task: update "How to contribute: Micro Quickstart Guide"

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Joe Corneli

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Nov 19, 2019, 12:37:04 PM11/19/19
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Just noticed that this is pretty out of date, someone want to propose a revision?

Charles Blass

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Nov 19, 2019, 1:14:03 PM11/19/19
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link please?
file under Onboarding

Roland Legrand

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Nov 19, 2019, 1:40:04 PM11/19/19
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Just wondering: I see lots of projects and tasks passing by, I probably missed quite a few. Maybe we could use Trello to keep an overview?

skreutzer

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Nov 19, 2019, 1:48:04 PM11/19/19
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Does Trello have a useful export?

skreutzer

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Nov 19, 2019, 1:57:57 PM11/19/19
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Trello being proprietary SaaS software, do they have a rate limit or hosting fee? In which case one would be always better off using alternatives – Robert Best for example running a Wekan instance for the Open Learning Commons.

Joe Corneli

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Nov 19, 2019, 5:05:59 PM11/19/19
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The link: peeragogy.github.io, part way down the page there's an outdated Quickstart guide.
Yes, I think it would be interesting to use one of the Kanban-like systems -- HuBoard could be a good one because it integrates with Github issues:

On Tue, 19 Nov 2019 at 18:57, 'skreutzer' via Peeragogy <peer...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Trello being proprietary SaaS software, do they have a rate limit or hosting fee? In which case one would be always better off using alternatives – Robert Best for example running a Wekan instance for the Open Learning Commons.

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skreutzer

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Nov 20, 2019, 7:14:56 AM11/20/19
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Me mentioning Wekan is less about actually using the Kanban methodology, just as another card-like task tracking system. Looking at Trello a bit, it appears that they have done enough of good API work so that it potentially can be used to some extend (not to speak of that APIs are a bad way to publish data to begin with). Consider


(for data that's public anyway). Could go directly into the Peeragogy Dashboard or other work environments, or converted/imported to WordPress or Twine or maybe even Federated Wiki, depending on openness, preference/want/need, implementation capacity, and programmability, given that the data quality is sufficient too.

As the Quickstart guide already suggests to create a GitHub account (but be aware, is proprietary SaaS hosting too and not just repository hosting, as issues could as well be hosted as an ordinary version-controlled repo, so why get locked-into GitHub online software, and what about issues on GitLab, or self-hosted git server instances etc.), its Issue tracker could be used as well via the web interface besides what HuBoard may offer, but don't know if there is a way to simply pull issues from GitHub/GitLab like Trello allows for the cards of a board.

For my own needs, I have a thing about these task/issue trackers, or let's say, I try to do completion tracking. Playing around with


practical example/instance is


Currently I'm looking into Org-Mode for GNU Emacs because I didn't develop a GUI for my completion tracking yet, so Org-Mode as a text interface offers keyboard shortcuts to easily/quickly move tasks around and change their status. With some help, export to XML was set up (also automatable), so I can now do (lossy) round-trip from external sources to the Org-Mode TODO text format and back to XML from where it can go pretty much anywhere. Still, there's things Org-Mode doesn't do for me interface-wise, not too convinced yet that the solution is to program big, monolithic Emacs of the app-model, so maybe I'll eventually start another little local/native task tracker tool. There are things like Taskwarrior, but there might always be something missing. Anyhow, with you guys too potentially deploying a whole bunch of task tracking apps, my point is less about settling for a single one, but making them all work together for everybody, to the extend they're open or "programmable", there's preference/want/need and capacity allows it.

Online (server-dependent) too, why couldn't one have a more or less custom/customized/customizable self-hosted tracking system, like


The general approach here is to use simple + open formats to avoid dependencies on particular servers or needed incompatible functionality of a single app, so data can go places, do things and flow, can't get lost or stuck. No need to do it this way, whatever my stuff happens or may end up to be, I might potentially be able to interface enough with Trello as well (for download/export).

Joe Corneli

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Nov 20, 2019, 7:51:19 AM11/20/19
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On Wed, 20 Nov 2019 at 12:14, 'skreutzer' via Peeragogy <peer...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
As the Quickstart guide already suggests to create a GitHub account (but be aware, is proprietary SaaS hosting too and not just repository hosting, as issues could as well be hosted as an ordinary version-controlled repo, so why get locked-into GitHub online software, and what about issues on GitLab, or self-hosted git server instances etc.), its Issue tracker could be used as well via the web interface besides what HuBoard may offer, but don't know if there is a way to simply pull issues from GitHub/GitLab like Trello allows for the cards of a board.

The SaaS stuff is separate from the issue tracker question, but it's relevant to the Quickstart question!

