Re: CSS or bust???

That's 3 amens, I believe. So I'll add this to the "supporting new
contributors" page.[1]

I can also change the doodle poll to just Wednesday, if we're set on that
day. Let me know.

Julee
[1] 
http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/WPD:CSS_property_guide/supporting_new_cont
ributors

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





-----Original Message-----
From: Eliot Graff <Eliot.Graff@microsoft.com>
Date: Friday, May 3, 2013 8:18 AM
To: Doug Schepers <schepers@w3.org>, "public-webplatform@w3.org"
<public-webplatform@w3.org>
Subject: RE: CSS or bust???

>AMEN!!!
>
>This looks wonderful. The only change I would suggest to the language
>here is:
>
>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.
>
>--> 6) Prior to 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. We report findings on the next Wednesday.
>
>Let the WPD Wednesday be about writing. Let the organizers be about
>organizing.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Doug Schepers [mailto:schepers@w3.org]
>Sent: Friday, May 3, 2013 12:36 AM
>To: 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_con
>tributors
>
>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-89PKiZpdE0xdm9Sb1ZvRW1Z
>>RzMtWEdyU0Z4OEE#gid=14
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>

Received on Friday, 3 May 2013 15:38:37 UTC