4:24 p.m.
>> http://www.opensuse.org/
> +1...VERY elegant.
Yes it is, but it feels bit like a desert - it lacks the message "Yes here
is something happening.". Thats what news with headlines does. And who
cares about project hidden behind the barrier of nice wallpaper. So yes,
it is graficaly nice, but definitely does not give a first impression of
live project.
Without clutter and with zero learning curve, it provides a very
obvious entry into each of the three main funnels with respect to potential visitor
interest. This is of paramount importance to the "unwashed masses" whom we hope
to seduce away from "The Dark Side." The more geekly among us will not be put
off, and our lesser brethren should not be frightened off by too much "richness"
of options and news. The OSuse front page is targeted at the first timer with the intent
of inducing download (first option for those of us of the left-to-right persuasion), not
those interested in a worldwide project to overthrow the domination of "The Evil
Empire." I think they (and Mike) got it right.
5:47 p.m.
New subject: Simple website
richard-harrison(a)comcast.net wrote:
>>> http://www.opensuse.org/
>> +1...VERY elegant.
> Yes it is, but it feels bit like a desert - it lacks the message "Yes here
> is something happening.". Thats what news with headlines does. And who
> cares about project hidden behind the barrier of nice wallpaper. So yes,
> it is graficaly nice, but definitely does not give a first impression of
> live project.
Without clutter and with zero learning curve, it provides a very obvious entry into each
of the three main funnels with respect to potential visitor interest. This is of paramount
importance to the "unwashed masses" whom we hope to seduce away from "The
Dark Side." The more geekly among us will not be put off, and our lesser brethren
should not be frightened off by too much "richness" of options and news. The
OSuse front page is targeted at the first timer with the intent of inducing download
(first option for those of us of the left-to-right persuasion), not those interested in a
worldwide project to overthrow the domination of "The Evil Empire." I think they
(and Mike) got it right.
Eh, it looks like the laptop.org home page which has always felt lacking
to me. Not to say that we don't have too much on our front page, just
that too little can be just as bad. An interface that's too cluttered
is hard to navigate but an interface that has too little doesn't give
you enough clues on how to navigate and worse, no reason to want to
navigate it.
-Toshio
6:36 p.m.
New subject: Simple website
On Fri, 2008-04-25 at 15:47 -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
richard-harrison(a)comcast.net wrote:
>>>> http://www.opensuse.org/
>>> +1...VERY elegant.
>> Yes it is, but it feels bit like a desert - it lacks the message "Yes here
>> is something happening.". Thats what news with headlines does. And who
>> cares about project hidden behind the barrier of nice wallpaper. So yes,
>> it is graficaly nice, but definitely does not give a first impression of
>> live project.
> Without clutter and with zero learning curve, it provides a very obvious entry into
each of the three main funnels with respect to potential visitor interest. This is of
paramount importance to the "unwashed masses" whom we hope to seduce away from
"The Dark Side." The more geekly among us will not be put off, and our lesser
brethren should not be frightened off by too much "richness" of options and
news. The OSuse front page is targeted at the first timer with the intent of inducing
download (first option for those of us of the left-to-right persuasion), not those
interested in a worldwide project to overthrow the domination of "The Evil
Empire." I think they (and Mike) got it right.
>
Eh, it looks like the laptop.org home page which has always felt lacking
to me. Not to say that we don't have too much on our front page, just
that too little can be just as bad. An interface that's too cluttered
is hard to navigate but an interface that has too little doesn't give
you enough clues on how to navigate and worse, no reason to want to
navigate it.
-Toshio
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.
Also im getting tired of this discussion as it seems its not going
anywhere, as people that think the website should be just the Fedora
logo aren't changing their minds, and people like me who thinks
information is a better way to reach to potential contributors aren't
changing our minds either. So instead of wasting time discussing this, i
suggest we name a group that will decide how things should look in the
website.
