Topic: New Contribs

[compdoc]

There are many months worth of new contribs, etc listed by month in New Development Announcements.

It would be really nice if these were moved in the proper places in the Contribs sections of this website where ppl can find them.

I never even realized Documentation contained a recent contribs section named New Development Announcements for the longest time. I stumbled over it by searching google. I mean, who would think to look there?

[RonM]

Good point - we're getting far behind (about 4 months) The "New Development Announcements" is linked on the main documentation page, however.

We have been "on hold" since mid Sept when we were trying to organize some teams to do things like this. I haven't seen any progress on this since the Lycoris announcement, though.

Mbachmann has been continuously updating the new contrib announcement with what he finds in weblinks and the forums (thanks!). We have agreed-on procedures in place to list these in the How To Classification, and the authors can list them in weblinks.

Muzo, wellsi and I also have some FAQs and doc and volunteer pages approx ready to go into a rebuilt set of Documentation pages.

We had a bunch of good folks volunteer to help out with most every team when asked last Sept. I don't know if Joe is waiting to set up the whole Lycoris volunteer structure here or what, but I humbly suggest that it's past time to get going on the website part, at least, before we fall too far behind.
Already the prospect looks daunting ;-)

[jcoleman]

Ron,

You guys have done a fabulous job so far.  Please do not wait for input from Joe on this as it seems to have fallen off his plate compared to working out the new distro.

RequestedDeletion and I are still running the website and we would very much appreciate it if you guys would move forward with your plans.

Cheers and many thanks....

-jeff

[RonM]

OK, let's do it! We can at least get the contribs up to date, and redo the main Documentation pages.

We still have the Docteam mailing list here:

http://lists.contribs.org/mailman/listinfo/docteam

archives here:

http://lists.contribs.org/pipermail/docteam

I'll start posting updates and reports there. If anyone wants to participate, or help out with something, you can sign up for the docteam mailing list at the top URL, and send email with suggestions, offers of help, etc., to docteam@lists.contribs.org.

[monkey]

You guys have done a fabulous job so far. Please do not wait for input from Joe on this as it seems to have fallen off his plate compared to working out the new distro.

Nothing has fallen from our plate Jeff.

RequestedDeletion and I are still running the website and we would very much appreciate it if you guys would move forward with your plans.

So why do you need our input?


RonM:

Dude you are king Let me know if theres something I can do to assist etc.

The documentation on contribs is really in a shambles and could do with a a major reorg. Its difficult and clumpsy to find in its current state.

Its something I know needs doing. If RonM would like to head that effort, he has my full support.

[gregswallow]

I would be willing to help re-organize the web links, new dev announcements, howto's, etc into wiki pages organized by category, maybe updating the Howto Classification pages - http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php?pagename=How-to%20Classification - adding something like this:
http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php?pagename=ContribsForSME6

The web links, new dev announcement and howto classification sections seem redundant - lets combine them all into wiki pages **editable by anyone that wants to help** and organized by category.  And encourage people to use the Recent Changes system - http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php?pagename=RecentChanges - to let people see whats new.

Any comments on that?  Let me know what I can do to help.  

Greg

[RonM]

Greg - that sounds great! By chance, I just added links to NewDev and Contribs for SME6 to the How To Classification page. If you had something more elaborate in mind, sounds interesting. Pls feel free to add it or demo it on another page, whatever.

AFAIK, almost all the wiki pages are editable by anyone, only the main dev and doc pages are locked. Certainly all the how to pages are...

The "difficult and clumpsy to find in its current state" condition referred to by Monkey is, I feel, characteristic of using a wiki. We just need to be continually organising it, and doing cleanup, to keep it as useful as possible. The benefit is how easy it is to add stuff.

The web links, new dev announcement and howto classification sections seem redundant - lets combine them all into wiki pages **editable by anyone that wants to help** and organized by category.

What do you have in mind? I'm very interested... currently, the How To Classification is getting less than 20% of the clicks that the Contribs page is getting, which tells me it could be more useful...

In the meantime, I'll just be going through the NewDev announcements and making sure they're all in metadata pages. This is something I'm sure needs to happen. Jan is done ;-). Anyone who wants to help with that is most welcome.[/quote]

[gregswallow]

If it was up to me I'd scrap the web links section and the 'New development announcements' section after moving that info (whats not there already) into the howto classification pages.  

currently, the How To Classification is getting less than 20% of the clicks that the Contribs page is getting, which tells me it could be more useful...

