Re: [Zope-dev] Re: Fishbowl?
Joachim Werner wrote: I think that there ARE problems that can not be solved on a mailing list or in the fishbowl. One of them is doing a good general design (which we MIGHT need for some of the Zope 3.0 issues). I followed all the stuff about the CMF and formerly PTK and knew that it was heading to a direction I didn't want, but at the same time I felt that it would not help if I just contributed to the mailing list. Maybe this was a personal problem of mine, but I don't think so. I don't think so either. I think your paragraph above does a wonderful job of concisely summarizing the challenge. First, there shouldn't be Annointed Tools. We should strive to have good tools, and we should strive to use good tools, but the real goal is communication. If the current approach isn't hacking it, we need something else -- which could mean we learn from successful patterns in other projects. Second, when communication reveals an issue -- what happens? Let's say that every single person in the world of Zope agreed that the CMF was going in a wrong direction (just for the sake of argument, as the CMF has people that like it as well as dislike it). Would anything actually happen if consensus was reached, and who would be the ones to convert conclusion into code? Third, as Brian pointed out and you conclude with in the paragraph, frustrated people tune out. This causes the other side of the communication to get frustrated and stop communicating. Then things break down. It's important to recognize this is happening, put aside the frustration, and address the problems. IMHO, there are two possible approaches to problems like that (major design issues I mean): a) dictatorship, if the dictator is really good in his job (e.g. Jim Fulton has done a great job with regard to the design of the ZODB ) b) meeting in real live (or at least in real time) Some of the core architecture of the KDE KParts component model was developed on the KDE 2 conference AFAIK. I think we might have to do sessions like that at the upcoming Zope/Python conferences ... That's a very good point. It's even a good point inside ZC. Getting ten people in a room for an extreme programming session has done wonders for our ideas on Zope3. Anybody want to fly to Virginia? :^) Yesterday morning I started hanging out on the #zope IRC channel. Already it has been illuminating. It also creates an atmosphere of understanding. I need to do this more often. --Paul ___ Zope-Dev maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
[Zope-dev] Re: Fishbowl?
Chris Withers wrote: Paul Everitt wrote: Moral: there's a difference between correct and right. While we might have good reasons for inattention, it will surely lead to an unsatisfying conclusion. Thus, ZC needs to be smaller part of a larger Zope, IMO, and do this by spending more time helping the community take over parts of Zope and the Zope world. Well, this is a purpose, which is good. I'd say sorting out the Fishbowl would be a good action to start with. You're going to love the irony on this, but there's a proposal in the fishbowl on this: http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/FishbowlManageability ...and of course, nobody knows the proposal is there. Now, I see options for this: 1. We can build something better. I can list requirements but that's not relevent here. However, this will take serious effort (it's a hard problem...) and as we know from bitter experience, things that need serious effort either don't happen, take far too long to happen or happen badly ;-) Yep. I'm in favor of some very small, very incremental steps. 2. We could by a tool that does this kind of thing. Where would we get such a beast from? how much would it cost/ who would fit the bill? ...and what would be the transition costs? 3. We could use another open source tool. Bugzilla springs to mind. Yes, it's not Zope, or even python, but it does work, certainly better than anything we, as a community, have right now or could build in the time it would take to install and set up. Hmm, I don't really see Bugzilla and the Fishbowl overlapping. Perhaps with the Collector, though. However, I don't think the real issues involved are related to choice of tool. It's been mentioning that ZC doesn't pay attention, so proposals go in and nothing happens. Bugzilla won't fix that problem. I'll add that the community doesn't always pay good enough attention. Sure, people will say when will we have versioning or when will we have web services. We go off, make a proposal, and email zope-dev. No feedback -- I take that back, each has received one response, whether by wiki comment, mailing list response, or private response. This isn't a good track record. Brian produced 35 pages worth of almost-flawless docs on web services to go with his code. But no comments. And he's doing this on his own time. So let's remember that this is a two-way street. IMO, Bugzilla won't fix these kinds of problems. I think the first step is to refine what we have while finding better ways to work together. --Paul ___ Zope-Dev maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
[Zope-dev] Re: Fishbowl?
From: Chris Withers [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1. We can build something better. I can list requirements but that's not relevent here. However, this will take serious effort (it's a hard problem...) and as we know from bitter experience, things that need serious effort either don't happen, take far too long to happen or happen badly ;-) As a friend of mine usually says: How hard can it be? :-) We need a python Product with a couple of objects: 1. A Proposal object that is Folder where you list the Document and Discussion objects that reside in it. Proposal objects have notifications, so people that are involved get emails when things happen. 2. A Document object, that is a WIKI. 3. A discussion object where you can have a threaded notifiable discussion. 4. A proposal catalog object, where the proposals are catalogued, and generates a list of the proposals. Doesn't take that many weeks, but no, I definitely don't have time until February... :-/ At least not until I get more efficient when programming, which needs fast debugging and proper unit tests... :-) ___ Zope-Dev maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
SV: [Zope-dev] Re: Fishbowl?
