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

[Jim Fulton]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> [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

No, they are in their own fishbowl, which seems reasonable to me.

 > (at least I can't find
> the two that you posted lately, ThroughTheWebDevelopment and
> FileSystemRepresentation).

The first wasn't a proposal. It was more like a white paper.

The second is a proposal and is in the proposals area.

...

> 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).

Huh? I find substantive information pretty quickly.

> 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).

Well, It certainly hasn't changed enough that it would occur to me
to change the page.

 >  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,

Isn't that what we're talking about, the proposals area? I've tried to keep
that current, although I haven't gotten around to updating it lately.

 > 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).

Changing the conversation to the Wiki,
as opposed to the proposal mechanism ....

I agree that the wiki could use some help. I've spent a fair amount
of time working on it. I removed a lot of stale use case pages a couple
of months ago. I thought the overall organization was pretty reasonable.


> I don't think it's Jim's job to be responsible for the Wiki;

Thank you. :)

 > 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? 

Ooooh, I like that. Or maybe a Wiki day on IRC.

 > I'd suggest to just start over, by creating a new Zope3
> Wiki. 

I wouldn't do this now. I expect that this spring we'll create a
Zope3.org site hosted on Zope 3 that will have a new wiki area.
Thanks to file-system synchronization, I think that this will lend
itself to better and easier wiki gardening.

 > 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.

Amen

Jim

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