I know thats the idea of having a websites group, but as people is
getting in this group, the group keeps getting bigger and its hard to
progress if we take into a count every ones ideas and just for a couple
of people who disagree about something we don't take any actions. So i
suggest making a small group who will be in charge of this aspect of the
websites team and decide what to do, also a poll or something similar
would do the job, but we definitely need some leadership here.
8:19 p.m.
New subject: Simple website
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
anywhere, as people that think the website should be just the Fedora
logo aren't changing their minds, and people like me who thinks
information is a better way to reach to potential contributors aren't
changing our minds either. So instead of wasting time discussing this, i
suggest we name a group that will decide how things should look in the
website.
Actually I think this has been useful. We've kept a few things off the
wiki, toshio's right. Balance is important. But as long as we keep in
mind that too much is nasty then I feel at least some good comes from
discussing it.
I know thats the idea of having a websites group, but as people is
getting in this group, the group keeps getting bigger and its hard to
progress if we take into a count every ones ideas and just for a couple
of people who disagree about something we don't take any actions. So i
suggest making a small group who will be in charge of this aspect of the
websites team and decide what to do, also a poll or something similar
would do the job, but we definitely need some leadership here.
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?
-Mike
7:51 a.m.
New subject: Simple website
On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 9:19 PM, Mike McGrath <mmcgrath(a)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).
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 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?!))
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.
my $.02 cents :-}
--
Craig
9:32 a.m.
New subject: Simple website
On Sun, 27 Apr 2008, Craig Thomas wrote:
On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 9:19 PM, Mike McGrath
<mmcgrath(a)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
5:50 p.m.
New subject: Simple website
On Fri, 2008-04-25 at 15:47 -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
Eh, it looks like the laptop.org home page which has always felt lacking
to me. Not to say that we don't have too much on our front page, just
that too little can be just as bad. An interface that's too cluttered
is hard to navigate but an interface that has too little doesn't give
you enough clues on how to navigate and worse, no reason to want to
navigate it.
This is the position that I take. We must not be slavish in our worship
of simplicity to the point of dropping important aspects of the _Fedora_
main website.
My thinking is to look for different ways to present simplicity with
complexity.
* Make use of AJAX and hide/show stuff easily
- by preference, i.e., remember what someone set (cookie)
- by dynamic effect, such as mouseover
* Remember across sessions what people prefer, so you can minimize
clutter
* Give people the option to make stuff invisible? That is, "Never show
me the news feed or link to join, I only ever want to see downloads and
the latest package information feed/security alerts."
* Elegant failure just ends up with a more cluttered page but all
information is available
* Define what the _Fedora_ main page must convey
- people don't like being lead down a long tunnel (the funneling
concept) if they can find what they want on the front page
- for a search portal (google is, fedora ain't), one can be as
minimal as google.com is
- we obviously need to raise to the surface more exposure points
than google
* Make simpled, elegant, and cool tools that let us convey that
information for people in a useful way
* Make it a bit hard to turn off the dynamic parts of the page. People
need to see regularly the vibrancy of our community, on every page
visit.
- It doesn't have to be RSS feeds, but it cold
- It could be a visual representation of how far along translation on
the latest release is going
- It could show a package count + packagers + users cool graph heat
map thingie
* Be willing to try ideas and watch the metrics
- If people click on something, talk about it, post the URL often in
#fedora, embrace it for longer
- If people ignore and hate it, remove it
... stuff like that.
--
Karsten Wade, Sr. Developer Community Mgr.
Dev Fu : http://developer.redhatmagazine.com
Fedora : http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
gpg key : AD0E0C41
6:01 p.m.
New subject: Simple website
On Sun, 2008-04-27 at 08:51 -0400, Craig Thomas wrote:
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.
This is no longer true. FESCo, Fedora L10n, Bug Triage are three that
come immediately to mind.
Back when Fedora Extras was just a gleam in the eyes of a few folks,
what you are saying was definitely true. @redhat.com had a very
important gravity that started things going.
