Notes from www.mozilla.org planning meeting on 1/23
davidwboswell
Fantasai
We used the list of topics on the following wiki page as an agenda:
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Mozilla.org:Planning
- Identity
Reed suggested that the new identity for the site should be as a
portal and as a place to host official content. Although there hadn't
been a consensus reached on the earlier newsgroup discussion about
site vision, everyone on the call agreed that this identity made
sense. One reason the earlier discussion couldn't reach consensus is
that people felt that the word 'official' was too vague. We felt that
it was clear enough though to give us a direction to work with.
- Projects
For projects hosted on mozilla.org we felt that it was important to
offer hosting space if they wanted it (this hosting space could
involve just a redirect to another site). The next steps for projects
is to come up with a comprehensive list of all projects and then
contact the owners to determine where their main landing page is (on
mozilla.org, on the wiki or MDC or on another site).
- Content
If we now have an identity for the site, we can determine what content
fits that vision and what doesn't. Instead of going through the site
and determining what doesn't fit, we agreed it was more feasible to
start from scratch to figure out what should go on the site and then
deal with the remaining content by archiving or migrating. This was
something Sheppy had suggested a while ago and we thought it made the
most sense.
As a first pass for determining what content should go on the site,
the structure on the wiki page seemed like a good starting point:
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Mozilla.org:Planning#Reorganize_Structure
Some initial suggestions for changes were to replace the Donate link
with a Contribute section that could link to the Donate page along
with providing information about how else people can contribute. It
was also suggested that Support shouldn't be a top-level section, but
it should be included in the footer and on the home page since people
do come to the site looking for support help.
- Design
We felt that it should be possible to move forward with a new home
page design and possibly a new site design while we work on content
issues as long as we've figured out the structure for the site. We
can also look into bringing in a designer to help with this process at
some point.
- Archiving
A couple different methods for archiving were suggested -- create an
archive site or tag pages with an archive header. Either would work,
but we felt that the main issue was feasibility -- do we go through
each page and figure out what to do with it or do we pick what to keep
and archive the rest? Since there are 10,000s of pages the second
option seemed best. It was also suggested that pages of historical
interest be kept on the main site and highlighted with a History page
in the About section.
- Next Steps
Have a follow up meeting in 2 weeks and have people start taking on
action items.
- Action Items
* Make comprehensive list of all projects / contact project owners
* Start determining new homepage content
* Continue work on site structure
* Update proposed History page to bring in more current pages
fantasai
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Mozilla.org:Planning
Identity
--------
David(?): We should establish an identity. Do we have a clear vision?
Reed: I think mozilla.org should become a portal site, focus mostly
on directing people to other parts of the project and helping
them get involved
Reed: And also be a place to store documentation and policies that
relate to the project as a whole
Reed: e.g. superreviewers, or CVS access policy
Robert: There's a problem with whether projects belong on mozilla.org
or separate subdomains
Robert: most projects seem to be moving off
Reed: Big projects.. lots of small projects still on mozilla.org
Sam: Small projects might want some static pages for policy etc. too.
Sam: I'm opposed to having everything forced on the wiki
David: We can have several options available, from hosting pages on
mozilla.org to space on wiki to having own site
Reed: Seamonkey just shifted to its own domain. I think only Calendar
and Sunbird are the only big projects where their site is on
mozilla.org
fantasai suggests we should go through the exhaustive list of projects,
make the project owner pick one of: /projects/foo, foo space
on wiki, or off-site hosting as the main page of the project
fantasai: we make /projects and wiki space available to each project,
they can split their content as appropriate
fantasai: but they need to have one main landing page that we direct
people to
Seem to have agreement on fantasai's plan.
David: What goes on mozilla.org besides projects?
Reed: policy stuff
Reed: it should remain on mozilla.org where it can be access-controlled
RESOLVED: official and policy documents on mozilla.org
Robert: is Mozilla Foundation getting its own site?
