Hi, There have been some discussions regarding a "landing page" for the Scooby project that we thought we should take to the maillists for comments.
When Scooby 0.1 is released we will have three major components of the Chandler ecosystem in place as official active OSAF projects; Chandler, Cosmo, and Scooby. For each project we want to make it easy for potential developers and others to quickly and effortlessly get information about the project in order to encourage them to get involved and begin to build an active community. This effort is in keeping with Fogel's observations about packaging and presentation: "A related mistake is that of skimping on presentation and packaging, figuring that these can always be done later, when the project is well under way. Presentation and packaging comprise a wide range of tasks, all revolving around the theme of reducing the barrier to entry. Making the project inviting to the uninitiated means writing user and developer documentation, setting up a project web site that's informative to newcomers, automating as much of the software's compilation and installation as possible, etc." --- Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project by Karl Fogel, p. 10 When Chandler 0.6 was released we collected information from various sources and created the Chandler landing page <http://chandler.osafoundation.org> as visually appealing home page for the project that organizes and clearly leads visitors to appropriate pages for more information. Some of the links on the landing page go to wiki pages, some to the OSAF website, some to the group blog, and some to secondary html pages on the landing page site itself. By creating the landing page site instead of using the wiki we had more control over the design of the page and made it more attractive and easier to understand and navigate. We of course want to provide those interested in Cosmo and Scooby with similar easy-of-entry access to information about those projects as well. The question at hand is, What do we do over the next couple of weeks to prepare a landing page for the initial 0.1 release of Scooby? There are a continuum of solutions: 1) At one end we can create a "landing page" on the wiki and simply continue to provide a redirect from <http://scooby.osafoundation.org> to the wiki. 2) We could make a simple html, mostly text-based page that would free the landing page from the wiki navigation and editing kruft and allow a more appealing presentation of the content. 3) We could borrow from the work done on the Chandler landing page, keeping much of the navigation aids and style the same but modifying the content to target the Scooby 0.1 release. At this point, I'll interject my opinion, that if time and resources allow, I am in favor of option #3. I see the advantages that Fogel pointed out in having good presentation in the project web site early in the project in order to lower the barriers to entry. I also believe reusing similar design elements on the different project landing pages not only makes it easier for someone who is familiar with one project to more easily find their way in a sister project, but it subtly reiniforces the familial relationship among the projects. There is some concern that a graphically polished landing page for Scooby may inappropriately set expectations that the software is more mature than the 0.1 release is. I think that we can set expectations appropriately through the messaging/content on the page. And as the project matures we can maintain the interface and change the expectation messaging. Similarly, at this early stage in the Scooby project some of the documentation (like some of the features and functionality) may not have been created yet. Again, going back to Fogel... "Running a project is partly about supplying information, but it's also about supplying comfort. The mere presence of certain standard offerings, in expected places, reassures users and developers who are deciding whether they want to get involved. It says that this project has its act together, has anticipated the questions people will ask, and has made an effort to answer them in a way that requires minimal exertion on the part of the asker. By giving off this aura of preparedness, the project sends out a message: "Your time will not be wasted if you get involved," which is exactly what people need to hear." -- Fogel, p. 19 " • Label the areas where the documentation is known to be incomplete. By showing the readers that you are aware of its deficiencies, you align yourself with their point of view. Your empathy reassures them that they don't face a struggle to convince the project of what's important. These labels needn't represent promises to fill in the gaps by any particular date —it's equally legitimate to treat them as open requests for volunteer help. The last point is of wider importance, actually, and can be applied to the entire project, not just the documentation. An accurate accounting of known deficiencies is the norm in the open source world. You don't have to exaggerate the project's shortcomings, just identify them scrupulously and dispassionately when the context calls for it (whether in the documentation, in the bug tracking database, or on a mailing list discussion). No one will treat this as defeatism on the part of the project, nor as a commitment to solve the problems by a certain date, unless the project makes such a commitment explicitly. Since anyone who uses the software will discover the deficiencies for themselves, it's much better for them to be psychologically prepared—then the project will look like it has a solid knowledge of how it's doing." -- Fogel, p. 26 If we don't have time to create a "Vision and Scope of the Scooby Project" document (at some point we know we need to have that), we can start out with one sentence, or one paragraph and expand on it as time permits. If we don't have a final architecture document ready, we can refer to an work-in-progress draft. Fogel's point was that it is reassuring and informative to list what we know is missing along with what we do have. I guess I see the Scooby 0.1 release as a forcing function to put up a project landing page that will persist and grow as the project matures and not that the landing page is constrained to the 0.1 release. Anyhow, that's my opinion, what's yours? Pieter Cross-posted to the general and scooby lists
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