Therefore I'm splitting the discussion. This thread is for www.mozilla.org's mission statement and way forward. Go to the previous thread to argue about dealing with old content.
KaiRo writes: > I think what we probably really need is > 1) a real vision what www.m.o actually is for and what is actually should > contain, and > 2) a module owner for www.m.o who stands behind that vision and happily will > review all changes that leads towards that vision.
The bug discussion on this is comment #0 up to comment #20, plus comments #29-34 and maybe #51 and #53.
IMO, the goal should be for mozilla.org to be the page where you go to learn more about getting involved in the Mozilla project which includes any Mozilla subproject.
I think this is a good mission statement.
KaiRo writes:
In my eyes, mozilla.org should be the place to go if one wants to know more about the Mozilla project and/or community. This includes getting involved, learning how the project itself is organized, how to get in touch with the community, what subprojects we have, maybe even what the Mozilla platform is and where it's headed - and linking all our various resources so that one can easily find them.
A good restatement, with a list of subgoals for us. :)
fantasai writes:
David Boswell writes: > If we decide that the function of www.mozilla.org is to serve as an > entry point for the whole of the Mozilla community, that would lead > to a different outcome for a given page than if we decide the site > should exist to provide the context for the rest of the community.
It should do both.
Wrt Project Pages -----------------
Reed writes:
* Small/new/etc. projects should be moved to a new projects.mozilla.org site * More mature projects should be moved to separate domains (caminobrowser.org, for example); hosted by MoFo hopefully
Beltzner writes:
Who decides what's small/new? And what value is obtained from this segmentation? I'd rather have a list of all projects, put the "big" (ie: famous in terms of queries or google searches) ones in a section at the top, but still make mozilla.org the home for all mozilla related projects. Heck, I'd even have pages for mozilla.org/songbird which talk about mozilla-derivative projects.
Hecker writes:
I think projects like Camino, Seamonkey, Sunbird, etc., having their own independent domains is overall a good idea -- I think it gives those projects a sense of identity and of not just being part of the mozilla.org "grab bag". This is healthy IMO.
KaiRo writes:
IMHO, the project owners/leaders should decide theirselves if they want to have their own domain for their project or not. All projects should have some default space though where they can place some basic information about their project, e.g. projects.mozilla.org/<projectname>/ - this can be used as long as the project itself thinks it's enough to stick their content there. If and when the project wants to move to using their own site/domain, we might even redirect this default space to their new site.
fantasai writes:
I agree with Beltzner here. I think projects like Seamonkey and Camino starting up their own domains is a good idea -- but I think those new domains should be an end-user front, just like mozilla.com is for FF/TB. Our projects aren't a "grab bag". mozilla.org is not SourceForge, we're not cvs+bugzilla hosting. Our software are all interrelated: tied together deep throughout the source code. You can't build any of them without Gecko. This makes the source code, schedules, documentation, and communities all overlap. Significantly. There's more overlap than not. The subprojects are all part of the Mozilla Project, and should identify themselves as such.
Hecker responds:
I'm personally happy with this approach: List all projects under www.mozilla.org and provide for each the sorts of information appropriate for w.m.o (as discussed [below]), and then have optional separate domains containing end user information, for any projects that want to do that.
www vs wiki vs projects -----------------------
Axel writes:
1) When do I put project pages on wiki.m.o, and when on www.m.o? I would think that this is something that can be decided depending on editing frequency and scale of cooperative editing. Maybe personal taste, too.
2) Where do I put project pages on wiki.m.o and on www.m.o? Looking at the QA and Project pages for Firefox2, those are at completely different hierarchies, some use / for separation, some use :. If you want to enter a URL, you need to know which, if you want to navigate to it, you need to know the right entry point.
fantasai writes:
I personally find this very confusing, but I don't really know what to do about it...
I think we can start improving the situation by having all the projects choose one (1) of either their wiki site Home_Page or their www site index.html as their main entry page page. They should sort out their main page content based on that decision, and we should update (revamp) http://www.mozilla.org/projects/, have it point to the right main pages, and link to it prominently from the front page.
(Note that the above is not as accurate a reproduction of the discussion as the snippets in my last posting, it merely reflects my understanding of the current state of the discussion.)
fantasai wrote: > www vs wiki vs projects > -----------------------
> Axel writes: > 1) When do I put project pages on wiki.m.o, and when on www.m.o? > I would think that this is something that can be decided depending on > editing frequency and scale of cooperative editing. Maybe personal taste, > too.
What about merging the two, migrating www content to the wiki and then pointing www.mozilla.org at it? It seems unnecessarily costly and confusing, both for community members and potential contributors, to have both sites.
Myk Melez wrote: > fantasai wrote: >> www vs wiki vs projects >> -----------------------
>> Axel writes: >> 1) When do I put project pages on wiki.m.o, and when on www.m.o? >> I would think that this is something that can be decided depending on >> editing frequency and scale of cooperative editing. Maybe personal >> taste, too.
> What about merging the two, migrating www content to the wiki and then > pointing www.mozilla.org at it? It seems unnecessarily costly and > confusing, both for community members and potential contributors, to > have both sites.
There is tons of content on www.mozilla.org and migrating most of it would be useless. Also, wiki.mozilla.org is very Mozilla developer-centric (and it ought to stay that way). We need an entry to the entire project, which is something that www.mozilla.org can provide.
For project pages, migrating them to the wiki might be a good idea but I'd rather have the project decide on that and do the work than assign a team to force the move. For now revamping the Projects page to point to the appropriate location is fine, and I'm happy with Simon filing a bug and doing that based on the feedback he received in March.
fantasai wrote: > There is tons of content on www.mozilla.org and migrating most of it would > be useless.
Right. I'm not suggesting we migrate most of that content. We should instead archive it somewhere like www-obsolete.mozilla.org.
> Also, wiki.mozilla.org is very Mozilla developer-centric (and > it ought to stay that way). We need an entry to the entire project, which > is something that www.mozilla.org can provide.
I agree that www.mozilla.org should be the entry to the entire project, I just think that it'd make sense for that site's content to be managed by a wiki, and if it was managed by a wiki, then I don't see why we should have a separate wiki specifically for developer-oriented project information.
On Aug 22, 12:28 pm, fantasai <fantasai.li...@inkedblade.net> wrote:
> Myk Melez wrote:
> > What about merging the two, migrating www content to the wiki and then > > pointing www.mozilla.orgat it? It seems unnecessarily costly and > > confusing, both for community members and potential contributors, to > > have both sites.
> There is tons of content onwww.mozilla.organd migrating most of it would > be useless. Also, wiki.mozilla.org is very Mozilla developer-centric (and > it ought to stay that way). We need an entry to the entire project, which > is something thatwww.mozilla.orgcan provide.
There is a lot of content (or, perhaps, there should be a fair amount of content) that should be on mozilla.org that is not appropriate for a wiki.
* Policy documents large and small (this has been touched on in .governance several times in the last few months), e.g. / owners.html, /legal/eula/, hacking/reviewers.html, /projects/firefox/ review.html, /projects/toolkit/review.html, and much, much more
* Press Releases and other press-related information
* Overviews of the project structure (/foundation/, /about/, probably other stuff; it's a mess, for sure)
* /security/
* Items of historical interest (e.g., but not limited to, /party/)
What a number of the proposals I've been hearing seem to envision is www.mozilla.org as an empty shell. I think this is the wrong way to go. www.mozilla.org speaks with authority about the project; for the types of things above, wikis do not speak with authority to most people. Moreover, we also need a good, single place that integrates all of our other sites with useful content: wiki.mo, MDC (why is there developer documentation on both MDC and wiki.mo, as well as www.mo!), planet.mo, and "application sites" like www.mozilla.com, SUMO, caminobrowser.org
And, as far as archiving old content goes (whatever we end up deciding "old" is), why even bother moving it somewhere? Why not simply remove links pointing to this content from pages we're "keeping" (not hard, in some cases, since a lot of the content is hard to find) and create a new page at www.mozilla.org/archive.html that then lists the content. This removes this content from public view (where such content was actually findable before) but continues to make it accessible, and it doesn't break any bookmarks that people like dbaron have (and by no means should we think dbaron is an isolated case). Perhaps even add a "badge" noting this content is considered archival, historical information?
By way of summary, www.mozilla.org should be the central site for the Mozilla community and for anyone wanting to find out about the project. It should speak with authority for the project about its policies, its goals and intentions (foundation, about), its activities (press), and where the project has been (historical interest and archived stuff), and it should help all visitors find their way to whatever other resources they need.
> I agree that www.mozilla.org should be the entry to the entire project, > I just think that it'd make sense for that site's content to be managed > by a wiki,
I tend to agree with this. I suspect that the lower barrier to editing is one of the reasons that MDC is able to kept more up-to-date than www.mozilla.org ever was. Note that this would make it harder to include HTML generated from other sources, though (c.f. the old discussion about getting the doxygen HTML onto MDC).
> and if it was managed by a wiki, then I don't see why we > should have a separate wiki specifically for developer-oriented project > information.
One reason might be in order to have one area that is a bit more "managed" and kept up-to-date (a la MDC) and one area that's really more of a scratchpad (a la the current wiki.mozilla.org).
> In my eyes, mozilla.org should be the place to go if one wants to know > more about the Mozilla project and/or community. This includes getting > involved, learning how the project itself is organized, how to get in > touch with the community, what subprojects we have, maybe even what the > Mozilla platform is and where it's headed - and linking all our various > resources so that one can easily find them.
I think this is certainly a reasonable vision for the site, but I would suggest adding one more part that helps gives us direction for determining what content belongs on www.mozilla.org and what content should be linked to on another site. How about:
"The www.mozilla.org site should contain content that is relevant to the whole community and not just to one segment."
This statement is already implied by the fact that developer docs are being migrated to MDC, but I think it would be useful to state this explicitly. There is a lot of content that applies to developers, evangelists, users and others and that certainly belongs in an easy to find central location. For content that applies to just one of those groups, there is probably already a site dedicated to that area that we can link to (and migrate content to as needed).
In this sense, www.mozilla.org is an entry point for all of the sites in the community, but it isn't an empty shell because there is still some content that belongs on the site.
>> I agree that www.mozilla.org should be the entry to the entire >> project, I just think that it'd make sense for that site's content to >> be managed by a wiki,
> I tend to agree with this. I suspect that the lower barrier to editing > is one of the reasons that MDC is able to kept more up-to-date than > www.mozilla.org ever was.
I think there are two separate issues here, ease of updating the site and editability by the general public. In my mind www.mozilla.org, unlike wiki.mozilla.org, is a source of *official* Mozilla project information, and a very large proportion of the site's content, if not all of it, should be off-limits to casual changes; this includes, for example, project policy documents, Foundation public documents (Form 990s, financial statements, etc.), the CA certificate data, and so on. If something is non-official information then IMO it should be moved to some other site (or deleted, if it's obsolete).
So to my mind the only reason for converting www.mozilla.org to a wiki would be to enable easier updating of official Mozilla project information by a defined group of people designated to update such information. I'd prefer to first figure out what should go on www.mozilla.org and who should be responsible for maintaining it. Then we can figure out if a wiki is the best approach to enabling those people to do those tasks, or if maintaining the status quo (i.e., using CVS) is OK for at least the near term.
Frank Hecker wrote: > Dan Mosedale wrote: >> Myk Melez wrote:
>>> I agree that www.mozilla.org should be the entry to the entire >>> project, I just think that it'd make sense for that site's content to >>> be managed by a wiki,
>> I tend to agree with this. I suspect that the lower barrier to >> editing is one of the reasons that MDC is able to kept more up-to-date >> than www.mozilla.org ever was.
> I think there are two separate issues here, ease of updating the site > and editability by the general public. In my mind www.mozilla.org, > unlike wiki.mozilla.org, is a source of *official* Mozilla project > information, and a very large proportion of the site's content, if not > all of it, should be off-limits to casual changes; this includes, for > example, project policy documents, Foundation public documents (Form > 990s, financial statements, etc.), the CA certificate data, and so on. > If something is non-official information then IMO it should be moved to > some other site (or deleted, if it's obsolete).
> So to my mind the only reason for converting www.mozilla.org to a wiki > would be to enable easier updating of official Mozilla project > information by a defined group of people designated to update such > information. I'd prefer to first figure out what should go on > www.mozilla.org and who should be responsible for maintaining it. Then > we can figure out if a wiki is the best approach to enabling those > people to do those tasks, or if maintaining the status quo (i.e., using > CVS) is OK for at least the near term.
For people who have CVS access, editing pages in the current system isn't much harder than editing a wiki. The cvs interface is available, but we also have Doctor for editing through a web interface. The main advantage a wiki has is that anyone can edit, but for official documents you don't want that.
Frank Hecker wrote: > In my mind www.mozilla.org, > unlike wiki.mozilla.org, is a source of *official* Mozilla project > information, and a very large proportion of the site's content, if not > all of it, should be off-limits to casual changes; this includes, for > example, project policy documents, Foundation public documents (Form > 990s, financial statements, etc.), the CA certificate data, and so on. > If something is non-official information then IMO it should be moved to > some other site (or deleted, if it's obsolete).
I guess I was conceiving of www.mozilla.org as it's been in the past, as both a source of official and unofficial information. However, making it be an official-only source sounds like a good idea to me; it seems much more likely to be what newbies to the Mozilla sphere are going to expect anyway.
Given that, your and fantasai's subsequent points seem right on the money. In deciding whether a wiki or the existing setup makes more sense, it's worth keeping in mind that wiki pages can be locked down to prevent editing by non-authorized users.
> I guess I was conceiving of www.mozilla.org as it's been in the past, as > both a source of official and unofficial information. However, making it > be an official-only source sounds like a good idea to me; it seems much > more likely to be what newbies to the Mozilla sphere are going to expect > anyway.
> Given that, your and fantasai's subsequent points seem right on the > money. In deciding whether a wiki or the existing setup makes more > sense, it's worth keeping in mind that wiki pages can be locked down to > prevent editing by non-authorized users.
Yeah, but I don't see how using a wiki would gain us anything in this case. Like I said, authorized users already have a web-based editing interface on www.mozilla.org. Switching to a wiki would involve a lot of extra work and further complicate handling of existing pages on www.mozilla.org, many of which need to remain outside the templating system.
>> I agree that www.mozilla.org should be the entry to the entire >> project, I just think that it'd make sense for that site's content to >> be managed by a wiki,
> I tend to agree with this. I suspect that the lower barrier to editing > is one of the reasons that MDC is able to kept more up-to-date than > www.mozilla.org ever was.
I actually think one main reason why MDC is in much better shape than www.m.o ever was is that it has a dedicated manager and a team actually caring about it (isn't someone even paid full-time to work on MDC?), another reason is that MDC has a clear focus on documentation, while www.m.o never had such a focus. Both things have nothing to do with wiki or non-wiki, and the CVS-based nature of www.m.o along with doctor makes it not as hard to edit as one might think, just that not everyone can edit it, which is a good thing in many people's eyes for the kind of content that is supposed to live there (opposed to documentations which MDC is for or dev scratchpads which should be on wikimo).
davidwboswell wrote: > "The www.mozilla.org site should contain content that is relevant to > the whole community and not just to one segment."
So, any project pages would be excluded by definition? MoFo financial statements that are probably irrelevant to most contributors (as long as they are positive) don't belong there? Press releases of the Foundation that are about only one segment of what our community does are irrelevant?