That section is not viewed as much because take a look at the main contribs page (the one you get after clicking on contribs on the lesft menu):
http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php?ContribsPage
...People will click on whats on the top of the page first - There are too may sections with the same information.  The main pages like that are the most important for determining where visitors to the site will go for information.

For example take a look at this page - http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php?pagename=New%20Development%20Announcement%20Process - suggesting someone with a new development post a web-link, post to the experienced forum, post to devinfo, edit the howto classification and edit the new development announcements page.   5 things to do - that seems crazy to me.  

I think I will work on a sample/template page for the howto classification section showing what I mean...

[wellsi]

Sorry for the long post (I've been away, ...

At the moment I think that the 'New development announcements' is absolutely vital as it takes information from the many places that developers put it.  

I second the scrapping of the Web-links

Regarding 'ContribsForSME6' this wouldn't scale to the number of contribs that we have - there needs to be some kind of structure as there is on the main 'How-to%20Classification' page.

I agree that the Announcement process is too much, but in practice various parts of that are done. But how should things be announced - often they only go to Devinfo or either Experienced or General fourums - I don't think that this will change. (I have a change proposal lower down)

My comment to this thread is that we need a fundamental review of how contribs are handled.

0) How to store RPM contribs. Often a topic on Devinfo and relevant here.

1) Find a lite way to annouce contribs - and get it agreed on Devinfo or at least some of the prolific developers.

2) Work out how the information can be maintained easily - ideally seperate the data from the presentation. Can Monkey help here?

3) Work out how to allow comments on the contribs and have this fed back to the developer.

If we had the data stored in a database rather than the wikipage the list of contribs for version X or popularity could be easily generated rather than having more hand-crafted pages such as 'ContribsForSME6' (which serves a useful purpose, but I don't think is sustainable)

I will have a lot of time in December - but it would be nice if the effort was useful.

As a short term change should we modify 'ContribsPage' so that it goes
* intro (but only the first two lines)
* How To Classification
* Contribs
* Web-links

As another short term change as the announcement process -
step 1) make clear this is optional
step 2) Post to Devinfo or Experienced forum
Then we accept that it needs some 'Doc' work.
(I can change this if you agree)

Finally does the doc email list work? Or is it just a case of needing to re-register (again)?

[gregswallow]

At the moment I think that the 'New development announcements' is absolutely vital as it takes information from the many places that developers put it.  

I agree completely - but I think that there should be a new development announcements section at the top of every howto classification page - rather than on pages sorted by month.  People can use the recent Changes - http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php?pagename=RecentChanges&days=30 - to see what is new for the month.

Regarding 'ContribsForSME6' this wouldn't scale to the number of contribs that we have - there needs to be some kind of structure as there is on the main 'How-to%20Classification' page.

I agree - but I think that some sort of template is required like that - that can be similar from page to page in the classification section.

If we had the data stored in a database rather than the wikipage the list of contribs for version X or popularity could be easily generated rather than having more hand-crafted pages such as 'ContribsForSME6' (which serves a useful purpose, but I don't think is sustainable)

Wiki pages are sustainable because everyone can help.  I went through all the new dev announcement pages and I made an excel workbook to take that list of contribs, descriptions, links and outputs them into a wiki table format similar to the contribs for sme6 page i made - this page was made just by copying and pasting the output:
http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php?pagename=test

It is a work in progress, but works pretty easily.  Anyone that want to see it, it is zipped up with instructions here:
http://www.skynetonline.ca/images/contribs.zip

As a short term change should we modify 'ContribsPage' so that it goes
* intro (but only the first two lines)
* How To Classification
* Contribs
* Web-links

I totally agree - someone who has admin/moderator access to the wiki has to do that...
[/quote]

[wellsi]

At the moment I think that the 'New development announcements' is absolutely vital as it takes information from the many places that developers put it.  

I agree completely - but I think that there should be a new development announcements section at the top of every howto classification page - rather than on pages sorted by month.  People can use the recent Changes - http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php?pagename=RecentChanges&days=30 - to see what is new for the month.

