Re: www.gnome.org

[Martin Aspeli <optilude gmx net>]

Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
> Thilo Pfennig wrote:
> > Its frustrating that nothing happens on WGO.
>
> It certainly is.
>
> > The problem is not all the
> > bugs or shortcomings of the website. The problem is the organization. I
> > also dont think that a technical new solution like Plone will magically
> > remove all organizational problems. Its easy to see bugs on web pages
> > but if those are not fixed the problem lies deeper.
>
> I completely agree.  And judging based on how long it has taken, I'm tending
> to thin the Plone system will bring in more problems than it will solve.
>
> > Concrete suggestions: Find somebody who will be the primary webmaster
> > (in a responsible sense, not so much technical) and find somebody who is
> > officially coordinating marketing efforts. There are many cooks but you
> > can never depend on anything that is said right now. Intransparency
> > kills involvement.
>
> It's easy to say so, it's impossible to find that one person.  I have a
> different approach to the solution: Lets install a readily available CMS, like
> Joomla, plug it into our existing LDAP account system, make it easy for
> everyone with commit access to create a web password and edit.  Then we can
> mobilize the hundreds of our volunteers to keep the website up to date instead
> of looking for The One.

I'm not sure this would be any different to what you have with Plone: 
it's a readily available CMS, it can connect to your LDAP account 
system, you can let let anyone create a password and edit pages.

The problem seems to be that no-one is actually doing the work to get it 
up to a live site. I saw the current state of play at the Plone 
Conference and it looks tantalisingly close. However, unless someone 
actually has the time, power and interest to put it on a live server and 
turn the key so that it actually becomes www.gnome.org, then it's always 
going to be "nearly done", as it has been for over a year.

I see a few people here trying to make it happen, and I hope those 
people *will* make it happen. Respectfully, I think that starting from 
scratch with a new technology stack right now would cost you another 
6-12 months of re-work unless you suddenly find a lot of dedicated 
people with the time, power and interest to make this happen.

Cheers,
Martin

--
Author of `Professional Plone Development`, a book for developers who
want to work with Plone. See http://martinaspeli.net/plone-book