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

Hi, Julee-

Thanks for the edits; I think that's a better overall focus. I've 
integrated them with minor tweaks.

Next, I'll add links to the various areas we want to direct people. Any 
suggestions there are welcome.

Regards-
-Doug

On 4/10/13 4:15 PM, Julee wrote:
> 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: site¹s 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, we¹ve decided to close down the Q&A forums to
>> refocus on what is working well: IRC, email, telcons, doc sprints, and
>> our issue tracker.
>>
>> We¹re also looking at refining those communication channels we are
>> keeping around. We started out with W3C¹s 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 Genie¹s 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 site¹s 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 don¹t 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 that¹s 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 23:56:15 UTC