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

I just feel like being called out as a "most active" contributor feels odd
to me. Since I see Mike Sierra and David Gash (sorry if I destroyed names
here) as those kinds of people since they actually worked through the
session issues on the docs.

I do like both of the recommended changes much better. I'll let it be
decided which to go with by letting a coin get flipped. (Although I am
preferential to being called a shadow-king since that is just flat out
hilarious.)


On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 8:06 PM, Doug Schepers <schepers@w3.org> wrote:

> Hi, Garbee-
>
> I'll honor your wish, of course... but first, please let me try to put a
> framing on it to try to persuade you otherwise.
>
> 1) You *are* one of our more active contributors... code, review,
> discussion, and organization are all contributions as well, not just content
>
> 2) It is desirable for us to publicly call out our specific community
> members... especially ones that don't work for the stewards, because:
>
>   2a) It shows that there are active contributors
>
>   2b) It puts a human face on the project
>
>   2c) It motivates some people to get involved, knowing that they will
> receive attribution
>
> 3) This will look good on a resume for you :)
>
> 4) I don't think this is very strongly worded at all (you might just be
> sensitive to seeing your name called out like this)
>
> 5) My appreciation for your initiative and drive is genuine, and I want to
> express that
>
> So, in that light, would this wording make you more comfortable?
>
> [[
> One of our more active community members, Garbee, researched alternative
> issue trackers,
> ]]
>
> Or how about this?
>
> [[
> Garbee, shadow-king of awesome, researched alternative issue trackers,
> ]]
>
> Regards-
> -Doug
>
>
> On 4/11/13 7:29 PM, Jonathan Garbee wrote:
>
>> After a quick glance over it, I am fine with the draft except for one
>> little thing.  "  One of our most active contributors, Garbee,
>> researched alternative, " I really don't like this. I'd rather not be
>> called out as one of the most active contributors (especially since I
>> have done barely any actual documentation editing like I really want
>> to.) If we could drop the opening entirely or find someway to reword it
>> so it doesn't seem so strong I would appreciate it very much.
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 8:15 PM, Janet Swisher <jswisher@mozilla.com
>> <mailto:jswisher@mozilla.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     There's some ambiguity around the pronoun 'we' in this post. In the
>>     context of launching the site, it refers to the Stewards. In the
>>     context of decisions being made currently, it refers to the most
>>     active participants in the project, which includes both Steward
>>     staff members and volunteers, i.e., "the community" as it exists
>> today.
>>
>>     Along similar lines, the phrase "ways for the community to talk back
>>     to us about how to improve the site" sets up an unnecessary
>>     division. Something like "ways for visitors to interact and become
>>     part of the community improving the site" would be more inclusive
>>     and inviting.
>>
>>     --Janet
>>
>>
>>
>>     On 4/10/13 2:50 PM, Doug Schepers wrote:
>>
>>>     Hi, folks-
>>>
>>>     Here's the rough first draft, without the links to resources.
>>>     Feedback welcome!
>>>
>>>     http://blog.webplatform.org/?**p=318&preview=true<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, we’ve decided to close down the Q&A forums to
>>>     refocus on what is working well: IRC, email, telcons, doc sprints,
>>>     and our issue tracker.
>>>
>>>     We’re also looking at refining those communication channels we are
>>>     keeping around. We started out with W3C’s 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 <http://project.webplatform.**org<http://project.webplatform.org>>,
>>> and port
>>>
>>>     over old issues. Another active contributor, Frozenice, has been
>>>     researching The Bug Genie’s 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 site’s 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 don’t 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 that’s 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
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>     --
>>     Janet Swisher <mailto:jREMOVEswisher@**mozilla.com<jREMOVEswisher@mozilla.com>
>> >
>>     Mozilla Developer Network <https://developer.mozilla.org**>
>>     Technical Writer/Community Steward
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>

Received on Friday, 12 April 2013 14:54:26 UTC