Simple website

[Mike McGrath]

On Sun, 27 Apr 2008, Craig Thomas wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 9:19 PM, Mike McGrath <mmcgrath at redhat.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, 25 Apr 2008, Juan Camilo Prada wrote:
> >  >
> >  > i totally agree!!
> >  > we cannot compare two different projects and two different websites that
> >  > aim at two different points. Obviously opensuse.org aims to let people
> >  > know about the tools the have build (Build Services) and of course the
> >  > wiki. The thing is, their wiki is so well organized that it feels good
> >  > to navigate in and also their wiki is their replacement for our fp.o
> >  > If we had a wiki so well designed with an interactive and intuitive
> >  > interface such as opensuse's wiki, we could discard having fp.o as the
> >  > wiki would do just a better job. But so far nor the wiki and definitely
> >  > not the fp.o site are helping on filling the gap between new
> >  > users/contributors and the project.
> >  >
> >
> >  I talked to the opensuse guys, similar to our wiki anyone with an account
> >  has access to edit the wiki.  So the question is, what do they do
> >  different or is it just they have a younger wiki?
> >
> >
> >  > Also im getting tired of this discussion as it seems its not going
>
> I would disagree that it's not going somewhere. I think it's been
> slow, and not been fraught with actual decisions or any concrete
> direction, but has helped clarify what the group thinks. Akin to 'It's
> not the destination, but the journey' sort of utility.
>
>
> >  The group is getting bigger but still, unfortunately, very few leaders
> >  have come out of it.  Ricky and ignacio immediately come to mind but of
> >  the people on this list, how many of you have commited or created and
> >  proposed a patch to the website in the last year?
>
>
>
> Sure, your right. And the silence is fairly loud. (and +1 btw; verify,
> sponsors)
>
> This group doesn't accomplish much.  How can we?  we don't have
> regular meetings and numerous of our tickets are for things the
> website group doesn't even have git access to: tickets 181
> (d.f.rh.com), 206 (docs.fp.o). Or tickets are just hanging around,
> waiting for translations (493), or are unclear (etags thing).
>

Not having access to get for these projects shouldn't have anything to do
with not doing the work though.  You can check these projects out and fix
them and submit them back to people that do have access (probably getting
access yourself in the process)

> We also don't have much direction or leadership. We have never had a
> website meeting, ever. From what I can tell, every other fedora group
> have a clear team lead, and that lead has a RH e-mail addy. I suspect
> that fact brings more cohesion and direction to those groups.
>

There is a bit of history behind this.  I believe this team at one point
was quite a bit more active but after the wiki came out, there was little
need for an organized group.  But now its more mature.  Perhaps we do need
meetings and things.  Here's the thing, and this is a big step for people
to take for some reason.

I'd bet there's over 100 people on this list... there's nothing stopping
ANY of them from saying "I'd like to schedule a meeting on this day" and
then scheduling the meeting, and holding it.

> There are good people here, people who care about fedora and do good
> work.  And I for one find myself frustrated and wasting lots of my
> $fedora time just trying to figure out process questions, and I am
> sure that I am not alone. (Such as what (besides the tickets) needs
> doing. If it's OK to 'just do' whatever it is. How to gather a
> consensus for things like rss feeds on the home page or not. If it's
> OK to push new pages that have no translations. can we change the
> layout without ART team/marketing team...(and can we be sued for the
> red in the beta banner?!))
>

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Websites/PageRequests needs doing.  As far
as being "frustrated" and "wasting lots of your time" goes.... I don't
know what to tell you.  The last job I started I spend 4 days on
orientation (the job before Red Hat).  Fedora is somewhere between 1,000
and 2,500 active contributors with many independent teams.  Not all of
which are full time so it can be hard to get ahold of them.  Its a large,
complex organization that matures every day.  If you're going to get
involved with it, there's going to be a learning curve unfortunately.
That's just part of being as large as we are.


There's many different types of volunteers.  For those of you that just
want to be told what to do, just ask.  I can give you stuff.  For those of
you that want to take a bigger part in fedora websites.  Suggest a meeting
time, create a wiki page, make sure people can attend, show up with an
agenda (I'll be there), hold the meeting, send the notes to the list.


> Perhaps I have done nothing but reiterate your point that we suck, but
> I guess my point is that yea, we do, but perhaps it's time for some
> one of the few leaders we do have to drive us, to establish a meeting
> time and point us in $the_direction so we can be less sucky.
>

I'd certainly not say "we suck" but in the past (look through the
archives) you'll see a number of times where we've asked people to design
pages and for some reason we almost never get them and I have to ping
ricky or ignacio directly.

I'm worried the above content sounds like it was ment to antagonize people
but its really not.  I can smell that the websites team is ready to do
things again but its been very hard to see exactly how to do that because
at the end of the day... we don't get patches, or fixes or anything else.
I plead with someone to reply to this email and say "I can dedicate 2
hours a week to scheduling and holding a weekly meeting"

	-Mike