
- for the posts: http://ccacblog.wordpress.com/feed/
- for the comments: http://ccacblog.wordpress.com/comments/feed/
I've done that in mine, http://almansi.wordpress.com/ , via the widget managing page of the admin interface, just as for the e-mail subscription link you already have.