Re: [libreoffice-website] Re: Libreoffice.org website dev sitrep 2011-02-02 - [Was: Work on the "Why?" pages]

Charles, it might be worth choosing your wording more carefully and
steering people toward a solution rather than dictating, just as you
have suggested others do.

On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 5:08 PM, charles.h.schulz
<charles.h.schulz@gmail.com> wrote:
> Just a reminder:
>
> We will not consider any move to another CMS, platform, etc. until at least 6 months. At that 
> stage (in 6 months or so) we might/may perhaps *consider* (not necessarily approve) a move to a 
> platform such as Drupal.
>
> Until that stage:
> 1) no discussion about Drupal on this list.
> 2) no "major overhaul" of the website.

There may be people within the community who want to consider these
things, and they are free to do so. It's only natural for an open
source community.
BUT what we have been trying to discuss here is the development of the
'about pages', so I would suggest if you wish to discuss CMS choice
you start another thread.

> What this does not mean:
> 1) we can't change the way some of the content is presented on the website. (see the wiki page 
> for this)
> 2) we can't improve the website in minor ways.
> 3) we can't fix bugs.

It is difficult to gauge your opinions here as some of the changes
that people are suggesting might be considered a major overhaul rather
than minor bug fixes.
The changes such as further development of media rich content and
improved CSS for page structures falls under this major overhaul but
IMO 'essential' category which I am unsure of your opinion on.
In any case I don't think it is good to discourage this work as your
comments seem to.

> Yes, there comes a time when the website is "completed" and where only incremental improvements 
> are needed.
> Again: LibreOffice is not about a website nor about letting people satisfy their passion about 
> web design, at least not primarily. We do not want a website that keeps on changing because 
> people think their way is better.
> We (the SC) do not want to reopen yet another thread about these topics. The level of energy and 
> effort spent on this topic (the website) is ridiculously high compared to what we need to to work 
> on. We're therefore glad that there are people who want to help but there comes a point where 
> it's not helpful, because someone's always pushing, pushing and always pushing. Same thing with 
> respect to the website confcall: we haven't agreed on working again on overhauling the website, 
> we haven't agreed on changing the website team, which for the sake of clarity is composed of the 
> same 4 people the SC has appointed.


"We (The SC)" do not dictate what the website team discusses. The SC
suggestions and the website conf call has clearly steered us towards
improving the site as it stands before looking for improvements in the
infrastructure, which is occurring. But it does not stop others from
investigating other options or proposing new ideas.

I take offence to your insinuation that the only people in the website
team are appointed by the Steering Committee. The website team is a
wider group of people who work together, we do not rely on the
Steering Committee to tell us what to do, or appoint new members to
our team. There are many more people that 'the four' who I would
consider valuable, contributing members of the website team.

Could I suggest that, like Florian and some other well respected
members of the Steering Committee, you allow the website team a little
breathing space at the moment to organically work the kinks out rather
than attempting to dictate what the team must or must not discuss or
what opinions people can express.
I would not like your comments result in an 'Us vs Them' relationship.
We are a community who should be respectful of others views and open
to listen to others opinions.

Just some ideas on more careful communication :)
Michael Wheatland

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