Re: CSS or bust???

Sounds right on the mark to me, Scott, and thanks to Eliot for originally bring this up.

I feel a bit guilty about branching out and starting on the beginner's material, but I was just finding it so hard to get my head around organizing a group to conquer the CSS properties docs, that the beginner's docs felt like a small chunk of content that I could just own and bring to fruition easily, for some easy impact to draw more people to our site.

But I guess we need reigning in a bit, and being made to align more so we can make beta some kind of success. A few questions/points:

1. I did start a list of beta criteria a while ago: I'm assuming this is being look at/utilised? http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/WPD:Projects/Beta_Requirements
2. What happened to the idea of us getting a project manager? Feels like we need it really badly.
3. Did anyone contact any CSS WG types and well-known designers to look at some of our more complete CSS property pages and say what they think is needed to make them truly good? I was going to do this work, but then got busy on a couple of weeks of travelling, and someone said they'd start this work off in my absence.
4. Where are we with dabblet? Can we embed examples yet?

I am happy to start working up some more CSS property pages now, as long as I know we are all moving in the same direction.

Chris Mills
Opera Software, dev.opera.com
W3C Fellow, web education and webplatform.org
Author of "Practical CSS3: Develop and Design" (http://goo.gl/AKf9M)

On 30 Apr 2013, at 22:19, Scott Rowe <scottrowe@google.com> wrote:

> Thanks Eliot!
> 
> Yes, your concerns are right on the mark, and in the Community Development Task Force meeting today, we considered exactly the same questions. We resolved to provide a clearer definition of our beta criteria, which Doug and Julee began working on. We considered where our resources are currently allocated, we considered new ways to work with and guide our current resources, and we considered avenues for recruiting new resources.
> 
> These are in the meeting notes that I'll send around here in a bit.
> 
> This is it in a nutshell: beta is a progress report and a call to action for more support. To show progress, we're keen to demonstrate content that is complete and ready to use (CSS properties and HTML5 APIs), we'll have established a content architecture, and we'll describe all of the great work that our dedicated volunteers and stewards have performed over the past (now six) months. To call for more support, we'll define "gold standards" for content that is not yet complete and have more cogent processes for contributing (including more interaction with content leaders); we'll also have clearer, more actionable flags and a UI that more successfully guides people to contribute.
> 
> So, while alpha was an exploratory phase of WPD, with very little defined in terms of resources, processess, and tools - let alone content and content architecture, beta is the proof of concept and the point where we announce that we are ready to scale our efforts to the wider community.
> 
> Such was my interpretation, but I shall defer to my colleagues. Doug, Julee, et al.: have I got this right?
> 
> ~Scott
>  
> 
> 
> On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 12:37 PM, Eliot Graff <Eliot.Graff@microsoft.com> wrote:
> Hi All.
> 
> [[Before I ask these questions, I want to say that I am as guilty of contributing to this as anyone, having recently introduced the 400+ JavaScript pages in to the mix.]]
> 
> Are we really placing our energies in the right places? Are we working on the right things? Or are we losing focus?
> 
> I thoroughly understand that there are a _many_ important and wonderful aspects of WPD that we could be creating, enhancing, and building, but I think we may be drifting from our original decisions (and if not, this will serve as a verification of our course of action). I was under the impression that we determined that we would identify and work on one section of WPD at a time to get that area up to what we considered "beta content", and that we were going to do that starting with the CSS properties. We're not anywhere near complete on those, are we? If we are, I apologize, and carry on. But I look at the CSS Properties spreadsheet [1] and I see a ton of work left to go. Yet, over the past couple of weeks, we are all (myself included) very eager to start work on JavaScript reference, Beginner's Guide, DOM, and other large projects (I'm sorry to pick on these in particular).
> 
> My call to this community is this: We should validate that our priorities are sound (from time to time) and strive to stay focused on our highest priority items prior to embarking on new work. In short, we need to hold ourselves accountable to our goals. Certainly, this is true while our community is still small but growing. Maybe later, when we're a robust and enormous group, we can have the luxury of being less strident.
> 
> Can we reiterate (in mail or during upcoming telcons) what our priorities are currently, and make sure that we're staffed to accomplish them in a timely manner?
> 
> I welcome discussion about this. My main goal is to help us get to beta as soon as possible under our chosen criteria.
> 
> Most sincerely,
> 
> Eliot
> 
> [1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkRs-89PKiZpdE0xdm9Sb1ZvRW1ZRzMtWEdyU0Z4OEE#gid=14
> 
> 
>

Received on Wednesday, 1 May 2013 08:38:19 UTC