Re: Hello and some questions

On Thu, 2003-12-18 at 12:14, Josh Berkus wrote:
> Robert,
>
> > Like maintaining the list of hosting providers? Or the list of support
> > companies? Or researching and updating missing/broken articles? Or
> > adding new articles and links? Maybe those types of things aren't sexy
> > enough for you though?
>
> I didn't know that you were doing that ... it's not really visible from the
> main page, and I've not been getting any of the e-mail. So, by the
> principles of Volunteerocracy, you are now in charge. What do *you* want to
> do with Techdocs?

I want to get someone else to run it :-) I'm only involved because
someone has to do it and no one else is stepping up to the plate. Same
thing goes for advocacy really... Justin left and someone had to pick up
the slack. It was discussed with others here and that's what shook out,
but I'll glad step aside if anyone else wants to run with it. Fair
warning though, the code in it's current shape is a bear to work with.
And that's really part of the issue... I don't want to spend my time
improving code if people are planning on running these sites under
different technology.

>
> > Early on I tried to get some kind of revision system set up by getting
> > the code into CVS, to allow anyone to get access to enable contributing,
> > only to have folks bypass CVS and/or complain that CVS wasn't an
> > acceptable form on managing content, so I acquiesced.
>
> Hmmm ... I recall saying that CVS was not adequate as a CMS but was better
> than flat HTML. Who else did you get oppostion from? Justin?

At least... I started moving things into CVS and he installed plone on
the site and kept updating files on the server...

>
> She's been led to believe, by some former members of our community, that there
> is some kind of secret cabal running our Web presence and that she is not
> welcome. I've been working on disabusing her of that notion. Offering to
> put her "in charge" of Techdocs seemed like a good move in that regard.
> There's also the issue of her advertising revenue, but that should be
> surmountable.
>

That's all ancient history at this point... we'll welcome contributions
from anyone, as long as there willing to work with the rest of the
team...

> Funny you should bring up the Indexing articles, though ... you know why there
> was never a third or forth one? Because I got bogged down doing the markup,
> and trying to revise the 1st two articles which are already marked up ....
> so really, my emphasis on a CMS is all about *me*. *I* don't want to do
> manual HTML markup on everything I write; the magazines I submit articles do
> don't require me to format them (heck, they don't *want* me to format them),
> and overall I've found that it took me as long to markup Indexing II as it
> took me to write it. Nor do I want you doing the markup, I want you working
> on other stuff for the community.
>
> I happen to believe that there are other potential authors ... Stephan Szabo,
> Robert Bernier, Joe Conway, etc, ... who would write for our web sites if
> they had a clearer and easier access path to do so.
>

Maybe I underestimate the complexity, but sending it to me and me
dumping it into html seems pretty easy... isn't this essentially what
Elein is doing now ?

> > You know though, I see a pattern here... take the jobs.postgresql.org
> > site, which is still not updated with the text that I suggested close to
> > two weeks ago. While several people keep kicking back and forth ideas on
> > what would be the ideal solution for a jobs site,
>
> As far as I'm concerned, the discussion is secondary to the effort. My
> company will be contributing *complete* code from our specification becuase
> it is of indirect commercial benefit to us. Nobody from the www group needs
> to waste time on it until somebody is ready to add features.
>
> Also, I think you should get used to the fact that in OSS projects there are 6
> people on mailing lists arguing about stuff for every 1 person who actually
> does anything. Heck, 1 of 7 is pretty good in comparison to OpenOffice.org,
> where it's more like 1 of 150.
>
> > Marc has quietly
> > implemented a solution (the jobs mailing list) that offers the majority
> > of functionality that most people would want, yet outside of myself
> > there has been virtually no support given for that idea, I guess since
> > people didn't think it was good enough... ?
>
> It's not good enough for my company, which is why we're working on a
> replacement. Until our replacement is ready, though, I think that we
> definitely need to get the text and references to the mailing list up.

exactly... how long do we wait for these solutions to appear? if we can
do something now I think it's a step in the right direction.

> > Actually thats not totally fair to Andreas and Co., since there is
> > nothing stopping you all from installing bric and moving content into
> > it...
>
> Yes, there is, but that's completely tangental to Andreas' effort. We've a
> huge job creating all of the templates for Bric. Once those templates are
> created, it's easy, but until then ....
>

whose working on that? you/elein? is there some way others could pitch
in?

> And I just worked the PR for 7.4, and then lost my office, so I've been a
> little distracted. Nobody's paying me to work on the community full time
> any more than you.
>

well, don't know that that is entirely true, given your company does
postgresql support, they do have a direct benefit from your
participation and gain a lot more from widening the community... really
a side issue though...

Robert Treat
--
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL