Thread: Website and "open development"
Hi! Lots of wonderful things were said in the list concerning how PostgreSQL development is wonderfully open. I want to ask a question: why PostgreSQL website development is so *closed*? 1) There is no public maillist (I presume) for discussion of website matters. 2) If there are actually people who are responsible for the websites (I am starting to doubt) why don't they respond to suggestions in the public maillists? 3) Where is the CVS repository with websites code? Is there even one? 4) Why there is no single look and feel of community websites and why is information sometimes duplicated? There is a talk now about doing marketing materials. Excuse me, but the goal of these materials is to lure people to the website. And the website in its current state will frighten them to death.
Well, I guess I ought to respond to this. Of course a little bit of searching the archives would have given you these answers, but it's ok, it's not like I have anything else to do. (Whats that? Weekly News? Huh?) On Monday 12 January 2004 03:44, Alexey Borzov wrote: > 1) There is no public maillist (I presume) for discussion of website > matters. pgsql-www is the list, archives available on the archive website. (archives.postgresql.org) 2) If there are actually people who are responsible for the > websites (I am starting to doubt) why don't they respond to suggestions in > the public maillists? Most of us are so busy that we barely have time to work on the website itself. much less follow all of the mailing lists and give personal responses to every suggestion that is made. (I'll admit that this is unfortunate, but just wishing it weren't so doesn't actually make the problem go away). 3) Where is the CVS repository with websites code? Is > there even one? http://gborg.postgresql.org/project/pgweb/cvs/cvs.php it contains the code for the main www page and the advocacy page, and has some outdated code for techdocs that I am looking to get brought back into line with the server code now that we've switched VM's. It also has the unfinished code for adding multilingual capabilities to the main site, which is the current feature most halting further development. 4) Why there is no single look and feel of community > websites and why is information sometimes duplicated? > Because the previous list of maintainers all had seperate agendas and didn't work as a team when building the individual sites. I've worked to try to bring all of the sites under at least one umbrella of support, and once we get past the multilingual tech for www, I think you'll see even more tangible results. > There is a talk now about doing marketing materials. Excuse me, but the > goal of these materials is to lure people to the website. And the website > in its current state will frighten them to death. > Well, you're more clued in now, if you're willing to roll up your sleeves take a look at the www and portal modules of CV and send an email to the web mailing list. Robert Treat -- Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL
Hi! Robert Treat wrote: > Well, I guess I ought to respond to this. Of course a little bit of searching > the archives would have given you these answers, but it's ok, it's not like I > have anything else to do. (Whats that? Weekly News? Huh?) Well, thanks for the response. But consider: if this was published on the website in an easily accessible way... >>1) There is no public maillist (I presume) for discussion of website >>matters. > > pgsql-www is the list, archives available on the archive website. > (archives.postgresql.org) This is Yet Another list that is not mentioned on Mailing Lists page at all... > 2) If there are actually people who are responsible for the >>websites (I am starting to doubt) why don't they respond to suggestions in >>the public maillists? > > Most of us are so busy that we barely have time to work on the website itself. > much less follow all of the mailing lists and give personal responses to > every suggestion that is made. (I'll admit that this is unfortunate, but just > wishing it weren't so doesn't actually make the problem go away). A good idea would be to mention this somewhere, so that people willing to help are able to find this info without asking again. >>There is a talk now about doing marketing materials. Excuse me, but the >>goal of these materials is to lure people to the website. And the website >>in its current state will frighten them to death. > > Well, you're more clued in now, if you're willing to roll up your sleeves take > a look at the www and portal modules of CV and send an email to the web > mailing list. Yes, thanks for the info. I had a look on the website code and must admit that it looks messy... I'll try implementing the usability improvements I suggested and then announce the results on pgsql-www. If the reaction is positive, I'll create patches.
Robert Treat wrote: > pgsql-www is the list, archives available on the archive website. > (archives.postgresql.org) But the list itself is not open.
On Mon, 2004-01-12 at 14:52, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Robert Treat wrote:
> > pgsql-www is the list, archives available on the archive website.