The idea that is still a requirement saddens me. But I *totally* agree
with the perception, in that it is often the @redhat.com person who can
take $dayjob time to commit to organizing stuff.
In Fedora, I've taken a bit of a pinch hitter role in that way, lending
either @redhat.com or Fedora Board Member as some gravity to get a
critical mass going.
But these days, I know with 100% certainty that every time I do that, a
kitten dies. But every time I sit back and enable and let someone ...
such as yourself ... do it instead, ten kittens are born. That's a
factual ratio.
<snip>
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.
Let me give an example. Before the last FUDCon, Jon Stanley, who is
leading the revitalized Bug Triage team (with the help of @redhat.com
people, who we *are* a bit ubiquitous), said, "It's time we do this,
I'll come down there on Friday and we'll kick off a bug triage
SIG." (paraphrase) I offered to pick him up at the airport, there was a
BarCamp session the next day, and away it went. Ten kittens were born.
- Karsten
--
Karsten Wade, Sr. Developer Community Mgr.
Dev Fu : http://developer.redhatmagazine.com
Fedora : http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
gpg key : AD0E0C41
6:46 p.m.
New subject: Simple website
On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 15:50 -0700, Karsten 'quaid' Wade wrote:
On Fri, 2008-04-25 at 15:47 -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
>
> Eh, it looks like the laptop.org home page which has always felt lacking
> to me. Not to say that we don't have too much on our front page, just
> that too little can be just as bad. An interface that's too cluttered
> is hard to navigate but an interface that has too little doesn't give
> you enough clues on how to navigate and worse, no reason to want to
> navigate it.
This is the position that I take. We must not be slavish in our worship
of simplicity to the point of dropping important aspects of the _Fedora_
main website.
My thinking is to look for different ways to present simplicity with
complexity.
* Make use of AJAX and hide/show stuff easily
- by preference, i.e., remember what someone set (cookie)
- by dynamic effect, such as mouseover
* Remember across sessions what people prefer, so you can minimize
clutter
* Give people the option to make stuff invisible? That is, "Never show
me the news feed or link to join, I only ever want to see downloads and
the latest package information feed/security alerts."
* Elegant failure just ends up with a more cluttered page but all
information is available
* Define what the _Fedora_ main page must convey
- people don't like being lead down a long tunnel (the funneling
concept) if they can find what they want on the front page
- for a search portal (google is, fedora ain't), one can be as
minimal as google.com is
- we obviously need to raise to the surface more exposure points
than google
* Make simpled, elegant, and cool tools that let us convey that
information for people in a useful way
* Make it a bit hard to turn off the dynamic parts of the page. People
need to see regularly the vibrancy of our community, on every page
visit.
- It doesn't have to be RSS feeds, but it cold
- It could be a visual representation of how far along translation on
the latest release is going
- It could show a package count + packagers + users cool graph heat
map thingie
* Be willing to try ideas and watch the metrics
- If people click on something, talk about it, post the URL often in
#fedora, embrace it for longer
- If people ignore and hate it, remove it
... stuff like that.
I couldnt agree more!!
what i tried to say last time was that this kind of ideas are not being
seriously taken as we keep discussing if fp.o need changes or not and if
those changes should be huge or small.
i can remember how i did some changes to the layout a few months ago,
and lots of people say "hey this is great..." but then nobody took it
seriously. So as long as we dont take any actions we will be stuck at
this point of discussion.
quaid has this great starting points, lets take them into a count, lets
stop discussing things that are not going anywhere and lets make a
meeting in which we can settle this and start working on it.
If i had the experience and knowledge i would lead it myself, but im not
sure how to do it. If there is someone who can help me with it then
please contact me and lets work together on that meeting.
The sooner the better
--
Juan Camilo Prada <jprada(a)fedoraproject.org>
6:52 p.m.
