Hi Michael, :-) On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 05:36, Michael Meeks <michael.me...@novell.com> wrote: >> a clear decision about the management of the libreoffice.org >> website. It's an important tool for marketing. I have plenty of ideas >> about how to market with it > > Here is my clear idea: since you are doing the work - you get to own > it, lead it, and those that don't like what you do get to gripe at you, > and everyone else gets to back you up :-) [ if only to keep you > motivated, happy and productive ;-].
I get the idea, but I'm not sure if it is really viable as a form of management. For instance, me, I want to do *work* for the project. But I don't want to spend more time writing to lists arguing with people, etc, than actually doing useful work. My experience to date has been 90% debating by e-mail and 10% actual work... And I certainly didn't feel too much back up until the last few days... So I probably won't be tempted to carry on the work past my original goal of seeing the LibreOffice community with a website. At the moment, spending more time with my guitar sounds more inviting! ;-) >> and I would like to get a clear remit to work on that with you. Please >> can you read my post [1] on the SC list and contribute your thoughts on it? > > I read it - it had about five new formal roles in it - so I didn't like > it. I'd much prefer that you were the leader by dint of actually doing > all the hard work (like you are now) :-) I do see what you mean, but working on the website for the project has not been a good experience so far... A whole lot of criticism, very little useful support, very little practical help from anyone... > (personally) I am not a big believer in lots of formal access control - > but in social pressure and consensus building: > you created some nice > content - how can we help you stop other people mangling it ? I don't really know, Michael... You tell me? :-D >> If you allow the site to be run in a chaotic, uncontrolled manner, >> I think you'll lose a lot of the benefit it could otherwise bring >> the foundation. > > True, so I wonder how we can help coax people into producing and > editing in a tasteful and restrained way ? how can we build good taste, > and/or asking-when-they-don't-know-the-answer into the community of > editors ? Well, again, this is apparently the SC's "laisse-faire" / anarchical style of community governance... or non-governance... so you tell me the answers to those questions... ;-) It's a system that might work when you're dealing with just people of goodwill and good intent... but we all know that there are always some people with negative behaviors and attitudes... How is one supposed to cope with them? In practice, this anarchical "management style" did not build you a website. When left to organize the work by themselves, the "website team" did not build you any kind of website at all. It took nearly 3 months before LibreOffice got a website. And that was due, in large part, to the bloody-minded obstinacy of one person. My humble 2 cents is that the SC's social experiment has proved a failure. And if you count on the same methods for the future management of your website, I think you'll reap either more failure or - at best - a mediocre result. I think I'd like to start a larger debate about where TDF is going when i finished the work on the website and hand it back to you to manage however you feel best. ;-) > Does that help ? :-) Well, it gives me an idea of you guys' position... Thanks for that... But so far it doesn't actually help as such, no... :-D In any case, thanks for your input. ;-) David Nelson -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
