[wp-hackers] Concept for a community video plugin

[Mark W. Kidd]

Hi folks,

I am interested in creating a pool of funds (bounty) to build a 
community video plugin or add new features to an existing plugin to 
achieve the same functionality. Sometime soon, I anticipate circulating 
a description of the project to some Wordpress developers to gauge the 
cost and complexity for the work.

I would be very grateful for any ideas or feedback on my draft 
description, which I'm pasting below. I'm hoping in particular whether 
there are key aspects of creating a plugin I've overlooked, or 
unanswered questions that come to mind when you see this.

Also, maybe the most important feedback would be: do you as a developer 
see any value in this kind of plugin for your own clients or projects?

Best,
Mark

*
What*
This project will put video blogging and video podcasting in easy reach 
of community artists and organizations with limited access to technical 
expertise or funding. This will take the form of a open-source Wordpress 
plugin and companion website to explain its features and provide 
examples of the plugin in use.

The community video plugin will enable organizations to build free or 
low-cost websites with Wordpress where posting video is as simple and 
accessible as uploading and embedding photos has become via WYSIWYG 
editors. In order to make sites using the plugin scale with surges in 
traffic or without financial resources for media hosting, the plugin 
will make use of the YouTube API to store user-submitted videos on YouTube.

*Community Video Wordpress Plugin*

*Key Features*

  * Enable the front-end creation of new posts featuring an embedded
    video by registered or unregistered users.
  * The user is presented with a button (or other interface element) for
    uploading their video directly from the submission form where it
    will be hosted to YouTube. The plugin passes the post's title,
    excerpt, tags, and body from the Wordpress form to YouTube so that
    this content is also present on the YouTube page for the video.
  * Users do not need a YouTube account - the site owner designates a
    YouTube channel on the back-end and all videos are uploaded there.
  * Allow the site owner to specify which license(s) is/are available
    for users to submit their videos
  * Optionally allow a safety/archival copy of the video file to be kept
    on the local web server
  * Must be installable and maintainable by a broad base of users. The
    documentation should be written for a similar technical proficiency
    to consumer electronics. Framing question: Could the
    technical-minded niece or nephew of the family install this plugin?
  * Open-source licensed
  * Distributed alongside a simple WordPress theme and recommended
    configuration which demonstrate the plugin features

*Why*
Web media offers the promise that people and communities who are the 
subjects or consumers of media can be involved in its development from 
inception through publication; fulfilling that promise requires 
collaboration between media organizations, technologists, artists, and 
members of these communities to ensure that the web offers equitable 
platforms for community speech and creativity.  As a baseline for such 
platforms and tools to be equitable, they must be accessible to those 
most affected by pressing issues, whether local or international, 
regardless of technical expertise or financial resources.

The story-gathering processes long employed in community media are often 
an expression of the same cultural values that open source and Creative 
Commons (or "copyleft") practitioners are advancing today on the web. 
Technologists have created a vocabulary and the intellectual property 
framework to support equitable and innovative creation, collaboration, 
and movement-building as they are practiced online. This project seeks 
to bridge these two ways of knowing about media to produce a democratic 
tool for the web.

*How*
_Inspirations_
     Integrated YouTube submission form at 
http://www.kitescampaigns.org/submissions/add/ (ExpressionEngine/PHP 
source available upon request)
     We Are the 99 Percent photo submission form: 
http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/submit/

_Extend an existing plugin?_
     Quick Post Widget: 
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/quick-post-widget/

-- 
Mark W. Kidd
Roadside Theater - Thousand Kites - Appalshop

606-536-0115 (cell)
roadside.org
thousandkites.org
appalshop.org