Re: Tech Docs and Consultants - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

On Tuesday 15 April 2003 06:51 pm, Josh Berkus wrote:
> Marc,
>
> > With that in mind, Josh ... since you seem willing to take the lead on
> > this, I think that this falls under more an 'administrative' then a 'user'
> > decision ... what tools do you require?
>
> > Please note that altho Bricolage (or someone mentioned something
> > called plone?) might be "overkill", who cares if you don't use all the
> > features, as long as those features you do use meet your needs?
>
> Good point.
>
> OK, when I'm over the current "hump" it's time to test the various CMSes,
> and we'll see what has all the features I want without becoming impossible
> to admin.

<rant mode on>
You know, I find it astonishing that people would still try to thrust the
mantle of techdoc king upon one persons shoulders.  And no offense to Josh,
especially when that someone is not involved in any of the other web site
maintenance efforts.  If there is one thing we should have learned by now
it's that one person is not going to do it alone.  We can all sit around and
claim that the workload is just too great to manage without some uber piece
of software cms to run the show, but you know what, for all the bashing
that's been done I don't think we have really prooven that the html/cvs model
wouldn't work because we've never even tried it.   If techdocs had an issue
with staying up to date I'd say it had far more to do with the fact that one
person was responsible for it and that there was *no* system in place for
others to help out.  I updated the hosting provider information in about 15
minutes today, but in most cases that would have never gotten done because
1. We continue to funnel web changes through individuals and closed groups
2. The only way to make changes is to "develop on production"
As far as content contributions go, I'm sure the current situation isn't
great, but then again I don't see a bevy of postgresql related articles
appearing on any other sites either, so I don't think we have definitive
proof on that either....  It should be obvious to us that one person running
the show just isn't going to be successful. This isn't because the people
aren't willing to work, in fact it's really because these people tend to be
involved in so many ways they're simply pulled in too many directions.  The
concept of development in an open forum steered by a core committee seems to
work so well for the database code, it drives me bonkers trying to figure out
why people are so against it for our web strategy.
<rant mode off>

And with all of that, I'm going to try to focus on the main www site for
awhile, but I'm willing to update the current techdocs "on the fly" until
Josh comes up with a better solution.  I'm not sure where change requests
should be sent... I'll probably see it if posted to one of the news groups,
or a web form posting to pgsql-techdocs (or pgsql-www) would be a good way to
do it, though it would require a little code and cooperation.....

Robert Treat