Fedora websites mailing list and Wiki ownership

[Rahul Sundaram]

Hi

We have been managing feedback on the official Fedora websites, 
currently http://fedora.redhat.com and http://fedoraproject.org/wiki 
through bugzilla and discussions in the marketing list. It makes sense 
to have a independent mailing list -> fedora-websites-list which can 
also be used for discussing wiki pages. The wiki has good amount of 
community buy-in and the amount of content being added is growing 
rapidly. While this is indeed a positive development we need to make 
sure the content is organized and kept updated.

Patrick Barnes has been keeping a good eye on this in general and I 
guess we can declare him the wiki master which is essentially the role 
he is performing .Going ahead, it might be a good idea to introduce a 
concept of "ownership" to each of the wiki pages.  Every page would have 
a comment on top which declares the owner. Everyone in the edit group 
should have their own wiki pages filled out with atleast the contact 
information . Every page is also subscribed atleast by the owner of that 
page to monitor changes and keep the content relevant and updated.

This process would help us make sure that unmaintained pages are marked 
as such and provide hints to users on what could be potentially 
outdated. It would also provide a list of pages that new wiki users can 
take care of and it provides accountability for the wiki itself.

Suggestions welcome.

regards
Rahul

[Patrick W. Barnes]

Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> Hi
>
> We have been managing feedback on the official Fedora websites,
> currently http://fedora.redhat.com and http://fedoraproject.org/wiki
> through bugzilla and discussions in the marketing list. It makes sense
> to have a independent mailing list -> fedora-websites-list which can
> also be used for discussing wiki pages. The wiki has good amount of
> community buy-in and the amount of content being added is growing
> rapidly. While this is indeed a positive development we need to make
> sure the content is organized and kept updated.

Also worth noting is that creating fedora-websites-list vs.
fedora-wiki-list allows this to cover not just the wiki, but f.r.c and
other websites that may now or in the future be under the umbrella of
the Fedora Project.  We can also allow others who run third-party sites,
such as Thomas Chung and Bob Jensen, to weigh in on the official sites
and follow along with the direction the project is taking.  This
perfectly compliments the new Bugzilla component created for the same
purpose.
> Patrick Barnes has been keeping a good eye on this in general and I
> guess we can declare him the wiki master which is essentially the role
> he is performing .Going ahead, it might be a good idea to introduce a
> concept of "ownership" to each of the wiki pages.  Every page would
> have a comment on top which declares the owner. Everyone in the edit
> group should have their own wiki pages filled out with atleast the
> contact information . Every page is also subscribed atleast by the
> owner of that page to monitor changes and keep the content relevant
> and updated.

It may take time to establish 'best practices' for new EditGroup
members, but having a head to roll if problems occur is the entire
reason we have the EditGroup in the first place.  We should encourage
all EditGroup members to provide at least one method of contact on their
wiki homepage.
> This process would help us make sure that unmaintained pages are
> marked as such and provide hints to users on what could be potentially
> outdated. It would also provide a list of pages that new wiki users
> can take care of and it provides accountability for the wiki itself.

Encouraging EditGroup members to take up unmaintained pages will also
help us clean up areas of the site that have long been ignored, and will
help us reduce the number of orphaned pages on the wiki.  Accountability
really isn't the top concern here, IMHO.  It is a measure that can
greatly benefit the quality of the wiki.  Translating this same idea to
other Fedora materials that don't already have this kind of measure
would surely also be advantageous.

Applying this particular method to the Docs arena would be doubly
valuable.  I would imagine that this would be easier and more reliable
than simply maintaining a long list of writers and editors.  Since this
will be implemented as comments, it would both be very flexible and
would be easy to filter out or parse where needed when converting or
publishing documents.
> Suggestions welcome.
>
> regards
> Rahul

For reference, a line declaring the owner of a document can be added to
the beginning of the document to look like this:

##owner FooBar
= Document Title =
And document contents.

As a matter of best practice, these comments should probably come after
parsing instructions or ACL lines.

For Docs, using ##writer and ##editor might also be of interest.

Any thoughts?

[Karsten Wade]

On Sun, 2005-10-30 at 18:12 -0600, Patrick Barnes wrote:
> For Docs, using ##writer and ##editor might also be of interest.

##technical-contact

This is especially important for Beat pages.  It might be more than a
page needs, though.
> Any thoughts?

Is this how other, successful Wiki projects handle it?

I was under the impression that it was normally more chaotic than that.

My instinct is always to exert some control.[1]  Thus, I don't trust my
own thinking when it comes to managing the Wiki overall.  That is why I
have tried to limit the FDP control to just certain pages.[2]

What Rahul and Patrick are proposing is that the FDP be the accountable
party for all formal[3] Fedora websites.  This is an addition to our
existing mission, or perhaps just an extension.  I agree with it 100%.

- Karsten

[1]  This is the control-freak in me.  One thing that FDP brings to me
is a chance to not be so controlling and to delegate, so thanks to all
for the constant chance at self-improvement. :)

[2] Meaning:

wiki/Docs/*
wiki/DocsProject/*

[3] I use formal because 'official' is a word loaded with meaning, yet
means something different to all.  'Official' is an overused word for
these contexts, IME.

[Stuart Ellis]

On Mon, 2005-10-31 at 08:07 -0800, Karsten Wade wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-10-30 at 18:12 -0600, Patrick Barnes wrote:
> > For Docs, using ##writer and ##editor might also be of interest.
>
> ##technical-contact
>
> This is especially important for Beat pages.  It might be more than a
> page needs, though.
> > Any thoughts?

I think that different types of content require different arrangements,
and the same considerations probably apply whatever the technology (Wiki
or static pages).

Pages with certain kinds of content need to be carefully maintained, and
may need more stringent change control than is usual. Material like:

- Legal and policy statements
- Project admin, e.g. schedules
- Download pages (with URLs and checksums)
- "Shop-front" pages, like the front page and FAQ, intended to be seen
by the new and unwary

For other stuff, it may be best to let people get on and produce
whatever they need. Having one person per category to act as a
maintainer, moderator and point of contact is probably enough.

FWIW, I really like Patrick's idea of having of a mailing list for
official and third-party Website maintainers to get together.

[Karsten Wade]

On Mon, 2005-10-31 at 21:53 +0000, Stuart Ellis wrote:
> I think that different types of content require different arrangements,
> and the same considerations probably apply whatever the technology (Wiki
> or static pages).
>
> Pages with certain kinds of content need to be carefully maintained, and
> may need more stringent change control than is usual. Material like:
> Legal and policy statements
> Project admin, e.g. schedules
> Download pages (with URLs and checksums)
> "Shop-front" pages, like the front page and FAQ, intended to be seen
>
> by the new and unwary
>
> For other stuff, it may be best to let people get on and produce
> whatever they need. Having one person per category to act as a
> maintainer, moderator and point of contact is probably enough.

This sounds like a reasonable compromise of control, applying more where
it is needed, less where it gets in the way.
> FWIW, I really like Patrick's idea of having of a mailing list for
> official and third-party Website maintainers to get together.

I have request fedora-websites-list and will announce it here when it is
ready.  A post to fedora-announce also seems in order.

- Karsten