New subject: Simple website
On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 10:32 AM, Mike McGrath <mmcgrath(a)redhat.com> wrote:
On Sun, 27 Apr 2008, Craig Thomas wrote:
> 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)
Very true. However, when reviewing the git projects here:
http://git.fedoraproject.org/git/
I am tempted to pull :
http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/docs-web.git
which I suspected was not right, and in fact does *not* contain
docs.fp.o . And I think that illustrates my point; It's just an
extra, needless hurdle or two. But yeah, not having commit access is
not really the issue. Having easy access to the source for the parts
we are 'responsible' for seems to me to make lots of sense though, and
would make getting the work done easier.
Really, where do we get/checkout (anonymously) docs.fp.o ? or should
I just use wget ?
<snip>
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.
Point taken. (Wow, over 100? we are a quiet crew :-} )
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.
I understand this, and do not mean to sound whinny about these facts.
I just think that the of lack of communication and cohesion of this
group makes it very hard to get things done, that's all. Just like
you said, you contact your go to guys at the last minute and they get
the job done (because they do rock!). But we all know this means that
only you and the go to guys know what was done and why. And that is no
way to build a team.
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"
I don't think it sounds antagonizing; direct, honest assessment, sure,
but not antagonizing.
And I think I can smell it too.
--
Craig
7:06 p.m.
New subject: Simple website
On Mon, 28 Apr 2008, Juan Camilo Prada wrote:
On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 15:50 -0700, Karsten 'quaid' Wade
wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-04-25 at 15:47 -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> ... stuff like that.
>
I couldnt agree more!!
what i tried to say last time was that this kind of ideas are not being
seriously taken as we keep discussing if fp.o need changes or not and if
those changes should be huge or small.
i can remember how i did some changes to the layout a few months ago,
and lots of people say "hey this is great..." but then nobody took it
seriously. So as long as we dont take any actions we will be stuck at
this point of discussion.
Please find this in the list, and show us the patch you gave us. I take
comments like these very very seriously. If you sent us stuff and it just
went down the tube, thats bad. If you said "I've got an idea" and it was
ignored, thats because idea's != change.
-Mike
8:05 p.m.
New subject: Simple website
2008/4/28 Karsten 'quaid' Wade <kwade(a)redhat.com>:
Let me give an example. Before the last FUDCon, Jon Stanley, who
is
leading the revitalized Bug Triage team (with the help of @redhat.com
people, who we *are* a bit ubiquitous), said, "It's time we do this,
I'll come down there on Friday and we'll kick off a bug triage
SIG." (paraphrase) I offered to pick him up at the airport, there was a
BarCamp session the next day, and away it went. Ten kittens were born.
Hey from the lurker on f-websites-l :)
What Karsten said is 100% true - I'm not @redhat.com, there's nothing
that says you have to be in order to do great things in Fedora. Sure,
it might help you in terms of the time crunch of competing demands of
$dayjob, but even that's not really true - the majority of Fedora
contributors @redhat.com don't do this as their day job. As a
concrete example of that, I'll take the leader of the art team, Mairin
Duffy. She's a UI designer for RHN Satellite - and the leader of the
art team on the side.
So do what I did, say "we have a problem and need to fix it NOW!", and
go forth and do it! I'll pass along some (paraphrased) advice I got
from Greg DeKoenigsberg when I was starting:
Piece of advice #1: Do the work yourself for a few weeks to understand
what it entails. Once you're satisfied, send a note to
fedora-announce list and say "I'm the new webmaster, unless someone
else tells me why they are the new webmaster." Be the leader from day
one. :) (this is pretty much what I did)
Piece of advice #2 Have weekly meetings on IRC. (NOTE: I've pretty
much failed in this as of late :( ).
Piece of advice #3: Keep a TODO list on the wiki, and use that TODO
list to drive your weekly meetings. And make sure that TODO list has
*names* and *dates*. Hold people accountable, even if they're just
volunteers. (reference http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Tasks
as a template)
One piece of advice that I'd add to this is to make sure that there is
a *clear* process to follow to get involved (much along the same lines
as this entire thread, really), and that you document that on the
wiki, and it's in an approachable format. The BugZappers landing page
was put on a serious diet, and all of the content moved to various
subpages underneath it.