I think a definition that is based on official vs. unofficial or that specifically defines what belongs where else (e.g. documentation -> MDC, dev scratchpads -> wikimo, ...) may be actually better than your above...
> > "The www.mozilla.org site should contain content that is relevant to > > the whole community and not just to one segment."
> On Aug 26, 6:16 pm, Robert Kaiser <ka...@kairo.at> wrote: > So, any project pages would be excluded by definition?
Based on earlier discussions summarized at the top of this thread, it sounds like listing all projects on www.mozilla.org makes sense but that in the long-term it would be a goal to host the project pages themselves somewhere else (either on independent domains, on wiki.m.o or on a projects.m.o site).
> MoFo financial > statements that are probably irrelevant to most contributors (as long as > they are positive) don't belong there? > Press releases of the Foundation that are about only one segment of what > our community does are irrelevant?
Although the financial statements themselves probably don't appeal to a wide audience, I think the Foundation content as a whole certainly is relevant to the entire community.
> I think a definition that is based on official vs. unofficial or that > specifically defines what belongs where else (e.g. documentation -> MDC, > dev scratchpads -> wikimo, ...) may be actually better than your above...
I think coming up with a better definition would be great as long as it provides guidance about when a page should be on www.mozilla.org and when it shouldn't be. Using the terms 'official' and 'unofficial' could be problematic though because it still doesn't address where content belongs. Isn't there official content on mozilla.com, MDC, SUMO, QMO...?
I understand though that saying 'content that is relevant to the whole community' is still vague and could be made more precise. To clarify, I think the following content applies to the whole community:
- About content - Foundation content - Project lists and community links - Community guidelines - Legal and policy content
Things were quiet last week because of the summer holidays, so let me try to get the discussion about the vision for www.mozilla.org going again. I just reviewed all of the comments in this thread and combined parts from different posts to get this definition for www.mozilla.org:
"The www.mozilla.org site contains official content that is relevant to all of the Mozilla community. This includes information about how to get involved, information about how the community is organized and governed, and information about the various projects under development. The site also makes it easy for visitors to find resources hosted on other community sites."
Does this definition capture the discussion in this thread? Does it clearly draw a line between www.mozilla.org and other sites? Feel free to suggest changes.
davidwboswell wrote: > "The www.mozilla.org site contains official content that is relevant > to all of the Mozilla community. This includes information about how > to get involved, information about how the community is organized and > governed, and information about the various projects under > development. The site also makes it easy for visitors to find > resources hosted on other community sites."
> Does this definition capture the discussion in this thread? Does it > clearly draw a line between www.mozilla.org and other sites? Feel > free to suggest changes.
I don't think this reflects the discussion at all. Documents about how to get involved and information on the various projects are not "official content" and should live in a wiki.
Additional nitpicks include:
"relevant to all of the Mozilla community" doesn't mean much. Obviously every page on www.mozilla.org is not going to be relevant to our entire community.
"resources hosted on other community sites" is pretty vague... there are other official Mozilla product/project sites which are immediately relevant to certain classes of community members such as such as www.mozilla.com, support.mozilla.org, and developer.mozilla.org; then there are "other related websites" such as planet.mozilla.org and mozillazine which are less official.
I would propose the following statement:
"The www.mozilla.org homepage should provide a gateway to the web resources of the Mozilla community, including web resources for developers and users. The www.mozilla.org website should host official documents of the Mozilla project and the Mozilla foundation."
> A good restatement, with a list of subgoals for us. :)
I agree with both.
Reed wrote: > * Small/new/etc. projects should be moved to a new projects.mozilla.org site > * More mature projects should be moved to separate domains > (caminobrowser.org, for example); hosted by MoFo hopefully
I'm not sure. Personally I hate having to search multiple sub domains. Multiple distinct top level domains are even worse.
See later comments...
