RE: website update

[Suhaib Siddiqi <ssiddiqi at inspirepharm dot com>]

 Rob,

I agree with all of your suggestions.

By the way, no question mark after Alan.  He is a core developer from XF86.
Can you remove it, please.

Thanks
Suhaib



-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Collins
To: cygwin-xfree@cygwin.com
Sent: 5/6/2001 8:36 AM
Subject: website update

I've updated the main page and added Alan to the contributors list. I'm
about to update the current supported levels.

I've also written a small page at
<http://xfree86.cygwin.com.writing.html> that describes the goals and
methods I've used in developing the site so far. It's not linked into
any of the other webpages (I wasn't sure if it should be) but I figured
you folk should know how I'm handling the web site... and why. I'd like
to encourage you developers to create content to document your efforts
(rather than having developers+1 independent websites floating around).
However I do not have the time, inclincation or desire to preview
_every_ page before it goes up.

I do wish to see the site stay fairly consistent and easily navigated
though. I'm happy to write up some guidelines, and provide post-upload
editing /review of pages.

I have some thoughts on this - please jump in and discuss this. It
affects us all.

A fairly easy approach would be to declare the website open-season, and
change what you will, but I'm not comfortable doing that until we've
_all agreed_ on the content, layout and presentation needed, and on the
remedial actions needed if a page fails one or more criteria. For now I
propose the following:

* Suhaib and I have veto over all website changes.
* Various "sections" (ie harolds user guide) are allocated to a team
(could be one person) who may commit to their hearts content. If some
issue appears, the community can discuss it post-change.
* Changes desired by anyone outside an area they are responsible for are
submitted as patches to me, and I'll apply asap, unless there are
presentation or content issues. (In which case those issues will be
immediately aired).
* I will work to develop a set of criteria for the website that all of
us agree to. These criteria will be in four categories:
    * technical (ie HTML 3 or 4? CSS 1 or 2? etc)
    * Stylistic (number of fonts/general writing styles etc)
    * content (clarity of expression, acurracy etc)
    * change control and remedial action.

When we are all agreed on the website criteria I suggest we adopt the
following mechanisms:
* Anyone with CVS access may change any web page as long as they follow
the agreed on change control process and page criteria.
* Anyone nominated to edit the web site can as well  (as longs as they
.."" "" "" "").
* We follow the agree on remedial action for pages with problems.

The goal being to keep the pages up to date with a minimum of confusion
and without making a single editor a bottleneck. (If there are two
editors, then the editors need agreed on styles and we're back to my
suggestion at leastin part).

Suhaib has suggested a owner based solution, but I don't believe that
will last for the long term. The reasons being that a) you may well end
up with each owner having a very different style, and b) things may well
bottleneck across "owners". Thus my little essay here.

Rob