Good luck, and if you want to trade stories with someone who's
actually done this, I'll be at FUDCon Boston, look me up! :)
9:07 p.m.
New subject: Simple website
On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 19:06 -0500, Mike McGrath wrote:
On Mon, 28 Apr 2008, Juan Camilo Prada wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 15:50 -0700, Karsten 'quaid' Wade wrote:
> > On Fri, 2008-04-25 at 15:47 -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> > ... stuff like that.
> >
>
> I couldnt agree more!!
>
> what i tried to say last time was that this kind of ideas are not being
> seriously taken as we keep discussing if fp.o need changes or not and if
> those changes should be huge or small.
>
> i can remember how i did some changes to the layout a few months ago,
> and lots of people say "hey this is great..." but then nobody took it
> seriously. So as long as we dont take any actions we will be stuck at
> this point of discussion.
>
Please find this in the list, and show us the patch you gave us. I take
comments like these very very seriously. If you sent us stuff and it just
went down the tube, thats bad. If you said "I've got an idea" and it was
ignored, thats because idea's != change.
-Mike
It was a discussion about the same issues we were discussing here. I
wrote a script to parse some rss news from different sites, and played a
bit with máirín's designs to create what you can see in this link ->
http://juankprada.livejournal.com/4805.html (now that i look back to
that post i see you were one of the people who liked what i did, Mike).
If you really want the comments on the list i could only find this link
(i didnt really search)
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-websites-list/2008-February/msg000...
I talked to ricky about that idea and we both agreed that it would be
good to make the changes but it would be better to wait till some
changes on the infrastructure (im still not sure i understood what he
said) so i keep waiting (thats why im in a rush for stop talking and
start working).
So this all goes to the starting point in which i said we lack of
leadership. If somebody has an idea that could make a change then who
decide if it is ok or not?... we are not even voting for such things and
so we comment about those ideas here on the ml and some people dislike
the idea and then thats all for it. Even if lots of people support your
idea, when two or three dislike it then nothing is done.
Now quaid is/was working on something similar and i support him as i
would really like such features to appear on the website, and im pretty
sure that he started to work on that feature because (just like me and
probably a lot more people in here) he saw the need of it on the
website.
As you said idea's != change, but so, this is the prove that something
similar to what i did needs to be done, as im not the only one thinking
about such feature.
9:22 p.m.
New subject: Simple website
On Mon, 28 Apr 2008, Juan Camilo Prada wrote:
On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 19:06 -0500, Mike McGrath wrote:
> On Mon, 28 Apr 2008, Juan Camilo Prada wrote:
> > On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 15:50 -0700, Karsten 'quaid' Wade wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2008-04-25 at 15:47 -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> > > ... stuff like that.
> > >
> >
> > I couldnt agree more!!
> >
> > what i tried to say last time was that this kind of ideas are not being
> > seriously taken as we keep discussing if fp.o need changes or not and if
> > those changes should be huge or small.
> >
> > i can remember how i did some changes to the layout a few months ago,
> > and lots of people say "hey this is great..." but then nobody took
it
> > seriously. So as long as we dont take any actions we will be stuck at
> > this point of discussion.
> >
>
> Please find this in the list, and show us the patch you gave us. I take
> comments like these very very seriously. If you sent us stuff and it just
> went down the tube, thats bad. If you said "I've got an idea" and it
was
> ignored, thats because idea's != change.
>
> -Mike
>
It was a discussion about the same issues we were discussing here. I
wrote a script to parse some rss news from different sites, and played a
bit with m??ir??n's designs to create what you can see in this link ->
http://juankprada.livejournal.com/4805.html (now that i look back to
that post i see you were one of the people who liked what i did, Mike).
If you really want the comments on the list i could only find this link
(i didnt really search)
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-websites-list/2008-February/msg000...