Beltzner wrote: > Who decides what's small/new? And what value is obtained from this > segmentation? I'd rather have a list of all projects, put the "big" > (ie: famous in terms of queries or google searches) ones in a section > at the top, but still make mozilla.org the home for all mozilla related > projects. Heck, I'd even have pages for mozilla.org/songbird which talk > about mozilla-derivative projects.
I agree
Hecker writes: > I think projects like Camino, Seamonkey, Sunbird, etc., having their own > independent domains is overall a good idea -- I think it gives those > projects a sense of identity and of not just being part of the > mozilla.org "grab bag". This is healthy IMO.
I'm in less position to oppose than hecker, and groups certainly can do this if they want.
KaiRo writes: > IMHO, the project owners/leaders should decide theirselves if they want > to have their own domain for their project or not. All projects should > have some default space though where they can place some basic > information about their project, e.g. projects.mozilla.org/<projectname>/ > - this can be used as long as the project itself thinks it's enough to > stick their content there. If and when the project wants to move to using > their own site/domain, we might even redirect this default space to their > new site.
Dunno. I suppose bugzilla did this (even before seamonkey/camino did, and possibly before firefox).
I suppose that my argument for when to provide a domain is basically when a project has so much distinct content that happen to have keywords that they pollute general searches that should find things in other projects about unrelated items.
e.g. How to file a bug can either mean how to file a gecko bug or how to use bugzilla to file a bug. The overlap for these two is high, and at some point you really don't want people to try to figure out how not to get bugzilla results when they want something else.
Note: if a project has fewer than 20 pages, then they can't possibly flood others out in search results so this explanation would only apply to projects with lots of content.
fantasai wrote: > I agree with Beltzner here. I think projects like Seamonkey and Camino > starting up their own domains is a good idea -- but I think those new > domains should be an end-user front, just like mozilla.com is for FF/TB. > Our projects aren't a "grab bag". mozilla.org is not SourceForge, we're > not cvs+bugzilla hosting. Our software are all interrelated: tied together > deep throughout the source code. You can't build any of them without Gecko. > This makes the source code, schedules, documentation, and communities all > overlap. Significantly. There's more overlap than not. The subprojects are > all part of the Mozilla Project, and should identify themselves as such.
This is almost true, but the webtools are special here. Sometimes forgotten even.
Certainly, I want one stop shopping. I hate having to look to more than one place to find calendars (I've made the mistake of having too many calendars for myself, as a result I can't even find/point people to things).
Hecker responds:
> I'm personally happy with this approach: List all projects under > www.mozilla.organd provide for each the sorts of information appropriate for > w.m.o (as discussed [below]), and then have optional separate domains containing > end user information, for any projects that want to do that.
seems fine
> www vs wiki vs projects
would you like 1 headache, 2 headaches, or 3 lumps with your 2 headaches?
Axel wrote: > 1) When do I put project pages on wiki.m.o, and when onwww.m.o?
Don't forget MDC. (Is that lump 4?)
> I would think that this is something that can be decided depending on > editing frequency and scale of cooperative editing. Maybe personal taste, > too.
This makes searching a royal pain.
> 2) Where do I put project pages on wiki.m.o and onwww.m.o? > Looking at the QA and Project pages for Firefox2, those are at > completely different hierarchies, some use / for separation, some use :. > If you want to enter a URL, you need to know which, if you want to > navigate to it, you need to know the right entry point. fantasai wrote: > I personally find this very confusing, but I don't really know what to > do about it...
We really need to do something. Fewer servers are better. Fewer (one please!) styles are better.
www.mozilla.org used to have a style guide. I think it got moved. Which really sucks.
> I think we can start improving the situation by having all the projects > choose one (1) of either their wiki site Home_Page or their www site > index.html as their main entry page page. They should sort out their main > page content based on that decision, and we should update (revamp) > http://www.mozilla.org/projects/, have it point to the right main pages, > and link to it prominently from the front page.
Benjamin Smedberg wrote: > I don't think this reflects the discussion at all. Documents about how to > get involved and information on the various projects are not "official > content" and should live in a wiki.
