Ministry Exchange Overview - Ministry Exchange (MX)

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/var/www/iv//staff/include/article/MXOverview050520.5155 InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA
Ministry Exchange Overview
May 20, 2005
The Ministry Exchange (MX) creates an online environment, accessible to anyone, for easily
sharing ministry resources. It is designed to lower the barriers that can make it challenging for
people -- from students and faculty to staff, donors, and the general public -- to {1} publish,
{2} find, and {3} acquire resources they may need to grow spiritually and to lead effective
ministries.
The MX highly participatory, and so it takes advantage of the Internet's power to distribute
the creation and publication of content. Because the publication of ministry content can now
be undertaken by any friend of InterVarsity, that work is distributed among a geometrically
increased field of partners, multiplying the power and reach of InterVarsity's communications.
Features and Functions
Accessibility is the touchstone of the MX. It is designed to make it not just possible but
positively easy:
· To upload nearly any kind of document, from Bible studies, posters, and training
handouts to spreadsheets, slide presentations, and graphics (to name a few examples).
· To create sets of MX items for almost any purpose, akin to academic "course packs,"
whether from content you yourself uploaded or from items found throughout the MX.
These sets are created with "labels" that any user can create.
· To find items in the MX by browsing. A densely branching information architecture
enables visitors to browse by subject, genre, audience, original uploader, label, or
reviewer, among others.
· To find items in the MX by searching. Users can use a simple "quick search" tool located
on every page site-wide, or they can focus their search within any of a dozen specific
fields with an advanced search query. (The MX is designed also to make sure that external
search engines like Google find and rank highly items published in the MX.)
How does it work? The publishing process takes just a few steps:
· A web visitor registers with the MX (a one-time requirement) and
· fills out a form on a web page to identify, categorize, and upload their content item.
· Any one of a team of designated staff moderators approves the item for publication with
the click of a button.
That's all -- the item immediately goes live, appearing on the MX site. If instead a period of
time elapses without a moderator's approval (or if it receives a certain number of "no" votes),
the item is rejected, the uploader is informed by email, and the item never appears in the MX.
This process is designed to maximize the publishing power of the MX while using an absolute
minimum of editorial intervention.
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What then? Once an item is published, it becomes available to the general public through
browsing or search for viewing or download (which does not require user registration), for
labeling for inclusion in a list defined by any user, for emailing to anyone, and for users to
give it a rating and review. Only registered users can submit item reviews and ratings, which
are averaged to give a quick snapshot of how an item has been received by other users.
The MX displays the following information about each item:
· a title, subtitle, and brief description
· the downloadable document's file type and size
· a list of all the item's subjects, genres, and audiences
· the author's full name and uploader's username
· the upload date
· how long the item is available
· how many times the item has been downloaded
· the item's average rating (out of "five stars")
· a complete list of individual ratings and reviews
· links to related content
Other special features of the MX include:
· The ability of any InterVarsity staff (all of whom are already pre-registered for the MX) to
restrict access for any item they publish to other staff only
· The ability of any user to customize (in several ways) their own "user page"
· The ability to "subscribe" (using RSS-reader software) to innumerable sets of MX updates,
ranging from the newest or most-often-emailed items to fresh reviews made about a
specific item
· And, without exaggeration, countless other features
Path-Breaking Technologies
The MX takes full advantage of InterVarsity's existing web-publishing technologies, developed
over the past four years, including such features as item management, dynamic indexing, user
commenting, XHTML- and CSS-valid code, and caching for server performance. But what's
more, it deploys numerous technical features never before seen on any public InterVarsity
website, including:
· global InterVarsity metadata (including global subjects and sub-subjects, audiences, etc.)
· database-driven advanced search
· site-wide RSS syndication feeds
· industry-standard intellectual-property licensing
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· global user registration
· dynamic, live download counts, user ratings, and page views
· site-wide security permissions
Further Info
Please address any questions about the MX to help[at]ministryexchange[dot]org.
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