Re: Taking a step back for a moment......

[Ryan Muldoon <rpmuldoon students wisc edu>]

> "rpmuldoon students wisc edu" wrote:
> > 
> > Original Message:
> > -----------------
> > From: Michael Bernstein webmaven lvcm com
> > Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 09:43:25 -0800
> > Subject: Re: Taking a step back for a moment......
> > 
> > <snipped>
> > > 3. Maintenence
> > > We need to remember that everything that we add to the site, we are
> > > going to have to maintain.  That means that multiple news sections, or
> > > anything that requires fresh content will have to be "owned" by someone
> > > to keep up maintenence.  I've seen a lot of projects fall by the wayside
> > > for this very reason.
> > 
> > If all news items have appropriate meta-information attached
> > to them, they can appear in whatever news sections are
> > appropriate. Therefore you only need to worry about
> > maintaining the news submissions as a whole, and let the
> > classification system do the work of 'maintaining' the
> > individual news sections.
> >
> > You aren't addressing the real issue - keeping enough content flowing in for all the various sections.  It is obviously simple to make it easy to add news.  But to actually have all the information, we need people adding it regularly.  That is the problem that I was trying to address.
> 
> So, you're saying that all news areas need to be equally
> active? I think it's fair to say that not all topics are
> equally interesting to people, and some sub-topics may not
> be very active. That's ok, if these less active sub-topics
> are aggregated into more inclusive topics *automatically*.
> People who are interested only in the sub-topic can view
> that sub-topic's news page, and ignore the other topics. If
> the particular page they're interested in isn't updated all
> that frequently, well, let them submit a news item!
> 
No, I am saying that, as we consider new sections, we have to be sure that
we can keep them populated with fresh content.  It reflects poorly on a site
if it has 15 different sections when only 3 of them have been updated in the
last several months.   The majority of gnome.org isn't going to be gnotices
type sites.  But that doesn't mean that the information isn't time-sensitive.
I am just advocating not biting off more than we want to chew.


> > > 4. Stress Involvement
> > > We should try and gear the site towards pushing the GNOME platform.  To
> > > do that well, we need to offer ways for people to get involved.
> > > [snip excellent suggestions]
> > 
> > I feel that the best way to get people involved is to let
> > them join the gnome.org site as a member, and allow them to
> > personalize the site to some degree. This makes it easier to
> > promote members who contribute to GNOME, and could also alow
> > members to more easily keep track of projects that interest
> > them.
> > 
> > I don't really agree here.  Personalizing gnome.org doesn't encourage involvement at all.  How can you promote members who contribute to gnome by personalizing gnome.org?  It isn't a matter of keeping track of projects - that is what mailing lists are for, really.  I am interested in encouraging people to get their hands dirty with actively helping out with the various projects.  That, I think, should be one of the main goals of the gnome sites.
> 
> I'm sorry, I didn't make myself clear. Personalization
> encourages people to *log in* to gnome.org. This makes it
> easy to identify site members who are contribute to the site
> (by adding an answer to an FAQ, for example) and promote
> them. It also makes it easy for people to contribute by
> adding material to 'their' folder (which they can only
> manage while logged in), and other sorts of positive
> feedback mechanisms. Personalization just makes it easier to
> encourage people to log into the site *in the first place*.

When I say "Stress Involvement," I don't refer to just the gnome.org website.
I mean GNOME in general.  The Documentation project, the UI Hitsquad, 
and the bunches of other GNOME projects, including coding.  The end goal of the
gnome website shouldn't be to get people involved in the gnome website.

Logging into the website, and personalizing it does nothing to further the goal
of increasing the GNOME development community.  The gnome website is but one
of the many many projects under the GNOME umbrella.  I suggested a "project of
the week" section under which any GNOME-related project could post some small
tasks that a new contributor could work on to get their teeth cut on GNOME. I 
don't see how making people have to log into the gnome website does any of this.


    --Ryan