On the contrary, I think that both belong to www.m.o on a certain part, esp. the "get involved part" which is IMHO the official guideline of how to get into the community (and www.m.o is abou the community, right?) and any pages that represent "official" statements about the projects (those projects that don't have their separate sites elsewhere). The latter part could move to a projects.m.ozilla.org some time, but as long as that doesn't exist, its place is in www.m.o/projects/ IMHO.
> "resources hosted on other community sites" is pretty vague... there are > other official Mozilla product/project sites which are immediately relevant > to certain classes of community members such as such as www.mozilla.com, > support.mozilla.org, and developer.mozilla.org; then there are "other > related websites" such as planet.mozilla.org and mozillazine which are less > official.
And I think we should also have pointers to those sites on www.m.o
> I would propose the following statement:
> "The www.mozilla.org homepage should provide a gateway to the web resources > of the Mozilla community, including web resources for developers and users. > The www.mozilla.org website should host official documents of the Mozilla > project and the Mozilla foundation."
That is too narrow, I think, mainly because of what I pointed out above.
Robert Kaiser wrote: > Benjamin Smedberg wrote: >> I don't think this reflects the discussion at all. Documents about how to >> get involved and information on the various projects are not "official >> content" and should live in a wiki.
> On the contrary, I think that both belong to www.m.o on a certain part, > esp. the "get involved part" which is IMHO the official guideline of how > to get into the community (and www.m.o is abou the community, right?)
Is there any reason why the "get involved" documents can't be publicly editable like any other wiki page? I think our goal should be to make as many page as possible publicly editable on a wiki. If that means making all of www.mozilla.org a wiki and locking down just the policy documents, we should do that.
> and any pages that represent "official" statements about the projects > (those projects that don't have their separate sites elsewhere). > The latter part could move to a projects.m.ozilla.org some time, but as > long as that doesn't exist, its place is in www.m.o/projects/ IMHO.
I disagree. I believe that the vast majority of the project documents belong somewhere like wiki.mozilla.org/SeaMonkey or developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/XULRunner with exceptions perhaps for official lists of reviewers/peers.
>> "resources hosted on other community sites" is pretty vague... there are >> other official Mozilla product/project sites which are immediately >> relevant >> to certain classes of community members such as such as www.mozilla.com, >> support.mozilla.org, and developer.mozilla.org; then there are "other >> related websites" such as planet.mozilla.org and mozillazine which are >> less >> official.
> And I think we should also have pointers to those sites on www.m.o
I agree completely! I do think that we ought to feature the official product/development site over the much larger set of community websites.
Benjamin Smedberg wrote: > Robert Kaiser wrote: >> Benjamin Smedberg wrote: >>> I don't think this reflects the discussion at all. Documents about how to >>> get involved and information on the various projects are not "official >>> content" and should live in a wiki. >> On the contrary, I think that both belong to www.m.o on a certain part, >> esp. the "get involved part" which is IMHO the official guideline of how >> to get into the community (and www.m.o is abou the community, right?)
> Is there any reason why the "get involved" documents can't be publicly > editable like any other wiki page? I think our goal should be to make as > many page as possible publicly editable on a wiki. If that means making all > of www.mozilla.org a wiki and locking down just the policy documents, we > should do that.
I think we have a fundamentally different perception of what wiki.m.o is for. In my eyes, it's a development scratchpad, a playground, just for drafting stuff things but no content that has any official tag of any kind associated with it.
And why is doctor so much worse than wiki editing?
Robert Kaiser wrote: > I think we have a fundamentally different perception of what wiki.m.o is > for. In my eyes, it's a development scratchpad, a playground, just for > drafting stuff things but no content that has any official tag of any > kind associated with it.
On 2007-09-05, Benjamin Smedberg <benja...@smedbergs.us> wrote:
> Robert Kaiser wrote:
>> I think we have a fundamentally different perception of what wiki.m.o is >> for. In my eyes, it's a development scratchpad, a playground, just for >> drafting stuff things but no content that has any official tag of any >> kind associated with it.
