mind can has mountains

Joseph Method has set up an Alexandria wiki, and I thought I’d kick things off by writing down a few core requirements for Alexandria. Well, I have to start somewhere! I’m going to try to keep the core of these requirements slimmed down. There will be other pages for the other scenarios in which Alexandria might be used: for example, whether or not you’ve read a book belongs in the Home User scenario, as does the current rating system. (It’s pretty clear that writing these things down will modify our thinking about the domain.) It’s a different picture entirely for, say, a Lending Library or a Second-Hand Bookshop. I’ll add a couple of new pages for more specific requirements soon.

Apart from looking through the Alexandria manual to find the current described features of the program, I’m going to go through the mailing list archives for various discussions of requirements. Alexandria users can help too: register on the wiki (it’s very quick) and add your requirements (in an orderly fashion, of course). I’ll probably be running around re-organizing things anyway, hopefully making it easier for me to formulate a detailed statement of requirements. I think anonymous edits are still possible at the moment, but it’s better if you have an identifiable voice for your requested features. It’s better for the developers too, since we get a handle on you as a user and can see all the requirements you have as part of a big picture.

This is all very new and experimental for me; I’ve never helped to run a wiki before. With any luck, it won’t all end in chaos. (I’m such an optimist!)