I can see that point but I still like these pages as it brings the changes from DevInfo, Web-Links and the forums into one place (not all found from RecentChanges). It is also a barometer of life. If we presume this page contines then the announcement process is also simple
* Annouce anywhere
* Mbachmann updates the monthly page
* Docteam update the HowTo Classification (or successor) and post to Experienced forum - to allow easy feedback.

However it is right to see if it can be improved. Certainly it would be useful to show what has recently changed in the topic pages.

I totally agree - someone who has admin/moderator access to the wiki has to do that...

I can make the change, but are we in the minority of wanting this change?


Thinking about the contribs/How To Classification -

What should this look like in the future?
How should it be maintained?
What is the workload like - it has been seen that there are never enough people to help (or maybe we haven't sold the vision)

At lot of hours has gone into what is there, but it can be all torn up if the replacement is both functional and maintainable.

[RonM]

Hey Ian! Great to see your 'handle' in the forums again. BTW, the docteam list appears to be broken.

Greg, I owe you an apology - the Contribs page, the How-to Classification, even some of the Topic pages _are_ locked! This wasn't how we created them. The Topic pages have a (mostly ignored) feedback section - useless if the page is locked. The whole point of using a wiki is being missed - maybe the locked pages are an artifact of the recent move. I'm sorry, I should have checked first. Maybe we should unlock this stuff.

Some general points:

- Recent Changes, while extremely useful, is problematic when editing existing wiki pages. If the "This is a minor change" checkbox is checked, it will not list the change, if it is not checked, it will list it (if edited) but change the author name. To be sure that news of a new contrib is avail to everyone (in "Recent Changes" for only 3 days by default) the developer would need to create a new page to announce it.

- I feel that the "New Development Announcements" are absolutely vital also. The hardest part of building the how to pages was finding the how tos in the first place, trying to figure out which was the latest, etc. - I'm enormously grateful to mbachmann for sparing us this confusing chore. I hope this will continue in some form no matter what occurs with the contribs pages - as a tracking mechanism if nothing else.

- Announcements _are_ all over the place, and it'd be great if we could reduce that. I agree weblinks are often the least informative method for end users, but it seems to me to be the method most often used by developers - as a secondary method if announced in forums or devinfo, for instance.

- Another issue is alpha-beta-final versions of contribs. Should we list in new dev at alpha but not move to howtos until final announce?

As a short term change should we modify 'ContribsPage' so that it goes
* intro (but only the first two lines)
* How To Classification
* Contribs
* Web-links

As another short term change as the announcement process -
step 1) make clear this is optional
step 2) Post to Devinfo or Experienced forum
Then we accept that it needs some 'Doc' work.

- for now, seems good to me. Some changes, however important, I think are out of the scope of documentation/web site maint (like deciding how to store rpm contribs). For the rest, I think we should post ideas here, and if we can agree, do them. The whole community has a chance to speak up if they want.[/quote]

[RonM]

I downloaded the zip file, Greg - looks nice. Useful to me to organize the Meta-data update, rather than the wiki.

How do you see using this on the site?
replacing weblinks? or topic pages? or what...

[mbachmann]

I will continue updating the New Development Announcements section with whatever i'll find. Would like to see new Howtos also been listed there, no matter if they are local on contribs wiki or remote?

[gregswallow]

I downloaded the zip file, Greg - looks nice. Useful to me to organize the Meta-data update, rather than the wiki.

How do you see using this on the site?
replacing weblinks? or topic pages? or what...

I made it becasue I wanted to help gather all the info on contribs and get it sorted and formatted in a similar way.  Since uploading I added a row at the beginning called category and then they can be sorted in the excel sheet by category before being outputted.  I think the "boxes" can go on the various howto classification pages - replacing the links to a second wiki page with an IFRAME.  For example instead of just having a link on this page - http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php?pagename=PHP - 'Install PHP Accellerator' - have a box with all the info on that page - instead of this page - http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php?pagename=Install%20PHP%20Accelerator

PS - the output sheet on the excel file is locked but there is no password

- I feel that the "New Development Announcements" are absolutely vital also. The hardest part of building the how to pages was finding the how tos in the first place, trying to figure out which was the latest, etc. - I'm enormously grateful to mbachmann for sparing us this confusing chore. I hope this will continue in some form no matter what occurs with the contribs pages - as a tracking mechanism if nothing else.

I have one more idea about the new development announcements - how about we keep the current month's announcements on a separate page (like it is now) - but move the previous months data to the howto classification pages....sound good?