Re: [gentoo-dev] GLEP 30 (Planet Gentoo): Round 2

[Kurt Lieber]

On Sat, Nov 13, 2004 at 03:21:56PM +0000 or thereabouts, Daniel Drake wrote:
> I think there should be some other motivation for removing it as well as it
> not having met its target. If we don't meet 1000 hits per week, but nobody
> has any problem with the planet being there, then why remove it? There will
> always be room for improvement and as more people get involved with the
> planet over time it will get more and more popular.
>
> I just don't like planning the removal of the planet at the same time that
> I'm proposing to bring it into existance, seems a bit backwards to me. What
> if the planet got 998 hits in that week? What if we didn't meet the target,
> but the average or exponential growth in hits each week means that we'd
> meet the target by miles 2 weeks after the 3 month evaluattion that I
> propose? Are you willing just to be a little bit flexible here?

I'm trying to avoid a flame-war down the road.  If the planet gets 1 hit in
that one week period and I suggest taking it down because it's not being
used, I guarantee someone is going to object to that.  They'll argue that
we didn't promote it heavily enough or that we didn't sacrifice a live
chicken or that the live chicken we *did* sacrifice wasn't properly
cleansed first.  There will be lots of finger pointing and CAPS and !!!!!!
characters flying around.  Quite frankly, I've watched the sensless
slaughter of enough !!!!!! marks that I don't want to see it again.  Been
there, done that, got the t-shirt and welts on my bum to show for it.

If we go into this with some pre-defined metrics, there is no argument.
We've either met the goals or we haven't.  Now sure, if we say 1000 hits
and we get 999, I'm not going to yank the site just to be a jerk.  However,
if we say 1000 hits and, in the initial 3 months, the site has caused a lot
of problems or the software needs a security patch every other week, if we
only get 950 hits, I may very well decide to yank it.

So, if you're OK with me making a unilateral decision on how much
flexibility to offer, then fine.  I'm not going to get into a situtation
where we have to have a huge argument 3 months down the road on whether or
not to kill the site, however.  I'm tired of arguing.

--kurt