[openbeos] Re: BugZilla => Trac

On 8/25/06, Jorge G. Mare (a.k.a. Koki) <koki@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: 
I am not referring to Trac specifically, but to the new website project
as a whole (from several months ago). It leaves a very bad taste and a
strong sense of unilateralism when somebody from the outside tries to
help on an open mailing list, his opinions are shot down, and then a few
privileged decide behind doors to do what this person had proposed in
the first place.


Actually, you sounded more like someone nagging (sorry). You had no
real suggestions for *what* to do except posting a "help needed" forum
item. It didn't really help. I already said it at that time and I'll
repeat it:
In most cases, people *seriously* wanting to help join without us
explicitly asking them for help. Michael mentioned this many times,
too. He doesn't believe in this "shout out for help and you get 10
volunteers" and I must agree. The only things we can do are:
* point out which tasks need to be done (including non-developer)
* make it easy to get started
That requires articles on our website and a page which lists
non-developer one-time contribution TODOs (if we have any).

Haiku seems to have a very inward centered view of things. Because the
admins discussed or voted on something (behind doors), it does not make
it legitimate in the eyes of the people looking from outside.


Okay, I'm sorry that I'm pushing so hard and that it might look to
some people that this is my personal project and I'm not working with
anyone else on improving the website. I'm always open for real and
concrete suggestions.

I don't have much time left. I must start concentrating on my studies.
If I had asked everyone before changing something on the website we
would still be sitting here with our old website and ugly BugZilla.
I tried it that way (talk, talk), but it is extremely frustrating that
you have to wait many hours for an email reply and discuss everything
to death before every step you want to take. It just takes too long.
This might work much better in a company where I can meet people
face-to-face and everyone can spend as much time on the project as I
do, but even then I just can't ask everyone because I would *never*
get finished with anything.
This whole email conversation is pointless. I'm well aware of my
mistakes, but I can't do anything about it apart from passing the
whole work to someone else who has enough time to wait until
everything is perfect.

That is not my idea of openness or collaboration, and something has
gotta change. I will propose to the admins that we publish at least a
summary of the topics discussed and the decisions made on the weekly
admin meetings.


This would be nice, but who has the time to do it?
Sikosis started mentioning internal information in his podcast. Maybe
it can be extended some more?

I did not say Waldemar was sloppy; I said that his rushing of the
transition makes the project look sloppy. You seem to take it lightly
that he decided to make the switch to Trac without announcing or even
consulting it with anyone else (that's the unilateralism and lack of
collaboration), but I don't, because I think it does make us look sloppy
and disorganized.


The reason for this quick switch to Trac was that I won't have time to
do the whole migration again when I work on my studies. Someone else
will have to do it. As you can see the last migration I worked out
quite well, so I don't see any reason to do it again and waste even
more time. If someone has a problem with it then I'd be happy to pass
all my work to him and start with my studies. Actually, it would be
nice if someone else could take most of the responsibility for the
website when I concentrate on real-life issues.

The existing website is VERY classy, and it is easy to navigate. The new
website may have more content that is more up-to-date, but it's design
is subpar, and the content is quite disorganized, so it is difficult to
find stuff.


Could you please give me specific examples of the new website being
too hard to navigate?
Maybe the problem is that I prepared the website for *huge* amounts of
content (unlike the old site). You should use the search and tag
functions to find information. Of course, we should still hard-link to
the most important articles. The new website is a little experiment. I
want to get rid of tree based navigation and static organization and I
want to see how well it works out when we have large amounts of
content.

I'm probably one of the worst designers in the world. That's why I
shouted out for help. Unfortunately, the response was ... silence.

But more importantly, the new website has absolutely no separation
between official content and contributed content; it looks like anybody
can post pretty much anywhere, which is a recipe for miscommunication
(as the one we had with the icon contest).


What exactly is this contributed content you're talking about? You
mean the blog posts (tutorials, rfcs, etc.)? I agree that *every* RFC
should have this notice at the top:
"This article is currently not complete and hence may not fully or
accurately reflect the list's consensus."
I've done it, now.

I'd like to know what you see as "unofficial".

Maybe I should explicitly state what the blog is for:
Everyone, when writing a blog post please don't write about your
personal life or other unrelated stuff unless it is highly important
for Haiku (e.g.: one of the primary developers not having any more
time for Haiku would be such an important post). These blogs are *not*
for personal rants. They are for news, reporting progress, important
Haiku-related articles, and writing tutorials, RFCs, and articles
about implementation details.
If you want to have your personal rant then go to blogspot. Basically,
the "blog" on our site is not really a blog, but "a place important
articles". The word is misleading.

In that sense, please John, Urias, and Gavin don't import those
one-liners and personal rants into our blogs even if the developer
found it important for his own blog. I started a short tutorial for
website users (only the most important explanations):
http://plonetest.haiku-os.org/node/118
Please shout if you think something very important is missing (or
simply add it yourself).

Why would the blog disturb end-users? Should we really hide everything
unrelated from them?
What is the average user interested in? We have three groups of users:
* first-time visitors
* long-time users
* developers
The most obvious links are accessible from the front page. Some pages
which are too hidden will have to be added to the main subsections to
be made more accessible, but it remains to be seen which of them are
actually important enough.

If you want to make sure that everyone understand that this a live beta,
make it obvious. Put a "BETA" stamp on the haiku logo that shows on the
header of every page, and add something like the following text
somewhere prominent in the front page:


Done.

Bye,
Waldemar Kornewald

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