Re: pgFoundry Download URLs - Mailing list pgsql-www

Dave Page wrote: <blockquote cite="mid:937d27e11001080057t1309b9fcod75fa78bf26ddf2f@mail.gmail.com" type="cite"><pre
wrap="">OnThu, Jan 7, 2010 at 10:45 PM, Greg Smith <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:greg@2ndquadrant.com"><greg@2ndquadrant.com></a>wrote:
 
 </pre><blockquote type="cite"><pre wrap="">You might have noted that part of the suggestion I was acting on here
included making the project maintainers responsible (and able) to keep that
info up to date.  At no point can it ever be the WWW team's responsibility
to do that sort of thing--everybody knows that won't scale.   </pre></blockquote><pre wrap="">
The problem is, they rarely do keep them up to date. We get the
occasional email requesting changes, but most people aren't checking
these things regularly enough to keep them up to date. </pre></blockquote><br /> There's a chicken/egg problem here: 
thecatalogue isn't very useful to a lot of people due to its UI issues.  Because of that, people don't really use the
catalog. As such, there's very little motivation to keep it current anyway.<br /><br /> As for concerns about project
datagetting stale, the whole point of talking about the compatible version is that projects are out of date already,
butthere's no way to know that.  If there were a version tag on there, and it mentioned an ancient version because the
maintainerdoesn't care, that's a valuable data point for someone browsing the catalogue, right?  If the catalog gets to
whereit's useful to more people, the projects that have good community support will mention they work with the latest
versionsas they come out and get updated there, and the abandoned projects won't, and from some perspectives that could
beconsidered a good thing because it makes it easier to figure out which are the serious projects.<br /><br
/><blockquotecite="mid:937d27e11001080057t1309b9fcod75fa78bf26ddf2f@mail.gmail.com" type="cite"><pre wrap="">I'd also
note,that the addition of an 'edit' option to the existing
 
pages would seem sensible, as opposed to the 'throw the bath out with
the water' approach of just moving it all to the wiki, where marketing
teams will have a field day making their products stand out. </pre></blockquote> One reason the format on that
prototypepage was so constrained was to keep that from being possible without said edit sticking out.  If all the other
entriesare short, somebody who tries to make their product stand out by bucking the standard format is going to look
prettysilly.  But the larger point that encouraging edit wars on a resources mainly aimed at community support is taken
anyway. <br /><br /> Let me see if I can wrap up this part...as for a wishlist for what the catalogue would need to do
inorder to work better as a community project locator, I think those are:<br /><br /> -Make it easy for people to edit
theircatalogue entries.<br /> -Add a short description field, limited to around 60 characters.  Can initially populate
thisby taking the first 57 characters of the existing description and adding in "..." if it's longer than that.<br />
-Adda new "Compatible database versions" field.  Make these all empty initially.  Seeing who fills them in will be an
interestingbit of data about which projects are paying attention.<br /> -Create a couple of simplified views of the
data:<br/> --Single page list of all entries in the catalog, with entires that fit in a moderately wide line: product,
shortdescription, version info, license<br /> --Same thing but only the open-source projects listed<br /><br /> I know
I'drather see work on those things instead of trying to salvage pgFoundry as a catalog, which as the other Greg pointed
outis an effort whose opportunity has already passed.<br /><br /> P.S. "Add-Ons and Tools" page is now removed from the
wiki,its usefulness as a prototype seems to have passed.<br /><br /><pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">-- 
 
Greg Smith    2ndQuadrant   Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:greg@2ndQuadrant.com">greg@2ndQuadrant.com</a>  <a
class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"href="http://www.2ndQuadrant.com">www.2ndQuadrant.com</a>
 


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