Re: [PASCAL-advocacy] [PASCAL-www] Alternate PostgreSQL.org Design

On Friday 12 November 2004 18:56, Gavin M. Roy wrote:
> >Have you checked the todo list? Those are the things we need to do in
> >the short term if you can contribute.
>
> Nope, I'm sure it's my fault, but I don't know where that is, and if
> it's in cvs, how to get at it.

Gavin, you are on the -www list aren't you? It's been posted there many times.
Just in case not, it's at http://wwwdevel.postgresql.org/todo

> Alexey posted a tarball of his source,
> but after my last contribution via email to the current Lucaz design
> went completely unnoticed and didnt even receive a no-thanks, we'd
> rather keep it the way it is, I'm a bit out of the loop on what it takes
> to actually get something done.

Huh? IIRC the last patch I saw you send in was applied by Dave a couple days
later?

> Add to that lack of documention to
> coding standards, and Alexey's clear stance on such things, and not
> wanted to step on Alexey's toes to get it anything done.... well here I am.
>

Heh... well, we do have a couple of minor docs in the CVS about coding
standards... um... I'll just ignore the part about Alexey.

> >I realise I'm probably one of the people you accuse of being rude and
> >shooting down ideas (and if I have been rude to anyone, please excuse me
>
> To be honest, I can only come up with a few people off hand and you
> werent one of them Dave ;). That's not to say.. well never mind.
>
> >- it was most certainly unintentional), but please see it from my point
> >of view. Periodically we get a barrage of message criticising the work
> >we put in from people who haven't taken the time to review the archives
> >of the list, or look at the cvs/todo/commit messages etc. It's extremely
> >disheartening to those of us that do give *many* hours of our time each
> >week, especially when 95% of those people complaining won't actually
> >help out.
>
> I understand your point here, and don't disagree. I can only state that
> in the past I've seen many offers to help, and if it's not in line with
> "Finish Alexey's code" it's shot down *right away*.

This is generally true only if it is a rehash of something we have been over
dozens of times. Kind of like when people pop-up on -hackers and say "I'm
ready to start coding up a threaded back-end, which files should I be looking
at" Otherwise my experience has been more of people asking what they can
do to help and us responding with "look at the todo/look at the portal code"
and then people either disappear or people point out they were hoping to
implement some CMS or other radical whizbang code and then they disappear
after we we don't get enthusiastic about it.

> There are many ways
> for people to do things, and for example, when the tinysofa ppl came up
> with a new design, the "official" response was basicly for them to get
> lost. Too little too late. Unless something is overly complex and
> wrong with Alexey's code, applying a different theme should be fairly
> easy and could take less than a day.
>

You have to realize that this is at least the 5th design we have seen for the
new site, none of which get us any closer to getting the new site launched if
for no other reason that each of these designs seems to spur another round of
website flaming. Also, for the record, I ask the tinysofa people if they
would be interested in submitting some updated banners and/or buttons for our
propaganda page and got no response. That's another example of us trying to
find ways for people to get involved and people not bothering when it's not
on their personal agenda.

> >As one of the oldest -www members, I have tried to lead as much as I
> >can, and each time I try to focus people on getting the job done, I get
> >flamed for not listening to different ideas about tasks we have already
> >discussed or even done.
>
> I've been on here a while, and I notice the flame wars. I try not to
> stir them up. Without a clear person in charge, it's collective group
> think, and in collective group think people will always disagree and
> stuff won't get done en masse.
>

We manage to develop the database without a single person in charge, do we
really have to one person in charge of www? I don't think so. Dave and I
are on the same page, and I think most of the regulars
(devrim/marc/alexey/john/chris) are as well.

> >So, here's the current plan again:
> >
> >1) Finish the new website, specifically the items on the todo list.
> >2) Make the new website live.
> >3a) Merge in the advocacy and developer websites.
> >3b) Review/update/sanitise all content.
>

And actually as I look at this list, I think we could launch the site
relatively soon. There are things that look like garbage, but they are no
worse than what we currently have. I'll take a swing at updating the todo
list tonight.

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