Project Issues

This email is going to have a lot of topics.  So, sorry for not breaking 
it into more emails with more targeted purposes.

1) Project Management.

We have failed miserably time and time again to try and manage this 
beast.  Tomato has good ideas on using more of the wiki system to help 
and I am looking heavily to using The Bug Genie (more on why I'm 
planning to move forward with this software in another thread) to manage 
the project.  We are going to collaborate over this winter hiatus on 
what we think the best approach should be. Hopefully from this we can 
offer a pretty solid solution shortly after the New Year for everyone to 
look over.


2) Getting editors to stick around.

We had a large spur of editors at launch.  Well, of course that was 
going to die out (especially with the session issues running rampant).  
But, it has dropped below even what I had expected.  We need to get 
organized and make some changes to the system and administration in 
order to run another editor campaign that can hopefully be successful in 
keeping editors around. People should easily be able to see what needs 
to be done if they just want to help.  This is something we tried to do 
with the Most Wanted Tasks but it got crufty and fell through the cracks 
of upkeep.  Helping make a solid solution for this will be a part of the 
Project Management plan. Although, this does leave dealing with how to 
best do another round of news targeting possible editors.


3) Changes to administration.

As re-opened for discussion in a previous email thread we need to try 
and allow anonymous edits.  Honestly, I don't care about the "we want a 
recognizable community" BS.  We need people who *want* to edit and some 
of them prefer to be anonymous; therefore, we need to deal with it 
{insert gif here to make you feel better}. There are a few other things 
in place right now such as admins only moving pages which should be 
lifted once we document the topic hierarchy properly in this case. 
Basically, later on it should be completely autonomous except for 
deleting pages (perhaps even this could be just allowed.)  We can't have 
a community driven site if the initial developers decide to say users 
can't do things like edit templates.


4) Goals.

This can go back into PM, but really deserves it own are to talk as 
well.  We have been looking at the immediate time and seeing what needs 
to be done and deciding on edits and routes to go from there. Um, this 
is wrong.  Do we get in a car most of the time and just "go"?  No, we 
have a place we need to get do and we decide on a route from there.  So 
why the hell are we trying to get things done without knowing where 
we're going?...  Let's talk about a topic that no one is really sure 
about, dropping Alpha. We need to decide what we want to achieve in 
order to drop the Alpha label and move into full release.  Honestly, 
lets run this like software and do a real release cycle, full with 
Beta's and actual milestones, not really time-based (although having 
target times to complete things is still good in most cases.)  We need 
to decide what we want to have as an end result and figure out what 
needs to be done back to what we work on now. With an end-goal that 
everyone knows and can see then it could encourage editors more, if not 
we at least have set goals and aren't looking around each week for 
things to do.


5) Feedback.

We have been using the IRC and Mailing List for most feedback.  The 
comment system has basically been purposed by some for giving feedback 
since they don't want to use (or don't know of) the other methods.  We 
really need to find better ways of getting feedback from the community. 
I for one think a good idea for now would be to get a few people who can 
keep up with feedback and respond appropriately and let people know how 
to get in touch with them. Basically creating community relations people 
to get feedback.  I for one don't mind helping with this type of 
solution.  If anyone has an idea for a better solution, let me know.  
(Yes, we can have a feedback form on the site either go to a mailing 
list of people who want to deal with it or eventually if we use The Bug 
Genie have it autosubmit a report there. So those are some options at 
some point to think about.)


Plain and simple though, these issues are in no way tied to any one 
person.  We all failed here and need to look into solving this before 
the project can really move forward.

If responding it would be best to respond to a single item and append it 
in the subject line by the number that identifies what item you're 
responding to (ex. Re: Project issues - 1).  This will help keep 
responses clearer.

Thoughts on any of this?

Thanks,
-Garbee

Received on Tuesday, 4 December 2012 00:31:14 UTC