Basically, we have not been emphasising free/open source software in the project so far, and I can't see any reason to have a double standard where we use Google Docs and Zoom for some things but prefer GitLab to Github.  That said, I personally love free software, and if we could switch the majority of our production platform over to open source solutions without harming our ability to collaborate in the project, then I would very be eager to do so.  It's great if some people are exploring how to do this: I feel like it should be approached holistically and pragmatically.  I would be happy to participate in such an exploration, as time permits, but I think most people in the project are currently quite happy using contemporary SaaS tools, and we will not win them over to free software by telling them they are doing something wrong.  We will win them over by building a better solution.

Currently I'm looking into Org-Mode for GNU Emacs because I didn't develop a GUI for my completion tracking yet, so Org-Mode as a text interface offers keyboard shortcuts to easily/quickly move tasks around and change their status.

I've used Org Mode frequently, and sometimes manage to get it set up so that it just about does what I want for task tracking.  But I can't imagine imposing this on other contributors to the project.
 
Anyhow, with you guys too potentially deploying a whole bunch of task tracking apps, my point is less about settling for a single one, but making them all work together for everybody, to the extend they're open or "programmable", there's preference/want/need and capacity allows it.

That sounds like a good approach.  As we were talking about yesterday in the reading group, part of the point with the pattern catalogue is to have a systematic way to manage our tasks.  If we really want the project to be as widely useful as possible, it should integrate with many other task management workflows!

The general approach here is to use simple + open formats to avoid dependencies on particular servers or needed incompatible functionality of a single app, so data can go places, do things and flow, can't get lost or stuck.

That reminds me of what Charles was saying in the discussion yesterday as well.  The data we work with will have a whole "lifecycle" that is somewhat different from, but related to, the patterns through which we interact as people.  It's a bit like what Christopher Alexander talked about regarding the relationship between architecture and construction -- if we don't get good at construction, then we won't be able to fully realise our vision as architects.

At the same time, at least among current contributors to the project, we're often more like the people who live in the houses (or rented apartments).  This is an important population too, after all!  Related issues are discussed eloquently by Jenifer Tidwell.

Jenifer Tidwell. 2000. The Gang of Four Are Guilty. (2000). http://www.mit.edu/~jtidwell/gof_are_guilty.html

skreutzer

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Nov 20, 2019, 10:55:23 AM11/20/19
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The SaaS stuff is separate from the issue tracker question, but it's relevant to the Quickstart question!

I don't really understand this yet. If there are tasks to file and manage (say, for coordinating the update of the Quickstart guide) and potentially the Quickstart guide to say something of how in a community of peer learners collect tasks and track their progress/completion, furthermore pointing to tools that help with that as well as listing known places of activity management by peer learning groups including the one that works on the Peeragogy Handbook itself, doesn't it matter in what form this happens, because it determines who can become peer in what way and if we ourselves can make use of it?

Basically, we have not been emphasising free/open source software in the project so far, and I can't see any reason to have a double standard where we use Google Docs and Zoom for some things but prefer GitLab to Github.  That said, I personally love free software, and if we could switch the majority of our production platform over to open source solutions without harming our ability to collaborate in the project, then I would very be eager to do so.  It's great if some people are exploring how to do this: I feel like it should be approached holistically and pragmatically.  I would be happy to participate in such an exploration, as time permits, but I think most people in the project are currently quite happy using contemporary SaaS tools, and we will not win them over to free software by telling them they are doing something wrong.  We will win them over by building a better solution.

Practically speaking, I don't really care who does what how in this context, as these won't end up being my own problem :-) If there's data lost or stuck eventually, fine, maybe nobody needed it anyway, like throwaway communication. For my own projects, I just try to avoid creating such data in the first place, there can still be push or pull, it's up to every peer indivitually how they organize their own things. Just recognizing that, it's relatively likely that different collections of data by different peers might end up in different locations and different levels of accessability to other peers, and if some collections of data are too closed, hostile, difficult, costly to work with, one shouldn't be surprised if these get lost, abandoned, ignored. There also can't be much of complaint that everything is spread all over the place and of little use for lack of integration/compatibility.

Libre licensing is a methodology to make developers/creators, users/licensees equal peers on the legal level and beyond. With proprietary applications, there's the peer group of users of that application as well. Proprietary vendors are peers of being in the same business. And so on, therefore, tasks can easily be filed and their progress tracked with any methodology and/or system one prefers, so if it's Trello or not, Wekan, GitHub Issues, it doesn't really matter in the practice of the individual managing his/her tasks, even this Google Forum would do. If it's not for personal use only and somebody else should potentially do something with it, then it matters more – in various ways to those other people.

I've used Org Mode frequently, and sometimes manage to get it set up so that it just about does what I want for task tracking.  But I can't imagine imposing this on other contributors to the project.

Wasn't suggesting the latter at all, but hinting at that you very easily could one-way import from Trello to Org-Mode, just in case an individual would want to.

