Martijn Faassen wrote:
> Making the ambition level lower will make it feel less scary to
> contributors. I notice for instance that the zodb site is quite
> intimidating for a contributor:
>
> http://new.zope.org/projects/zodb/documentation
>
> That's an overview of 8 empty pages. What's supposed to happen? Are
> people to fill them all out before new.zope.org can go live? Is anyone
> approaching particular ZODB people by email and asking them to write a
> page? Why not reverse this, get rid of the empty pages, and get
> volunteers to hunt up existing ZODB documentation and edit it into
> place?
>
> How many more of those intimidatingly empty pages exist on the site?
Unless I am very mistaken those empty pages where created by the very 
person who volunteered to fill the ZODB subsection, so that argument 
doesn't quite fly here.

> This is also why I've been such a strong advocate of decoupling the
> efforts, and promoting a separate zodb.zope.org, buildout.zope.org,
> etc.
>
> Witness the discussions surrounding grok.zope.org. The suggestion was
> made to make this part of new.zope.org late last year. We decided not
> to. We now have a growing, living grok.zope.org, and have had it for
> about half a year. I think the right decision was made back then...
>    

I think that is because the grok community has you. You, and a few 
others in the grok community, are big drivers on documentation and user 
friendliness. None of the other 'Zope communities' have similar people.

Wichert.

-- 
Wichert Akkerman<wichert@...>    It is simple to make things.
http://www.wiggy.net/                  It is hard to make things simple.

Hi Martijn,

> On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 3:55 PM, Martin Aspeli <optilude@...> wrote:
>> 2008/6/2 Wichert Akkerman <wichert@...>:
>>> What's our current status? Am I correct in thinking that we are still
>>> blocked on people writing content?
>> Yep. It's like pulling teeth. I'd encourage anyone on this list who
>> have time to write a bit. :)
> 
> I'm dropping in from outer space and will take off again after a brief
> landing, so I hope this doesn't duplicate anyone's message. It's not a
> criticism of the people who actually bother to do something, but a set
> of suggestions on how to improve contribution. I don't know whether
> it'll work, but it's based on my own experience with getting people to
> contribute content (which has so far only been successful for
> grok.zope.org).

No worry at all - my primary grief is over the fact that from a time 
when I had quite a lot of spare time, I'm now so overbooked that I'm 
struggling to find time to sleep, let alone work on zope.org. :)

> Making the ambition level lower will make it feel less scary to
> contributors. I notice for instance that the zodb site is quite
> intimidating for a contributor:
> 
> http://new.zope.org/projects/zodb/documentation
> 
> That's an overview of 8 empty pages. What's supposed to happen?

These were made by Christian Theune, who I had assumed had content for 
them.

> Are
> people to fill them all out before new.zope.org can go live? Is anyone
> approaching particular ZODB people by email and asking them to write a
> page? Why not reverse this, get rid of the empty pages, and get
> volunteers to hunt up existing ZODB documentation and edit it into
> place?

My understanding is that this is something Christian either has or will 
be collating. No-one created those pages with the idea that they should 
be filled in by "someone".

> How many more of those intimidatingly empty pages exist on the site?

Not very many, actually.

> This is also why I've been such a strong advocate of decoupling the
> efforts, and promoting a separate zodb.zope.org, buildout.zope.org,
> etc.

I don't think this is so different now. Look at 
new.zope.org/projects/zope2, for example. Two pages and a folder for 
arbitrary documentation. That's what all the sub-projects started with. 
I think if you go any smaller than that, there's no point in having a 
web page at all.

> Witness the discussions surrounding grok.zope.org. The suggestion was
> made to make this part of new.zope.org late last year. We decided not
> to. We now have a growing, living grok.zope.org, and have had it for
> about half a year. I think the right decision was made back then...
> Replicating this success may not be trivial (the grok community cares
> about documentation more than, say, the zodb community), but I still
> think it's the right direction to go into. Not only from a content
> production perspective, but also from a community perspective - people
> who see zodb.zope.org as a standalone site will get a very strong clue
> that this can be used without Zope, and you don't need to announce it
> anymore in red letters. The whole "well, yeah, this is part of Zope
> but you can use it independently too!" message hasn't worked very well
> in the past. Why not "this is independent, and has been battle-tested
> by Zope and is backed by Zope"?

To be honest, I'm not really that interested in revisiting this debate, 
which has been had at least three times now. The position has always 
been the same:

  - if someone wants to make a zodb.zope.org, they are more than welcome 
to, and we will give them all the support we can

  - if not, we at least need a couple of pages on waht the ZODB is.

I suspect the energy around Grok has more to do with Grok being new, 
cool and exciting, and attracting people who (a) care and (b) are 
motivated by promoting Grok. People seem to care a lot more about 
promoting Grok than they care about promoting Zope in general, and 
people who are not primarily interested in Grok or Plone do not seem to 
be terribly interested in being in the business of writing web/marketing 
content.

I hope I'm wrong, but I'm beginning to grow rather cynical.

> My suggestion to energize people:
> 
> * actually put up a buildout.zope.org and zodb.zope.org, with 2 pages
> on them each. zodb.zope.org is already done (just scrap all the empty
> stuff)

If you find me the people to write those two pages, then great. However, 
I don't think they exist.

> * liberally give people in the right communities write access.

This is already happening. Short of making it wiki-like access, anyone 
who shows even the slightest whiff of interest is getting access almost 
immediately and are given very free reins.

I suspect the problem is the opposite - there's not enough leadership or 
guidance, and not enough nagging. I'm feeling a bit lonely trying to do 
that job, though, and as I said, I'm depressingly lacking in time these 
days.

> * nag people. Nag the right people individually, nag them collectively.

I try. I wish I had some help.

> This way you'll also decrease the ambition level for new.zope.org
> itself, as it won't have to worry about the ZODB or buildout anymore.

I don't think ambition level could be much lower than it is now. I just 
don't buy that it's so much easier to write content for zodb.zope.org 
than it is to write content for zope.org/projects/zodb. The people who 
volunteered to write ZODB documentation created all those empty pages. 
I'm a bit disappointed they stopped at that, but I'm still hopeful 
they'll go further. For the other projects, the boilerplate has been 3 
pages.

For the rest of the site, there are:

  - one front page on "what is zope"
  - one page on how to download/install a zope codebase
  - one page on "why zope"
  - a couple of pages on the zope community

If we can't muster these 5-10 pages of text, then there's no point in 
having a zope.org at all, and we should just pack up our bags and let 
Zope 2 become part of Plone and Zope 3 become part of Grok and forget 
there was ever such a thing as Zope.

Grumpily yours,

Martin

Martin Aspeli wrote:
> Jan Ulrich Hasecke wrote:
>> But still it is not possible to insert internal links with Kupu.
>
> Yeah, I'm sorry about this. Plone 3.1.2 is being released in the next 
> day or two and has a fix for this issue (it's a permissions bug, 
> basically). We should be able to upgrade fairly instantly.

It's running 3.1.2 now.

Wichert.

-- 
Wichert Akkerman<wichert@...>    It is simple to make things.
http://www.wiggy.net/                  It is hard to make things simple.