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Oo
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---- Envoyé avec BlackBerry® d'Orange ----
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-----Original Message-----
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From: AllenJB <gentoo-lists@××××××××××.uk>
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Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:30:34
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To: <gentoo-dev@l.g.o>
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Subject: [gentoo-dev] PR Project Activity Issues
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Hi all,
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The Gentoo PR Project currently appears to be having difficulties with
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keeping up, both with the newsletters and announcements, and I believe
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this is currently reflecting badly on the project as a whole. These
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issues are apparently holding back some key changes to the Gentoo
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website to make it easier to navigate and help the project appear more
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active than is reflected by the current front page.
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If the project needs more hands, and these aren't appearing, then
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perhaps more should be done to advertise the positions and exactly what
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they entail (I would suggest announcements on the forums, with specifics
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on who to talk to for those interested).
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The newsletter has been having issues for some time, and this makes me
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wonder if the amount of effort required is excessive for the value
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obtained from those efforts. While the GuideXML system Gentoo uses for
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newsletters, etc is nice, does it require too much time and effort to
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convert articles to GuideXML and get the newsletters published?
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Alternative setups for the newsletter could be to either go text-only or
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web-only.
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Text-only would involved producing a text-only email, which is then
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copied and pasted onto the website for archiving. This would obviously
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require minimal formatting work.
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My idea for a web-only setup would require more initial work, but I
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think would make maintenance much easier once set up. The Gentoo
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Newsletter would become a separate website, not based on GuideXML, but
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on a standard CMS. Instead of having set release dates (weekly or
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monthly), articles would just be released as soon as they are produced.
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The regular features like bug stats, GLSAs, developer changes could be
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easily generated automatically (I suspect almost all of those are mostly
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done automatically anyway - adapting such scripts for a CMS that can
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publish from RSS feeds should be relatively trivial) and would appear on
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the website without any intervention.
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As above, articles would be published as and when they are ready.
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Instead of just 1 editor, this website-based setup would be able to have
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multiple editors with little collaboration required (just to mark
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submissions as being worked on when an editor picks them up, which
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should be easily doable using a ticket-based system (bugzilla) or
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mailing list).
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An advantage, as I see it, of the website-based system is that it could
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be expanded to include features not currently easily possible with the
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current newsletter - categorized archiving of articles (not just be
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publish date) and user comments. While I haven't looked, it's probably
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possible to even find a CMS which includes email notification of new
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articles as a feature.
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AllenJB
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PS. This did start out as a submission for a council meeting agenda
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item, but I couldn't stop writing.
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PPS. To preempt the obvious suggestion: I do intend to become a
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developer, I just don't feel I have the time to commit right now.
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That'll hopefully change in ~6 months once I've finished uni and have a job. |
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