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

Hello Michael,

Le Fri, 4 Feb 2011 00:35:40 +0930,
Michael Wheatland <michael@wheatland.com.au> a écrit :

> 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.

I'm not dictating, I'm merely reminding. 

> 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.

An open source community focuses on code, not on website experiments. 

> 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.

I'm glad if improvements are done; and I'm cautiously warning against
not having discussions on CMS choice. 

> > 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.

So let's call them "improvements"?  :-)

> 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.

What you describe above seems to fall for sure in improvements. 

> > 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 think that on this last topic given our past experiences we may want
to tone these down (the new ideas). Understand that the purpose of my
mail was to make sure everyone was still keeping in mind that we were
talking about improving the present website and not propose something
completely different. 


> 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.

Given that I have already written precisely that the four people in
question are "community enablers" I'm not going to repeat it. 

> 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

Here's what my problem is: we (all of us here) invest time and effort
into something which in theory should not cost us that much. People
here don't seem to get along, have twenty different agendas, and the
very factual comment I can make is that they simply have trouble
working together. I could say that several of them are not used to OSS
communities, but that would perhaps sound too paternalistic or
arrogant. The net result is that we have a website, that there is room
for improvement (yes, this website has way too much text on it) but
that this website has been a birth in pain and tears. 

Since LibreOffice is not about a website and that many of us are doing
many other things for this project, please understand that we are not
going to cover the activity here 100% of the time just to make sure
everyone agrees to contribute in any specific ways. Having said that,
it's obvious that reaching that stage shows we have a problem
(management problem, communication problem, skills problems, etc.) so
let's stick to the basics: website, improvement of the website, period. 
That was the purpose of my mail, you can claim I am not carefully
wording it enough, that might be the case, but it seems whatever is
being written here is never fully understood, appreciated, integrated,
etc. Just understand it's not always about the website, it's not
always about the latest and greatest idea that "absolutely needs to
be implemented tomorrow". It's about many other things. It's about code
development, users support, QA, localization, marketing, documentation,
fundraising, etc. 

Thank you,

-- 
Charles-H. Schulz
Membre du Comité exécutif
The Document Foundation.

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