> > (archives.postgresql.org)
>
> But the list itself is not open.
>
IIRC subscribers have to be approved, but I haven't heard of anyone
being denied entrance to the list. It's certainly more open now than it
used to be. If you want to lobby for it to be more open I'm sure people
would listen to your arguments.
Robert Treat
--
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL
On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Robert Treat wrote: > On Mon, 2004-01-12 at 14:52, Peter Eisentraut wrote: > > Robert Treat wrote: > > > pgsql-www is the list, archives available on the archive website. > > > (archives.postgresql.org) > > > > But the list itself is not open. > > > > IIRC subscribers have to be approved, but I haven't heard of anyone > being denied entrance to the list. It's certainly more open now than it > used to be. If you want to lobby for it to be more open I'm sure people > would listen to your arguments. Thta was my understanding as well ... (re: approved) ... and I believe Dave is doing that as ppl try to subscribe ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Robert Treat <xzilla@users.sourceforge.net> writes: > IIRC subscribers have to be approved What is the justification for this policy? -Neil
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 > IIRC subscribers have to be approved, but I haven't heard of anyone > being denied entrance to the list. Not "denied", but it certainly took me multiple attempts and a lot of time. Just learning of its existence is not an easy job for those new to the community. At least the site is in CVS now. I'm going to apply some of the recently posted ideas when I get some time. - -- Greg Sabino Mullane greg@turnstep.com PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200401122159 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iD8DBQFAA18ovJuQZxSWSsgRAtCTAKCo0d9nzw7u31F1ZlvCrG2ObSXxEgCfUynT HXlK6earuVWsLq7eUwHXDRw= =yTEL -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Neil, > What is the justification for this policy? As I recall, because the WWW team wants to stay narrowly focused on WWW development without tangental discussions (seriously). Also because many things regarding the stucture of the site and hosting, which could give an attacker useful information, are discussed there. -- Josh Berkus Aglio Database Solutions San Francisco
Josh Berkus wrote: > As I recall, because the WWW team wants to stay narrowly focused on > WWW development without tangental discussions (seriously). Also > because many things regarding the stucture of the site and hosting, > which could give an attacker useful information, are discussed there. Hence the public archives.
On Tue, 13 Jan 2004, Josh Berkus wrote: > Neil, > > > What is the justification for this policy? > > As I recall, because the WWW team wants to stay narrowly focused on WWW > development without tangental discussions (seriously). Also because many > things regarding the stucture of the site and hosting, which could give an > attacker useful information, are discussed there. Actually, the last part isn't true ... pgsql-www is up on archives and viewable in its entirety by the public ... but the first is the key reason ... its a *very* low traffic list focused entirely on development of the web sites, and, as such, has little to no tangents from that subject ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Hi! Josh Berkus wrote: >>What is the justification for this policy? > > > As I recall, because the WWW team wants to stay narrowly focused on WWW > development without tangental discussions (seriously). Also because many > things regarding the stucture of the site and hosting, which could give an > attacker useful information, are discussed there. Sounds like lame excuses to me. 1) There was a wonderfully enlightening discussion why open development is perfect for advocacy in this list recently. 2) The list has PUBLIC ARCHIVES, for Gods' sake!
Alexey, > 1) There was a wonderfully enlightening discussion why open development is > perfect for advocacy in this list recently. ... which was not, as I recall, concluded with any consensus. And open development != unmoderated subscription mailing lists Can I point out that for that matter, the SFPUG mailing list is closed-subscription? I did that because of spammers joining the list, and because of the number of people not being clear on where San Francisco is (really, I've had people from Taiwan try to join and re-directed them to -Novice). The closed-subscription would only be significant if Dave wasn't letting people join. He is. If you want to be involved, send him an e-mail and a subscription request. If you're really upset about it and can show that you are willing to put in the work, then you can take over administration of the list and relieve Dave of that duty, and open the list subscription option. Ultimately, that's what it comes down to: Dave is the list admin, and he's set the list subscription to "moderated", and he has the "right" to do so since he's doing the work. -- -Josh Berkus Aglio Database Solutions San Francisco