Hi Kai, *, On Fri, Aug 25, 2006 at 04:22:28PM +0200, Kai Backman wrote: > We need to keep talking about the name of the tab because it does IMHO > illustrate something pretty fundamental about the site. To start, I > agree that according to the dictionary "Contribution" is probably the > correct term. However, in this case, the dictionary does not help us.
I think that the term is the correct one for the stuff currently offered. The majority of people wanting to contribute cannot code or provide patches, so they need a place to go to. Hence "Contribution". > [...] > This is a question of principle, do you listen to the other person and > try to understand them, or do you shout your own opinion and demand > they put up with it? On the internet you better listen, some other > site is only a single click away. > > So I did a quick unscientific sampling of some open source project > sites to see what -they- put in their tab. As written before an on IRC this is of no sense at all if you don't have the contents to provide after people click follow that link. If all those site had a page like development.ooo currently is, that won't do any good either. > [...] > So the votes are: > "Develop*" 6 votes > "Get* involved" 2 votes > "Participate" and "Community" 1 vote each > 1 blank OOo has a different userbase and different areas to contribute than most of the projects mentioned. So you cannot really draw conclusions. > On 8/25/06, Christian Lohmaier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >Well - newbies shouldn't start with CVS but get the source-tarball > >instead. But if you want to download using cvs, then click on either > > Sure, we would love that to be so. However, the tarball of 2.0.3 does > rarely build. ? Since that tarball is generated from the cvs sources, how would that be less-buildable than a cvs-checkout? > And nobody else builds the tarballs so newbies get no > help when they inevitably have problems. Just scan [EMAIL PROTECTED] and count > the number of successes where someone built 2.0.3 from the tarball You never get success-stories, only problem-reports. And there are way more people not knowing how to use CVS with OOo than build-problems originating by using a sourcetarball instead of a checkout. > ..IMHO. the source tarball download is detrimental and should probably > be removed or hidden somewhere as deep as the CVS is currently.. :-) That's again another task. > >[cloph is talking about kernel.org] > >There is a link to a page that apparently lists some instructions > >on how to access it using git, but it is inaccessible. > > All the links labelled "git" on kernel.org work for me. If this was an > issue it was temporary. I still maintain my thesis that the number of > external developers correlates directly with the ease of finding the > source.. Well, I doubt the kernel has any developers. And honestly - even if I would have the skills to develop on the kernel, I would not want to be part of that crowd. I followed the kernel-ML for a while and I absolutely didn't like these folks (or they way they do decisions) > Excercise: Order the following projects by the number of external > developers: kernel, mozilla, OO.o. Then order the projects by number > of clicks from homepage to find working source. Find the inverse > correlation. ;-) So this demonstrates that merely having a download-link or cvs-instructions at most prominent place doesn't help at all. So instead of talking about the label, one should prepare a page that actually carries some clear content instead of a whole full of links. Once such a page is created, one can talk about renaming the contributing-link (probably not), or adding back a Developers Link. But directing potential contributors to a confusing page doesn't help at all. (IMHO) ciao Christian -- NP: J.B.O. - Vorwort --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