I talked to ricky about that idea and we both agreed that it would be
good to make the changes but it would be better to wait till some
changes on the infrastructure (im still not sure i understood what he
said) so i keep waiting (thats why im in a rush for stop talking and
start working).
So this all goes to the starting point in which i said we lack of
leadership. If somebody has an idea that could make a change then who
decide if it is ok or not?... we are not even voting for such things and
so we comment about those ideas here on the ml and some people dislike
the idea and then thats all for it. Even if lots of people support your
idea, when two or three dislike it then nothing is done.
Now quaid is/was working on something similar and i support him as i
would really like such features to appear on the website, and im pretty
sure that he started to work on that feature because (just like me and
probably a lot more people in here) he saw the need of it on the
website.
???As you said idea's != change, but so, this is the prove that something
similar to what i did needs to be done, as im not the only one thinking
about such feature.
1) So you posted this image...
2) Everyone liked it...
3) Patch submitted.
So what happened between 2 and 3? More precisely I ask, what do you think
_should_ have happened? In my mind, step 3 comes next. As a volunteer in
Fedora (even long before I had @redhat.com on my email) I just kept
working on stuff, pushing to get stuff in until someone said no. When
they did, I found out why and fixed it.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Websites/ShowUs was built with that in mind
There may be a hangup or two, but those are minor technical details when
compared to getting an active working site in order.
-Mike
9:53 p.m.
New subject: Simple website
On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 21:22 -0500, Mike McGrath wrote:
On Mon, 28 Apr 2008, Juan Camilo Prada wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 19:06 -0500, Mike McGrath wrote:
> > On Mon, 28 Apr 2008, Juan Camilo Prada wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 15:50 -0700, Karsten 'quaid' Wade wrote:
> > > > On Fri, 2008-04-25 at 15:47 -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> > > > ... stuff like that.
> > > >
> > >
> > > I couldnt agree more!!
> > >
> > > what i tried to say last time was that this kind of ideas are not being
> > > seriously taken as we keep discussing if fp.o need changes or not and if
> > > those changes should be huge or small.
> > >
> > > i can remember how i did some changes to the layout a few months ago,
> > > and lots of people say "hey this is great..." but then nobody
took it
> > > seriously. So as long as we dont take any actions we will be stuck at
> > > this point of discussion.
> > >
> >
> > Please find this in the list, and show us the patch you gave us. I take
> > comments like these very very seriously. If you sent us stuff and it just
> > went down the tube, thats bad. If you said "I've got an idea"
and it was
> > ignored, thats because idea's != change.
> >
> > -Mike
> >
>
>
> It was a discussion about the same issues we were discussing here. I
> wrote a script to parse some rss news from different sites, and played a
> bit with m??ir??n's designs to create what you can see in this link ->
> http://juankprada.livejournal.com/4805.html (now that i look back to
> that post i see you were one of the people who liked what i did, Mike).
> If you really want the comments on the list i could only find this link
> (i didnt really search)
>
> https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-websites-list/2008-February/msg000...
>
> I talked to ricky about that idea and we both agreed that it would be
> good to make the changes but it would be better to wait till some
> changes on the infrastructure (im still not sure i understood what he
> said) so i keep waiting (thats why im in a rush for stop talking and
> start working).
>
> So this all goes to the starting point in which i said we lack of
> leadership. If somebody has an idea that could make a change then who
> decide if it is ok or not?... we are not even voting for such things and
> so we comment about those ideas here on the ml and some people dislike
> the idea and then thats all for it. Even if lots of people support your
> idea, when two or three dislike it then nothing is done.
>
> Now quaid is/was working on something similar and i support him as i
> would really like such features to appear on the website, and im pretty
> sure that he started to work on that feature because (just like me and
> probably a lot more people in here) he saw the need of it on the
> website.
>
> ???As you said idea's != change, but so, this is the prove that something
> similar to what i did needs to be done, as im not the only one thinking
> about such feature.
>
1) So you posted this image...
