Re: CSS or bust???

Amen!

This sounds like a solid approach. I'm also available as a
guide/greeter/cheerleader, and I've started working on some properties:
http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/css/properties/flex

I call dibs on Flexbox!

~Scott



On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 7:59 AM, Julee <julee@adobe.com> wrote:

> Sounds like a plan! Let's talk about this at the meeting today.
>
> Again, I'd like to encourage folks to separate out the discussion between making
> the CSS properties project successful and what is a
> successful Beta — unless we decide to redefine Beta in terms of this
> project, but I'm not sure what that would afford.
>
> Regarding the CSS properties project, and per our discussion earlier this
> week, I iterated through the following action items:
>
>    - Updated the spreadsheet as best I could to make it clearer to
>    contributors what they need to do.[1]
>    - Created a document about how to support new contributors.[2]
>    - Generated a doodle pool to find the best (Pacific) time for a weekly
>    content wrangling meeting.[3]
>
> Regarding the Beta:
>
> As Scott said, "beta is a progress report and a call to action for more
> support."[4] He then goes on to sketch out what progress is. Let's review
> what he said — what we talked about earlier this week, what's on the
> Project Status page,[5] and get a sense of the 138 open bugs. Then, if
> we're not going to do any recruiting, let's consider how much of a work
> force we really have, and set the date for Beta accordingly.
>
> Regards.
>
> Julee
>
> [1]
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkRs-89PKiZpdE0xdm9Sb1ZvRW1ZRzMtWEdyU0Z4OEE#gid=17
> [2]
> http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/WPD:CSS_property_guide/supporting_new_contributors
> [3] http://www.doodle.com/y4bdnrg4ycdk4i25
> [4]
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webplatform/2013Apr/0370.html
> [5] http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/WPD:Project_Status
>
> ----------------------------
> julee@adobe.com
> @adobejulee
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Doug Schepers <schepers@w3.org>
> Date: Friday, May 3, 2013 12:36 AM
> To: "public-webplatform@w3.org" <public-webplatform@w3.org>
> Subject: Re: CSS or bust???
>
> Hi, Eliot-
>
> As Julee and Scott mentioned, this was the central subject of our
> Recruitment call. In my mind, it makes little sense to spend energy on
> recruitment if we don't have a clear contribution rhythm in place to
> convert interested potential contributors into active contributors. So,
> I'd like us to break things down into even clearer goals.
>
> Eric Shepard (Mozilla) has a good methodology for MDN called "Wiki
> Wednesday"  (Janet, please correct me on details): he picks several
> topics or articles that need work, and makes a call for volunteers (on
> email and Twitter) for people to cover those articles.
>
> I'd like to adopt this methodology. We have 159 CSS pages with status
> "unknown" (probably not started) and another 8 that "need work"; that's
> 167 pages. We want to be in good shape in roughly 10 weeks (more or
> less). So, that's 17 pages a week. Each of these articles may take 2-5
> hours to complete; so that's an average of 60 solid hours per week of
> work that we are looking for. Do we have enough contributors for that?
> It's not yet clear, but I'm optimistic.
>
> Here's what I propose:
>
> 1) We pick a day ("WPD Wednesday"?), and pick 17 CSS property articles
> for that week (it might be nice to sort them into topic clusters, but I
> don't want to create makework)
>
> 2) To prevent people from being intimidated by a blank page, we create
> stubs for those 17 articles, with the link to the specification where
> you will find the basic information to start from; I would hope we could
> automate this with a script (it would be nice to also insert the topic
> cluster)
>
> 3) We put the word out for contributors, on this list, on the blog, on
> Twitter, on the CSS public mailing list, among our companies, in the
> site notice, etc.; we direct them to this email list, or IRC or Twitter
> if they are not into email
>
> 4) When people show up to commit, we have designated "greeters" for each
> page (one of the core community folks who knows how to do things will
> each take 3-5 pages to be responsible for), who trains and encourages
> the contributor, removing roadblocks and facilitating quality contributions
>
> 4a) If we get more contributors than we need, we pull a few more
> articles into the list
>
> 4b) If we don't get enough contributors, we either ask the existing
> contributors to take on a little more work, or we make a new call, or we
> adjust our goals (date or amount)
>
> 5) Once a contributor has finished their task, they tell their greeter,
> who make sure the next stage happens (typically, review), and they take
> care of the "paperwork" in the Giant Scary Spreadsheet
>
> 5a) We ask the contributor to tweet about their contribution, to give
> themselves props and to spread the word; we retweet these from @webplatform
>
> 6) The next Wednesday, we take stock on what actually happened, how much
> got done and what wasn't done, and we pick the next set of articles
>
> 6a) We blog about the progress, and about the next set of work. (Rinse,
> repeat; apply praise liberally.)
>
>
> I'd also like to split it down into more discrete, manageable tasks (as
> I alluded to):
>
> a) basic facts, such as overview table, syntax, and values
>
> b) explanatory text, such as the introduction (summary), usage, and notes
>
> c) examples, with explanations
>
> d) review, and flagging and unflagging
>
> e) links to tutorials and other materials (either inside WPD or on the
> wider web)
>
> Each contributor might sign up for one or more tasks for one or more
> articles; you only want to fill in basic facts? Great, take 3 or 4
> articles, that will probably go quick. You are good at a more creative,
> time-consuming skill like explanatory text? Ok, maybe you should only
> commit to 1 or 2 pages. You like making examples? Pick 2 or 3 articles.
> You want to do the complete page? Okay, pick 1 and go to town.
>
> (Note that I don't include compatibility table information in this
> breakdown; we will soon have automated compatibility tables, so we
> should discourage people from trying to edit this manually for now.)
>
>
> In doing this, we should send a clear initial and continuous signal:
> this is a push to get to beta, and this is the deadline. This is not the
> sustained pace we will have going forward; we're asking people to make a
> concerted short-term sacrifice to help us all reach a concrete goal.
>
>
> I've been speaking to Julee about this quite a bit on IRC, and I imagine
> that we'll come up with refinements of this; she's already written up
> some great notes [1]. I welcome suggestions and feedback on details.
>
>
> All this said, it also bears saying that volunteer resources are not
> necessarily fungible; people will work on what they are interested in.
> Max Polk has jumped on the MSDN-JS project, and has a methodology, and
> we would be silly to ask him to stop that and work on CSS instead. So,
> some parallel work is healthy and reasonable.
>
>
> There is nothing hard about this. This would require very little
> up-front work, except possibly the optional populating script and the
> optional topic-clusters (which I think would take 2-3 hours of sitting
> down and sorting), and deciding who will be the "greeters" (or
> "ambassadors"). We could start this next week.
>
> Maybe I'm naive, but I actually think that with this systematic and
> streamlined approach, and with the awesome community waiting in the
> wings for guidance, we will be surprised by how great the response will be.
>
> Can I get an amen?
>
>
> [1]
>
> http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/WPD:CSS_property_guide/supporting_new_contributors
>
> Regards-
> -Doug
>
> On 4/30/13 3:37 PM, Eliot Graff 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
>
>
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