Proposal: Richer project descriptions

[gambogi]

Just going to toss out an idea myself and others have been kicking around for a few years that I'd really like to see implemented.

It would be nice to take advantage of the fact we require descriptions of projects for submission to eboard for PR/record keeping purposes. Concretely, I'd like the following functionality (and happy to implement myself):

• project descriptions may include some form of richer text, preferably markdown or something similar, possibly user choice.
• Images and other attachments (but hopefully not malicious code) may be attached.
• Projects must be marked as published in some fashion. Ideally anything that is a major project should be worth bragging about.
• Public facing project blog should be exposed, attributing contributions to project authors, this should either be linked to by the main site or incorporated.

[liam-middlebrook]

I like the general idea of this issue. Although I'm not sure conditional is the proper platform for aggregation. I proposed a similar issue to this over the Summer on the Public Site ComputerScienceHouse/CSHPublicSite#140

I was considering something like this earlier today and personally came to the conclusion that removing projects over time to avoid our current issue is tricky. I wouldn't want the site at week 0 to appear as if no projects had been done. But I'm also not sure that cutting off the list that's sorted by submission date is the right way to go either. Earlier in development there was discussion about creating a project up vote system. Some concerns about it encouraging a toxic culture were brought up. I'm not sure if that as a way to export projects within the past year or so would be a good way to generate a list, but I'm certainly open to discussion.

[mbillow]

This library looks really good and perfect for what we want. It should be super simple to implement and a great step towards our end goal of publishing. https://github.com/NextStepWebs/simplemde-markdown-editor

[gambogi]

Wait we agree on publishing? That's great news

[mbillow]

There is a lot in between us and that goal, but I definitely want to see it happen!

[audiolion]

By being marked as published, is that a decision by the project owner? E.g. they can mae their project page and iterate privately before publishing it?

[mbillow]

@audiolion The publishing would be left up to Eboard in the current plan. So, as a cool project is submitted, Eboard can approve it and then publish it.

[gambogi]

@audiolion I would hope so.

[liam-middlebrook]

I don't think we should get ahead of the immediate goal here of having descriptions that are being shown in conditional written and rendered in markdown.

I'm definitely in favor of updating the public website with more recent major projects, but that's more long term and will require many changes on both conditional and the public site in order to work out.

[gambogi]

If you want to talk about an immediate goal do so in a different issue. This is the proposal thread where the end goal should be discussed.

[audiolion]

So @mbillow's proposal is that eboard publishes, @gambogi's proposal is that the project owner publishes. Maybe these are two separate pieces, the project owner can iterate and once they are ready submit the proposal, a flag is set in the database to put it in a queue for eboard to review, if eboard accepts it is published, if they reject it the flag is unset and the project owner can make changes and submit again?