[Zope3-dev] Development methodology (Re: [Zope-CMF] Future CMF) (rant)

[Guido van Rossum]

[Jim]
> I think that the fish bowl has been pretty successful. Do you have
> evidence that PEPs have been more sucessful?  Fishbowl proposals
> aren't lost. They are gathered in one place and can be easily found.

But the Zope3 proposals aren't in the fishbowl (at least I can't find
the two that you posted lately, ThroughTheWebDevelopment and
FileSystemRepresentation).

>From its FrontPage, the Zope2 fishbowl looks well-maintained; Brian
seems to be on top of it.  When you drill deeper, you'll find many
proposals that seem stalled, having seen no action in a year -- but
this is also the case for many Python PEPs.  My main complaint here
would be the long URLs required to reference proposals.  By contrast,
the 4-digit PEP numbers, dry though they may seem, are handy because
they're not dependent on a particular site hosting the PEPs, and allow
one to consult the PEPs e.g. directly in CVS as well as on the
website.

However, the Zope 3 proposals are not in such a good state.  The Wiki
is well-hidden under a long confounding name.  It seems nobody has
much interest in being the editor here and creating some order.  It
suffers from long chains of references (e.g. try to find any contents
more than a sentence or two by following the Documentation link).
There are some long documents (e.g. VisionStatement) that appear
unmaintained (don't tell me that the project vision hasn't changed in
a year).  There appear to be many pages that were started with great
enthusiasm and then abandoned (e.g. the CheatSheet).  The only area
that seems to be actively used (i.e. is updated regularly with real
new content), the Zope3Proposals page, is not listed on the FrontPage.
Well, it is, but hidden in a list of "handy shortcuts" that begins
with a boring and redundant link to RecentChanges.  It is number 8 in
the hierarchy of Project (number 1 is the poorly named CurrentStatus).

I don't think it's Jim's job to be responsible for the Wiki; I don't
maintain the Python PEPs myself either.  But just tossing everything
in a Wiki and letting "the community" create order from the chaos
clearly doesn't work either!

What now?  It seems to me that *someone* (or a very small task group)
has to put a concentrated effort in this.  Perhaps a Wiki sprint would
be helpful?  I'd suggest to just start over, by creating a new Zope3
Wiki.  But since I'm not volunteering (unless Jim assigns me to this
task) that's just a suggestion.  And once the Wiki is reorganized,
someone needs to stay on top of it: update status regularly, remove
abandoned proposals, and generally make the Wiki easy to navigate for
visitors old and new.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)