Ok related to the subjects: (my personal opinion) Sorry for the long post!
- Approval process:
For my experience we need a system that has to re-credit FabLabs from time to time. Some of the Labs think the FabLab is a constant and doesn’t change with time, we know is not true, so we should re-credit them, also to check if they are following the basic principles.
Another thing is, how can we scale? Is the FabFoundation, Supernodes, enough? Can they receive and check 1000+ FabLabs and more? I don’t think so. One thing we could do to solve that is layers. The FabFoundation, the country network, the regional network and than the Lab (this to check any problem) but i think the accreditation should occur without borders, but with responsabilities.
I think each three FabLabs can credit a FabLab, for that they should check the six concepts (open source, open to community, fab charter, fab academy, network and inventory). The same thing as to supernodes, two say yes, the lab is in, two say no is out, and when there is two yes and one no it goes to the regional network to be discussed.
One more important thing is one of those three would be responsible for that fab lab. From setting it up, to show how the network works. (first years and than they would be a direct connected FabLab)
Each two or more years they would do that again and the three that would check them and change direct connected FabLab. (all of that should be responsibility of a layer above, being a local network or group, freeing the FabFoundation and Supernodes for other things).
This would make the Network have the minimum consistency (i’m totally for new things but it have to have a firm base to grow). And i can grow forever without any of the restraints of a central place.
Resuming: Scale + Responsibility.
- Project documentation
In this topic i think we should address the power user, the one that makes a project from star to finish and document that and the new user that just wants to give a opinion on a project (i think this is different from comment, because is related to the project and not the person that made that), also FORK is essencial so people can take a project that is not finished and work on that without erasing the old documentation.
One other thing is a project with multiple users, so everyone can edit and add things!
We can use GitHub, Thingverse and Instructables also, i think we can have a part of the documentation that searchs for the TAG FabLab (and implement on those sites?)
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Discussion
I think this is a good start, but one feature discussion could have is the Yahoo answers voting, so that discussions could be focused in the main issues of that subject. -
Associations tools
I like FabLabWgtn idea very much, we can make local networks and fablabs have a more active page on this platform, we can addapt Fab-Mananger.com to connect to FabLabs.io and have a system help manage fablabs. -
Flagging labs
Yes please! (i think the re-accreditation should work) -
Badges for labs and people
Yes, like network, or went to FAB or to local event, FabAcademy and such -
Language
I think one of the reasons many Labs are making their own website outside the fablabs.io platform is that is english only, can we make it multilanguage? We from Brazil can translate the main part of the site for Portuguese! -
Calendar
Some calendar so we can follow what is happening