Re: Blog post for taking the Q&A system offline.

Hi, everyone:

Before we announce the close of forums, can we address the global nav
issues? I'll send out a separate email, delimiting the dependancies.

For the blog post, here's some suggestions:

* Change title to something more inclusive, such as: Refining our
communications channels
 

* Change:

  Email lists were another

to:


 Email lists were another channel of communication

* Add heading:

  After "...like the popular and useful StackOverflow."

Add:

  Suspending forums


* Change:

  we are closing down the Q&A forum



to:

  we are suspending the Q&A forum



* Change:

  IRC, email, telcons, doc sprints, and our issue tracker.

to: 

  IRC, email, telcons, doc sprints, and project.webplatform.org, our issue
tracker.


* After that, add heading:


project.webplatform.org

* After


  and port over old issues.


Add:

  In addition, project.webplatform.org has a system where anyone can
propose an idea, and everyone can comment in context.


* Add heading

After: sitešs look-and-feel.

Add:

GitHub


* In last paragraph, change:

, and our issue tracker,

To

, and project.webplatform.org,



HTH

J

----------------------------
julee@adobe.com
@adobejulee





-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Schepers <schepers@w3.org>
Date: Wednesday, April 10, 2013 12:50 PM
To: Jonathan Garbee <jonathan@garbee.me>
Cc: "public-webplatform@w3.org" <public-webplatform@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Blog post for taking the Q&A system offline.

>Hi, folks-
>
>Here's the rough first draft, without the links to resources. Feedback
>welcome!
>
>  http://blog.webplatform.org/?p=318&preview=true
>
>[[
>Suspending Q&A Forums
>Apr 10 2013 by Shepazu	
>
>When we launched WebPlatform.org, we wanted to have plenty of ways for
>the community to talk back to us about how to improve the site, and how
>to pitch in. IRC was a familiar option for many of us. Email lists were
>another, for long-term asynchronous discussions. An issue tracker was
>important to make sure we knew what needed to be done, and how it was
>progressing. An inline comments extension for Mediawiki was developed as
>an improvement on Talk pages. Community teleconferences to talk about
>tasks and progress. Doc Sprints to onramp new people into the community,
>and get work done. And a Q&A forum, like the popular and useful
>StackOverflow.
>
>After evaluating the most productive ways that our community has used
>each of these channels, we are closing down the Q&A forum, and refining
>some of our other communication processes.
>
>The software we used for the Q&A forum, Question2Answer, seemed to
>perform the task well. Our problem was communicating how to use the
>forums, and integrating feedback into our workflow. People tended to use
>the Q&A much as they would StackOverflow, to ask technical, pragmatic
>questions about doing Web development. Though our intent for it was more
>to act as a living FAQ and suggestion board for content on Web Platform
>Docs, questions about Web development were natural, and we did try to
>use these questions to help guide us in what content we would create for
>WPD. But the Q&A forums were never as focused as other channels, and
>ultimately there was not enough energy in our fledgling community to
>mine the Q&A forums for gems while keeping our eyes and hands on the
>tasks ahead of us. So, wešve decided to close down the Q&A forums to
>refocus on what is working well: IRC, email, telcons, doc sprints, and
>our issue tracker.
>
>Wešre also looking at refining those communication channels we are
>keeping around. We started out with W3Cšs go-to issue tracker, Bugzilla,
>but found it lacking. One of our most active contributors, Garbee,
>researched alternative, and convinced us that The Bug Genie has the
>feature set we wanted for not only filing and managing issues, but
>overall project management as well; he is taking the initiative to
>configure our new instance at project.webplatform.org, and port over old
>issues. Another active contributor, Frozenice, has been researching The
>Bug Geniešs API, so we can push issues directly in via the inline
>comment system in the wiki. Two W3C staff, Denis Ah-Kang and Lea Verou,
>have also helped by respectively installing the system and skinning it
>to match our sitešs look-and-feel.
>
>We are also strengthening one communications channel that we initially
>undervalued: Github. We are putting infrastructure into place to make
>all the code for WebPlatform.org available through Github, including our
>MediaWiki extensions, templates, skins, and stylesheets.
>
>We donšt know yet if we are retiring the Q&A forums forever. We are
>keeping the software installed, with all the questions and answers
>intact, but are not allowing any new questions or answers. Once our
>primary and immediate goal of documenting the Open Web Platform is more
>mature, we may decide to reopen the Q&A forums to allow people to
>discuss Web development, if thatšs what the community wants. But for
>now, we encourage people to get involved through email, IRC, our issue
>tracker, or by just diving in and helping create and edit content.
>]]
>
>Regards-
>-Doug
>
>On 4/10/13 3:05 PM, Doug Schepers wrote:
>> Hi, Garbee-
>>
>> I'll write this today.
>>
>> Regards-
>> -Doug
>>
>> On 4/10/13 3:03 PM, Jonathan Garbee wrote:
>>> We should try to get a blog post written for the Q&A system being taken
>>> down. This way we can post it and finally take the software and put it
>>> out of commission for the time being.
>>>
>>> If I recall the email thread on taking it down correctly we had decided
>>> that it currently doesn't have a solid use-case with the current state
>>> of things. Further it hasn't had much use since the initial launch.
>>> Although we are taking it offline for now, it may come back later once
>>> the documentation is worked on more and we see a valid use for it.
>>>
>>> Did I miss anything major from our conversation (probably did)? Is
>>> anyone up to writing this post?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> -Garbee
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 10 April 2013 20:17:29 UTC