Software StructureCHAPTER 4

The overall structure of the online learning community system :

1. user database

2. content database

3. user/content map

4. user/user map

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Software StructureCHAPTER 4

User Database

The user database has to record the real name and email address of the user.The more identified, authenticated, and accountable people are, the better the opportunity for building a community out of an aggregate.

The user database should have a facility for recording the reliability of a user's name and email address since the name is likely to become more reliably known over time and the email address less likely.

To contribute to an accountable and identified environment the user database should be able to store a personal URL for each user and keep track of that URL.

The user database should record privacy and contact preferences.

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Software StructureCHAPTER 4

Content Database

Emerging pattern : the representation of articles, comments on articles, questions, answers, etc. should be unified to the maximum extent possible.

Each is a content item. Each has one or more authors. Each may optionally be a response to another content item.

services that would be nice to centralize in a single content repository within the content database: versioning of content whether content is a reply to, a comment on, or an attachment to some other item whether an item of content has been approved or disapproved by the site moderators to whom may the content be shown? who has the right to edit the content? who has the right to change who has the right to view or edit? who has the right to comment on an item? Who must review comments that have been posted before they go live? timing the content: When does it go live? When does it expire? quality or importance of the content: full-text indexing of the content summaries, descriptions, and keywords for the content a consistent site-wide taxonomy

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Software StructureCHAPTER 4

User/Content Map

An online learning community generally needs to be able to record the following statements:

User #21 contributed Comment #37 on Article #529 User #192 asked Question #512 User #451 posted Answer #3 to Question #924 User #1392 has read Article #456 User #8923 is interested in being alerted when a change is made to Article #223

Must record authorship because attributed content contributes to our chances of building a real community. E.g., to offer users the service of email notifications when someone responds to a question or comments on an article.

Once recording the readership, it is natural to record the user’s interests. "User #7241 really liked Article #2451" opens up interesting possibilities for personalization.

In a large content database it might take a user 30 minutes to scan the titles of the new content. The User may abandon the community. Extend the system capabilities by defining similarity among documents and present potentially interesting ones to users.

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Software StructureCHAPTER 4

User/User Map

Relationships among users are important in communities :Someone who is in a discussion forum with 100 others may wish to say "I am offended by User #45's perspective; I want the system to

suppress his contributions in pages served to me or email alerts sent to me". The technical term for this is bozo filtration.

Grouping of users is the most fundamental operation within the User/User database :

For example : In a collaborative medical records system, you need to be able say "All of these users work at the same hospital and can

have access to records for patients at that hospital."

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