That reminds me of what Charles was saying in the discussion yesterday as well.  The data we work with will have a whole "lifecycle" that is somewhat different from, but related to, the patterns through which we interact as people.  It's a bit like what Christopher Alexander talked about regarding the relationship between architecture and construction -- if we don't get good at construction, then we won't be able to fully realise our vision as architects.

I kept suggesting to several online conversation/"collaboration" groups that frequently discussed questions of software, digital, augmentation, content, that there could be a neutral "department"/"function" doing nothing else agnostically than helping people with their data/software needs, so maintaining data collections or also recovering them would be a task for them as well. For some reason, there seems to be very little want/need/interest in such a thing, Code for America is probably the closest for public data, if not counting libre-digital-native projects like Wikipedia. But this is a separate topic entirely to potentially discuss in another thread, avoiding to clutter this one.

Joe Corneli

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Nov 20, 2019, 11:40:01 AM11/20/19
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On Wed, 20 Nov 2019 at 15:55, 'skreutzer' via Peeragogy <peer...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

The SaaS stuff is separate from the issue tracker question, but it's relevant to the Quickstart question!

I don't really understand this yet.... doesn't it matter in what form this happens, because it determines who can become peer in what way and if we ourselves can make use of it?

It seems like we are getting at the same point. 

Tools influence access, and of course this matters.  The Quickstart guide and the tools it references should ideally be accessible to everyone, and, in practice, accessible to most people.

So if it said, for example, "Start by installing Mumble", that's not going to work very well, because a bunch of people would not be able to figure out how to do that.  If it says "Meetings are by Zoom", that's also going to be problematic for people who can't or won't use Zoom.  And so on, I don't think there is any perfect solution. What I was trying to say was that the discussion is really at a different level from which task tracker we use.  I shouldn't have said "separate".  It's just that the discussion should be holistic, and task tracking tools are only one facet.

If there's data lost or stuck eventually, fine, maybe nobody needed it anyway, like throwaway communication.

This is what happened with Google+ so these sorts of situations definitely do arise. 
 
Just recognizing that, it's relatively likely that different collections of data by different peers might end up in different locations and different levels of accessability to other peers, and if some collections of data are too closed, hostile, difficult, costly to work with, one shouldn't be surprised if these get lost, abandoned, ignored. There also can't be much of complaint that everything is spread all over the place and of little use for lack of integration/compatibility.

Well, let's not underestimate people's willingness to complain!  Again, we can only really win people over to a new way of working if the new way provides tangible benefits.

Libre licensing is a methodology to make developers/creators, users/licensees equal peers on the legal level and beyond.

Indeed, but the legal rights are not enough on their own -- there is also a knowledge gap, which is one things that the Peeragogy project would ideally address.

I kept suggesting to several online conversation/"collaboration" groups that frequently discussed questions of software, digital, augmentation, content, that there could be a neutral "department"/"function" doing nothing else agnostically than helping people with their data/software needs, so maintaining data collections or also recovering them would be a task for them as well. For some reason, there seems to be very little want/need/interest in such a thing, Code for America is probably the closest for public data, if not counting libre-digital-native projects like Wikipedia. But this is a separate topic entirely to potentially discuss in another thread, avoiding to clutter this one.

Maybe what's needed is a kind of A/B test.  If we have a quickstart guide that embodies the kind of principles behind the suggestion you're making and one that doesn't, we could compare people's responses.

skreutzer

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Nov 20, 2019, 12:41:51 PM11/20/19
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I generally agree with everything, except maybe that

Maybe what's needed is a kind of A/B test.  If we have a quickstart guide that embodies the kind of principles behind the suggestion you're making and one that doesn't, we could compare people's responses.

is needed. The Quickstart guide may suggest a certain tool/location/service for every function and/or recommend other optional alternatives (or omit them to avoid stuff getting scattered), and whoever opts in will of course subsequently be subject to the properties, limitations, affordances, benefits, costs, etc. that happen to be the inherent nature/setup/design of the systems/services used. A/B are different in their own right, how/why compare them as if they were equal? How to determine what's "better", according to what criteria,  for whom? Using one solution doesn't preclude other peers from using other solutions, for reasons and benefits they prefer.

To bootstrap this practically: this thread is already a task. One might simply self-assign himself/herself (to avoid duplication of effort) for updating the Quickstart guide. If there are questions about how, we can offer some help right here. Roland's question about tracking tasks in Trello could be started as a new topic/thread in this Google Group with the title "task: Create a Trello board", where somebody can self-assign himself/herself to carry out the task so we don't end up with two Trello boards.

skreutzer

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Nov 20, 2019, 1:03:18 PM11/20/19
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Description, steps/subtasks (feel free to self-assign yourself to any of these, or extend/change the description or steps): The Quickstart guide is out-of-date. There are two variants (a short and a long one). The short guide is part of the index.html of the web variant of the Peeragogy Handbook, the long guide is a wiki page on GitHub. Steps/subtasks for the short guide:

 - Determine/decide if $/_site/index.html or $/index.html in the repository is the source, and which one is generated. Hints: the latter has an https Amazon link (potentially indicating newer), but also nonsensical HTML definition lists in an ordered list (potentially indicating older). You may use diff tools. Maybe the scripts contain instructions of how one file is generated from the other. Maybe this can be found out by asking contributors who changed the file. Report back if none of this works.