2) Everyone liked it...
3) Patch submitted.
So what happened between 2 and 3? More precisely I ask, what do you think
_should_ have happened? In my mind, step 3 comes next. As a volunteer in
Fedora (even long before I had @redhat.com on my email) I just kept
working on stuff, pushing to get stuff in until someone said no. When
they did, I found out why and fixed it.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Websites/ShowUs was built with that in mind
There may be a hangup or two, but those are minor technical details when
compared to getting an active working site in order.
-Mike
As i said (i hope you actually read the whole message), ricky though it
would be better to wait for some changes in the way the websites were
handled so im waiting.
now, im thinking you are going to the branches and avoiding the main
subject here. this is not about why my proposal isnt being used, but the
way we are handling things here.
I hope you dont take this personal, but i think you are one of the guys
who are delaying the advance and progress of the website team. i know
you help a lot and i give you credit for that. But you are always the
one who is against new proposals and ideas.
Also i dont want to sound like a mr. know-it-all but we are talking here
about a website and thats a very dynamic field in which changes needs to
be done quick because new requirements will show up before you finish
building the previous ones. If you ever heard about RAD (rapid
application development) this is the field in which it should be
applied, and having long discussions about what should/shouldn't be done
is not helping.
back to the main subject, Users demand information, and as a project we
should provide that information, and the kind of information they demand
changes very quick, we cant always show the same info or the website
will be useless as people might already know whats in it so they wont
visit it.
10:03 p.m.
New subject: Simple website
On Mon, 28 Apr 2008, Juan Camilo Prada wrote:
As i said (i hope you actually read the whole message), ricky though
it
would be better to wait for some changes in the way the websites were
handled so im waiting.
yeah, there's implementation issues. So its not implimented. Why not
have it ready so when we can implement it... it just goes right in?
now, im thinking you are going to the branches and avoiding the main
subject here. this is not about why my proposal isnt being used, but the
way we are handling things here.
I hope you dont take this personal, but i think you are one of the guys
who are delaying the advance and progress of the website team. i know
you help a lot and i give you credit for that. But you are always the
one who is against new proposals and ideas.
I'm not against new ideas. I'm against complication... I have a very long
memory and I remember what the wiki used to look like when it was our
landing page. I couldn't find anything. Now though, I can find stuff
pretty easily. Even more then that we're getting to a point where there
are canonical pages. IE: when you want fedora... go to
fedoraproject.org/get-fedora.
Don't think of me as "against progress". Think of me as a
check and balance, and one that can be completely ignored. Feel free to
reference this email:
I, Mike McGrath, know almost nothing about UI design except that it should
be left to UI designers, not engineers like myself.
But I remember what the first thing people used to see when they came to
the website:
#wget -U 'gimme' -qO-
'http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraMain?action=recall&rev=195' | grep -c -i
href
62
62 links. Maybe thats good, maybe thats what we want. I don't think it
looks good, but that really doesn't matter at the end of the day.
Ultimately what I want is to be able to go to a websites team and say
"hey, we need this" just like I do the art team, marketing team,
translators, docs team, etc.
-Mike
10:14 p.m.
New subject: Simple website
On 2008-04-28 09:07:04 PM, Juan Camilo Prada wrote:
It was a discussion about the same issues we were discussing here. I
wrote a script to parse some rss news from different sites, and played a
bit with máirín's designs to create what you can see in this link ->
http://juankprada.livejournal.com/4805.html (now that i look back to
that post i see you were one of the people who liked what i did, Mike).
If you really want the comments on the list i could only find this link
(i didnt really search)
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-websites-list/2008-February/msg000...
I talked to ricky about that idea and we both agreed that it would be
good to make the changes but it would be better to wait till some
changes on the infrastructure (im still not sure i understood what he
said) so i keep waiting (thats why im in a rush for stop talking and
start working).