I think that idea was suggested a couple of years or more ago, and was rejected on the basis that all content on mozilla.org was the "official" word of the Mozilla Foundation, and setting up sufficient access restrictions on a wiki would require a lot of effort.
I actually have privileges for using doctor (at least I think I still do), but my understanding was that I shouldn't change anything without filing a bug in bugzilla and attaching a patch, unless I was the owner of a particular page or had otherwise been given authority by the owner of a page (and identifying and contacting the owner wasn't necessarily straightforward).
Of course, this was before the product content moved to mozilla.com, so maybe things have changed. But it would make sense to be clear on the policy before having this kind of discussion...
> I don't think this reflects the discussion at all.
I think we're pretty much agreeing on the main points, but are disagreeing about where to draw the line between www.mozilla.org and the rest of the community sites. Specifically, I don't think there's any disagreement in this thread that:
- www.mozilla.org should be an entry point to the community - www.mozilla.org should be the authoritative voice of the community for some set of content (it can't be the authoritative voice for everything since there is content spread across many different sites)
> "resources hosted on other community sites" is pretty vague... there are > other official Mozilla product/project sites which are immediately relevant > to certain classes of community members such as such aswww.mozilla.com, > support.mozilla.org, and developer.mozilla.org; then there are "other > related websites" such as planet.mozilla.org and mozillazine which are less > official.
If the site is supposed to be an entry point for the community, then the whole community needs to be represented on the site, not just those sites sponsored by MoFo and MoCo. Why shouldn't mozillazine or mozdev be linked to in addition to MDC and SUMO? For that matter, why shouldn't projects like Songbird or Joost be linked to in addition to Bugzilla and Camino? These other related sites and projects are certainly very relevant for a part of the community.
> "relevant to all of the Mozilla community" doesn't mean much. Obviously > every page on www.mozilla.org is not going to be relevant to our entire > community.
IMO, just saying that the site should host official documents is not enough of a definition to draw any meaningful distinction between www.m.o and other community sites (the one distinction it does draw is between the scratchpad wiki.m.o and www.m.o). I agree that "relevant to all of the Mozilla community" is not precise, but let's replace it with a positive definition of the site that is better.
In bug 345664 there are some people who are eager to get the archiving process started, but I had thought we should wait until this vision discussion had reached a consensus before moving forward. If we aren't able to reach a consensus though, maybe starting the archive process and having discussions about where specific pages belong will help us come up with the vision for the whole site.
Is there any objection to getting the archiving process going now? In practice, this would mean picking a few pages that look like they might be obsolete, posting the links on the wiki and then discussing them on this newsgroup (or in a different location if this isn't the right place for this discussion). After we discuss one batch of pages, we'll start the process over with a new batch.
> www.mozilla.org used to have a style guide. I think it got moved.
It still has a style guide.
> Which really sucks.
This I don't understand. It's still there, *and* there's a redirect to the new location. What are you complaining about?
> http://www.mozilla.org/README-style.html > http://www.mozilla.org/contribute/writing/guidelines >> I think we can start improving the situation by having all the projects >> choose one (1) of either their wiki site Home_Page or their www site >> index.html as their main entry page page. They should sort out their main >> page content based on that decision, and we should update (revamp) >> http://www.mozilla.org/projects/, have it point to the right main pages, >> and link to it prominently from the front page.
> I don't understand this.
My observation was that projects either had a wiki site, a www site, or (often) both. In all cases it was hard to figure out where the main project site was, and content was split haphazardly between various parts. So my suggestion was to tell each project "Give us the URL to your main project site. We don't care where it is. We will list it on the projects page. No you can't give us two URLs, you only get to pick one." That may not be the best thing for search or consistency, but it isn't any worse than what we have now. And then at least then we can make an index to guide people through the /projects mess, and the projects are forced to commit to one main page from which they must link all their other resources.
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