Steps/subtasks for the long guide:

 - Find out if the wiki page https://github.com/Peeragogy/peeragogy-handbook/wiki/Quickstart-guide is editable with your GitHub account, either online via the web interface or by forking (https://github.com/Peeragogy/peeragogy-handbook.wiki.git)

This is obviously from my perspective, you may simply self-assign you to a task and close it with an answer (maybe even as short as "yes"/"no"). If it's a non-task, at least I learn something in the process (and it'll end up being documented, too!). Add your own next steps and have other people self-assigning themselves.
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skreutzer

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Nov 20, 2019, 1:37:03 PM11/20/19
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Another rather important addition to the first task for the short guide: by "$/_site/index.html or $/index.html in the repository", it turns out that the repository in question is the one for the "website" (via subdomain on github.io), https://github.com/Peeragogy/Peeragogy.github.io, and not https://github.com/Peeragogy/peeragogy-handbook. I assumed the latter would be the main source repository from where other compositions were generated/produced, but commit history indicates that changes were made to the former repository, more frequently and more recent. Deeper investigation of the "peeragogy-handbook" repo would be needed to determine the differences, if and for what it is still needed, otherwise it could be archived to reduce confusion. Note that changes to the "Peeragogy.github.io" might mean that they immediately go live, so the preferred method for changing in this repo might be to create forks and pull requests, for a small amount of repo owners/members to pull from and commit.

skreutzer

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Nov 20, 2019, 3:03:38 PM11/20/19
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Subtask for the long guide completed: GitHub wiki is editable for whomever has a GitHub account, no request for priviledges or joining a team required.

Meta: Google Groups has an option to mark messages as "completed"/"resolved", so why not use this for completing tasks/subtasks? I/we just need to file tasks as separate messages/e-mail, which I'll try to do until told otherwise.

skreutzer

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Nov 20, 2019, 3:07:19 PM11/20/19
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The long guide recommends to optionally join the Peeragogy Google+ group. As Google+ doesn't exist any more, it needs to be decided what can be recommended instead, or if this entry should be removed. Multiple individuals might self-assign themselves to this sub-task, make suggestions, discuss, potentially arrive at a decision after some time, and actually carry out the change on the GitHub wiki page themselves or ask somebody to do it, if no interest in learning how to do this.

skreutzer

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Nov 20, 2019, 3:14:55 PM11/20/19
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On the website and it's repository (Peeragogy.github.io at https://github.com/Peeragogy/Peeragogy.github.io, assuming that the source is $/index.html in there), the short/micro quick start guide might be more recent/verbose than the version on the wiki page (https://github.com/Peeragogy/peeragogy-handbook/wiki/Quickstart-guide), so somebody may self-assign to update the wiki page to copy over what's on the website. Alternatively, asignee(s) might provide reasoning why this shouldn't be done.

Joe Corneli

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Nov 21, 2019, 6:32:29 AM11/21/19
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On Wednesday, November 20, 2019 at 8:03:38 PM UTC, skreutzer wrote:
Meta: Google Groups has an option to mark messages as "completed"/"resolved", so why not use this for completing tasks/subtasks? I/we just need to file tasks as separate messages/e-mail, which I'll try to do until told otherwise.

Huh, I didn't know that this feature existed!  Cool.  It seems like a "hidden feature" (or maybe it hadn't been added last time I logged in via the Forum interface; it doesn't seem to be available via the email interface). I think these are the relevant docs:
That said, I feel we should compare this option with Github Issues; my initial sense after the short experiment so far is that it would be better to have issues tracked somewhere else, with notifications sent to a mailing list for notification purposes; but I could be wrong.

Joe Corneli

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Nov 21, 2019, 6:46:25 AM11/21/19
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On Thu, 21 Nov 2019 at 11:42, 'skreutzer' via Peeragogy <peer...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Need to edit something to the description: The quickstart guide(s) seem to be primarily about how to join + set oneself up for contributing to the Peeragogy Handbook itself

Good point, it could be interesting to have one or more additional quickstart guides for using these things in another context.  I think the reason the existing one focuses on how to contribute to the peeragogy project itself is that the project has still been "bootstrapping".  But it's not likely to get beyond that unless it adopts a more outward-facing role -- something that has come up in our discussions about the Handbook as well.  So this can all be improved in the push up to publishing v4.
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