So this all goes to the starting point in which i said we lack of
leadership. If somebody has an idea that could make a change then who
decide if it is ok or not?... we are not even voting for such things and
so we comment about those ideas here on the ml and some people dislike
the idea and then thats all for it. Even if lots of people support your
idea, when two or three dislike it then nothing is done.
I should really apologize
for the way that I handled your contributions.
Around this time, I was concentrating on FAS2 a lot, and I pretty much
put everything else aside, which definitely wasn't the right thing to
do.
Going back to the technical difficulties that I was talking about - most
of this has been related to translations for our website. One thing
that I'd like to discuss at a meeting is how we can coordinate with l10n
to get regular website updates translated. Right now, every time I
change a string, I have to worry about translations not being updated
(and the problem of things like half-translated pages). I am still
worried about having the website grow too much while it has this
limitation.
So here are some vague thoughts torwards a solution:
* Have some sort of release cycle associated with websites (that we
would coordinate with l10n about)
* Website change email notifications to specific groups within l10n?
Any other ideas about how we can handle this? (I should start a
discussion of this on fedora-trans-list soon.)
Thanks,
Ricky
10:16 p.m.
New subject: Simple website
On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 11:03 PM, Mike McGrath <mmcgrath(a)redhat.com> wrote:
Ultimately what I want is to be able to go to a websites team and
say
"hey, we need this" just like I do the art team, marketing team,
translators, docs team, etc.
Right. And that's exactly what the websites team should be; a service,
just like the other teams.
Other teams should be able to come to us, ask for a web presence, be
it wiki or static and we give that to them, full stop.
--
Craig
10:21 p.m.
New subject: Simple website
On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 22:03 -0500, Mike McGrath wrote:
I'm not against new ideas. I'm against complication... I
have a very long
memory and I remember what the wiki used to look like when it was our
landing page. I couldn't find anything. Now though, I can find stuff
pretty easily. Even more then that we're getting to a point where there
are canonical pages. IE: when you want fedora... go to
fedoraproject.org/get-fedora.
Don't think of me as "against progress". Think of me as a
check and balance, and one that can be completely ignored. Feel free to
reference this email:
I, Mike McGrath, know almost nothing about UI design except that it should
be left to UI designers, not engineers like myself.
I totally agree with you.. engineers like you and me pretty much suck at
UI design, but we are not alone here, there is people in the art team
who is really good at it (remember my idea... i didnt created the
layout.. just got the mockup from máirín's ideas and worked over it).
But I remember what the first thing people used to see when they came
to
the website:
#wget -U 'gimme' -qO-
'http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraMain?action=recall&rev=195' | grep -c -i
href
62
62 links. Maybe thats good, maybe thats what we want. I don't think it
looks good, but that really doesn't matter at the end of the day.
Ultimately what I want is to be able to go to a websites team and say
"hey, we need this" just like I do the art team, marketing team,
translators, docs team, etc.
The problem in a website is not how many links are there, as at the end
a website without links is useless, but how they are shown, and im
pretty sure no one here wants a messy website for the project. So i
think you should trust us a bit more.
I think i wont say more, as i've said all i had to say, just hope people
here decides what to do, but do it quick as we are getting behind in
this field compared to other projects
10:28 p.m.
New subject: Simple website
On Mon, 28 Apr 2008, Juan Camilo Prada wrote:
I think i wont say more, as i've said all i had to say, just hope people
here decides what to do, but do it quick as we are getting behind in
this field compared to other projects
You're one of the people on this list. And one of the ones that not only
cares enough to post to the list but one that I think has a legitimate
vision of what the website should look like. I hope your version of the
site does get turned into actual html and css. I think once that point is
done whatever translation issues are still around will quickly melt
away... Hope you can make it to the meeting.
-Mike
5847
days inactive
5851
days old
websites@lists.fedoraproject.org
19 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
Craig Thomas -
Jon Stanley -
Juan Camilo Prada -
Karsten Wade -
Mike McGrath -
Richard Harrison -
Ricky Zhou -
Toshio Kuratomi