Re: Project Issues

Hi Garbee,

Thanks for your thoughts here.

I agree with (most) of what you say. I think a lot of it comes down to not
having a central project manager to help get us organized. We have an
incredibly large amount of work ahead of us--so much that it's paralyzing.
I'm hopeful that having someone formally take on that role will help be a
good next step to begin addressing some of these issues.

--Alex

On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 11:30 AM, Jonathan Garbee <jonathan@garbee.me> wrote:

> 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.


One reason for it to be limited to admins only is that it's so easy to mess
up a lot of stuff technically if you don't know what you're doing
(especially with gotchas around SMW properties and queries that depend on
them)


> 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
>
>