Hi folks.
Let me start with a joke.
How do you recognize a Canadian in a crowd?
You step on his foot and he says "Oh, I'm sorry..."
We're not all _that_ conciliatory, but there is something to the stereotype.
There has been a _lot_ of talk about doing a new website at
www.gimp.org recently. A lot of opinions have been put forth. Many
fragments of proposals have been made. I have a sense that there is
consensus on many high-level issues. Everyone seems to agree that:
- Something should be done.
- It's important to plan things out in advance.
- We need to decide the _goals_ of the site.
- The HTML on the site should be standards-compliant.
- The HTML on the site should work with any somewhat-modern browser.
- The code that runs the site should be separate from the content.
- Lots of other things :)
There's also a pretty good list of things to do at:
http://home.bn-paf.de/smokey/gimp_org/
It seems to me - and to many others, I imagine - that we're actually
stuck hard on the first unfinished item:
"Get together a lot of people"
We do have a lot of people who are interested here on the mailing
list, but nobody has stepped up to take command of this project. It
seems to me that that's what we need to get this show on the road.
Once someone is in charge - not a webmaster, a coordinator, just
to get the new site together. Someone without any agenda or
preferences aside from making the best damn GIMP site.
I'm not a big fan of people-hierarchies, but here goes:
- Coordinator to coordinate all these folks:
- Technical back-end person
Code modules may be assigned to others
- Content manager/editor
Sections of site assigned to others
- Design/layout person
Icons/etc. could be assigned to others but the final layout
would have to go through the main layout person cooperating with
the technical back-end person.
- System manager
We need someone with root on wilber to help set up groups and
install packages and all that. i.e. a single point of contact
for wilber admin. So far yosh has filled this role for me quite
well.
Now, I know most of us here are hackers and before you go killfiling
and /ignoring me for suggesting that there should be a manager, just
think about it for a bit and let me know if there's anyone you know
who has time to do any technical/design/content _and_ make sure
that nothing is dropped on the floor.
I don't know of anyone at the moment.
I have an agenda, and I'm not going to hide it. I'm building this
template system because I want to. I've been building systems like
this for 5 years now and I think this one is the least flawed I've
ever constructed. I think it is in line with most of the goals that we
all share, so I'm building a GIMP site with it. I'm writing a paper on
it and presenting it in Manchester at the end of June. Those are my
own personal & immediate goals. They are not necessarily in conflict
with getting the GIMP website moving, but they _are_ in conflict with
me leading or dealing with content or design.
So. Here we go:
I'd like to nominate Carol Spears <cspears@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> to the
position of coordinator. She seems really determined to help us
all sort this out, and she doesn't know enough about anything to
have a too-strong opinion. Yes, that's a complement, Carol - we
need people like you! Having someone like Carol around - just like
these "users" we keep talking about for the GIMP application -
will ensure that we can, to some extent, explain/justify our
choices and problems to a layperson. That has always helped me to
clarify implementation issues. Carol is good at asking questions
and making suggestions.
I nominate myself to the position of Technical person. I would be
glad to coordinate anyone who wants to help out in that regard and
of course show the Content and Design folks how easy it is to do
their stuff.
I also nominate Michael Spunt and the GUG folks to the position of
Technical person.
I think that once we have a content tree in place we can nominate
TigerT and others to come up with an appropriate design.
I nominate yosh to the undemanding position of Sysadmin attache.
I would now like to open nominations to anyone else. Feel free to
nominate yourself or decline your nomination.
Once we have a list of, say, at least 3 nominees for each position -
and of course we may want to revise the number of people and/or their
responsibilities - we can have a vote.
Let's say that the voting system is ... you rank all candidates (0
being most preferred, going up by 1) and the candidate with the lowest
score for each position wins. Geeky+simple enough?
If something doesn't get decided soon, I will take my template system
back to theory-land so I can get the stuff _I_ need done on it.
That's my 2 U.S. cents - which is worth about $150 Canadian these days.
Cheers,
Tom
--
Tom Rathborne tomr@xxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.aceldama.com/~tomr/ |
I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my | H
complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the | A
greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission, and I want to help you. | L
