[Zope3-dev] zope3.org?

[Jeffrey P Shell]

On Wednesday, January 8, 2003, at 05:04  AM, Chris Withers wrote:

> Stephan Richter wrote:
>
>>> Surely it splits off Zope
>>> 3 even further from the rest of Zope, it also provides even less 
>>> motivation
>>> for sorting out the crufty hell that is the current zope.org.
>> Nope, using zope3.org we have a chance to build a site in Zope 3. 
>> Furthermore, the domain is already purchased... ;-)
>
> The domain being purchased is neither here nor there. I fully agree 
> that having a test site for Zope 3 would be very useful and as 
> zope3.org has already been purchased then you may as well use it.
>
> However, I would urge caution against it become 'the place to go for 
> Zope 3'.
> Otherwise zope.org becomes ' the place to go for Zope 2', and 'Zope 2' 
> and 'Zope 3' end up being completely different 'Products' from a user 
> user point of view.

Until Zope 3 (not Zope 3X) final is out, I think it makes good sense to 
have a separate place to go.  The problem becomes what to do when Zope 
3 has become final and is the default Zope to talk about.

> Admittedly, at this stage they _are_ different products, but as far as 
> I'm aware, that's not intended to be the case when Zope 3.0 is 
> released.

This is a very important distinction though, right now.  I really want 
there to be a real place to go to get Zope 3 information that is not 
the sprawling mess of Wiki - a place with articles and information tied 
to development milestones instead of being full of proposals and early 
conceptions.

Zope 3X is different enough to separate them out for now, and I think 
it needs to be done in a way that doesn't impact Zope 2.x development 
and acceptance.  The conflict that's been in my head has been "how do 
we start talking about Zope 3's vast improvements and what they mean to 
users and developers that doesn't make Zope 2 look bad?", because Zope 
2's not bad.

> There's also the chance of zope3.org turning into another 
> CMF-dogbowl-esque thing which falls into disrepair easily, and isn't 
> maintained in a way that results in as helpful a resource as it should 
> be.

This is true.  It takes time to plan a site, especially when using new 
technology.  A lot of work went into designing the current Zope.org, 
which was really a big experiment with early Zope 2 technologies, 
particularly ZClasses, for better or worse.  I think Zope.org has held 
up pretty well considering its age.

I think we need a Zope3.org for the time being to have a publicly 
accessible (by which I mean - not a developers wiki) site with 
development news and articles, but I fear having it turn into a dogbowl 
type thing.  I think this can be avoided, however, if some time were 
spent up-front deciding what to do with the site.  I'd suggest:

- No ability to join.  It shouldn't be a playground to anyone 
interested in checking out how Zope 3 works.  Membership should be 
explicit.  This should keep the amount of content down, and cut down on 
chance of cruft.  This policy could be expanded later, but I think 
right now the site should be simple (see next bullet).

- Simple structure, like Plone.org:

   - About Zope 3
   - Documentation
     - User Documentation (ie - "Zope 3 book")
     - Articles
   - Downloads
   - Development
     - Zope 3 development Wiki (link)
     - Collector (link)
     - Mailing list (link)
   - News

   Right now, it could probably work just to have "About, Downloads, 
Development, News"


--
Jeffrey P Shell
jeffrey@cuemedia.com