Reed: Zak started setting up mozillafoundation.org a year ago
Reed: but it never really got anywhere
Reed: they could do what Seamonkey did and move their content over
David: I think the current thinking from Frank is that we shouldn't move over
?: So next step is to go through content and see what fits and what doesn't
Reed: Should we hire someone to redo the front page?
David: Personally I think getting the content sorted out is more
important, but we can do things in parallel
fantasai: We shouldn't block on having a designer: if we feel we should
be adding some content to the front page we should go ahead
and do that
fantasai: we can get a designer to sort it all out and make it pretty
later on
John Slater: I think updating the look of the front page is better done
after the content is sorted out
Slater: There are firms that specialize in info architecture that can
help us out there.
Slater: I think the overall design and presentation is also important..
I think the problem with mozilla.org is that there is not a clear
identity, there's no real point
Slater: It's not clear what we expect you to get out of it
David: we should be able to agree on top-level content items pretty quickly
Structure
---------
David: I put together a possible structure on the wiki page
David: I started by thinking we could just trim things that don't fit,
but sheppy was saying we should start by saying what needs to be
there, and I think I agree
David: basically, we're saying what we want and building the site from
scratch
Robert: I'm seeing there that you're unsure of the Developers point in
the navigation
Robert: I think we should have some pointer to different developer sites
and documents there
Robert: Not really developer content, but one page that has pointers to
MDC and other tools etc.
Sam: I agree with that. There are also some pages that we want to keep
there, like stuff under /hacking
Sam: That would be almost it's own portal site to other resources
fantasai: I'd replace Donate with Contribute, because there are a lot of
different ways to contribute to the mozilla project
Reed: we need to fit support in there somewhere
Reed: Have a support portal page, that links to all the relevant support
pages
Reed: Each project can add their own support snippet
David: I'm not sure it fits with our identity here
fantasai: You don't have to have it as a tab, you could make it just a
prominent link on the main page
Seem to have agreement on this being a good starting point
Robert: How much would About and Foundation include similar things?
Reed: There's a distinction between the Foundation and the Project as a whole
Reed: Foundation stuff is just Foundation stuff -- grants, trademarks, etc.
David: I just shifted the Foundation section out from under About
fantasai agrees with that
Robert: As long as we know what belongs where, I think it works
David: There's some areas where there could be some overlap, and if you
see things that are mistplaced we can shift them
David: We should also start drawing up a to-do list
David: although maybe not right now
David: Should discuss content that doesn't fit into this structure
Archiving
---------
Reed: If you're waiting for stuff to be migrated, it'll never happen
Making and archive site vs. labelling things as archived/outdated
Advantages of archive site: can state that stuff on mozilla.org is
official, make it obvious archived content is not kept up-to-date
number of pages is huge
Sam: Jay has spoken to me and he's in charge of qmo. He says if there
are pages on that site that are valuable, we should update them
and move them or update them and keep them
Sam: I'm afraid that there are some pages that might get missed
Reed: Are you afraid that if we put them on the archive site they won't
be seen?
David: If we go with an archive site, we can always move something back
Reed: There are e.g. smoketests on the site right now that are so
out-of-date...
David: We can start from the home page and start archiving stuff under
there that aren't used.
fantasai: There is some content on mozilla.org that isn't up-to-date,
but it's not out-of-date either: it's dated.
fantasai: e.g. press releases, release notes, announcements, etc.
fantasai: I think we should keep these on the main site and organize them
fantasai: new dated material would fall into that filing system
fantasai: I'd rather see that than have them get lost amongst all the
junk that will be in the archives.
fantasai has created an index of this kind of content up to 2005
Forward
-------
minutes and next meeting info will be on m.d.mozilla-org
fantasai
>
> fantasai: There is some content on mozilla.org that isn't up-to-date,
> but it's not out-of-date either: it's dated.
> fantasai: e.g. press releases, release notes, announcements, etc.
I'd add slideshows from tech talks etc. to this mix.
~fantasai