This isn't a good track record. Brian produced 35 pages worth of almost-flawless docs on web services to go with his code. But no comments. And he's doing this on his own time. So let's remember that this is a two-way street. Well, that checkin was done to the cvs 4 days ago. If you haven't read the one line at dev.zope.org about it being available in the cvs, or if you dont subscribe to the cvs mailinglist, how are you supposed to know that it exists? :-P I downloaded the Webservice package a few days ago, and I agree, the docs are really good. But sending a mail to Brian, who probably gets too many mails every day anyway, saying Good work!... well. I dunno. /Magnus ___ Zope-Dev maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
Re: SV: [Zope-dev] Re: Fishbowl?
Magnus Heino wrote: Well, that checkin was done to the cvs 4 days ago. If you haven't read the one line at dev.zope.org about it being available in the cvs, or if you dont subscribe to the cvs mailinglist, how are you supposed to know that it exists? :-P Actually, he sent an email to zope-dev on 11/26. Version control went to zope-dev on 10/23. Between the two, one email of discussion. This is why I'm leery of thinking this is simply a tool issue. I think we'll need more creativity, hijacking notwithstanding. :^) --Paul ___ Zope-Dev maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
RE: [Zope-dev] Re: Fishbowl?
It's been mentioning that ZC doesn't pay attention, so proposals go in and nothing happens. Bugzilla won't fix that problem. I'll add that the community doesn't always pay good enough attention. Sure, people will say when will we have versioning or when will we have web services. We go off, make a proposal, and email zope-dev. No feedback -- I take that back, each has received one response, whether by wiki comment, mailing list response, or private response. This is just a guess, but I suspect that this is a sort of unfortunate cycle developing: people post proposals, get (understandably) dismayed at the response time and end up not spending much time there, either contributing or providing feedback. My gut feeling is that the root of this is an ease-of-use problem. We all want to do well-reasoned, professional development in a publicly visible (and usable) forum. Achieving that means a certain amount of ceremony (proposals, projects or something different that achieves the same goals). The big problem right now is that the mechanics of the ceremony are way too painful, especially WRT tracking changes. When we first opened the fishbowl, it was with the certainty that we wouldn't get it right immediately. That's why we went with the intentially low-tech approach of a pile of Wikis. That first step actually worked pretty well for a while until we hit critical-Wiki-mass and there were suddenly too many proposals / projects to follow easily. So please don't think that we are somehow attached to the current fishbowl implementation as some sort of be-all-end-all. When we first put it in place, we were minimal with the fishbowl, applying Jim's second law of engineering (You can't solve a problem until you know the answer.) Now I think we a lot more about the answer: - The fishbowl needs to be integrated with email in order to stay on people's radar. - There needs to be a way to filter the firehose so that people on all sides can focus on the things they care about. - There needs to be a much lighter-weight way of seeing an overview of what's going on (where proposals are in the process and why). - There is still a legitimate need for content areas that capture artifacts related to projects. - We need to find a way to scale the process of pushing proposals through to projects. - There needs to be much more clarity on what should happen when a proposal is approved, rejected, ignored, whatever, by the community. The last one is very important IMHO. I just looked, and there are currently 15 proposals in the awaiting resources state, meaning that the general idea seems to have met with approval by the developer community and that now someone needs to actually sign up to _do_ it. Unfortunately, I have not been approached by anyone about any of these proposals, except for occasional flame-o-grams demanding to know why they are not done yet. Part of this, I'm sure, is that the community of committers is still fairly small and still getting their bearings. We need to do a better job of helping developers get actively involved - but we'll never have a happy community if awaiting resources means awaiting ZC resources. Ken has written a fair amount on the current fishbowl problems at: http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/FishbowlManageability How should we go about getting from that + this thread to some concrete solutions? Brian Lloyd[EMAIL PROTECTED] Software Engineer 540.361.1716 Zope Corporation http://www.zope.com ___ Zope-Dev maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
Re: [Zope-dev] Re: Fishbowl?
Brian Lloyd wrote: snip fishbowl ain't easy to use spot on ;-) - The fishbowl needs to be integrated with email in order to stay on people's radar. Hallelujah! - There needs to be a way to filter the firehose so that people on all sides can focus on the things they care about. Praise be! - There needs to be a much lighter-weight way of seeing an overview of what's going on (where proposals are in the process and why). I am in heaven... - There is still a legitimate need for content areas that capture artifacts related to projects. yup, but these could hang off issues or exist somewhere totally seperate. These artefacts are actually significantly less important than the status of the issue, who's looking after it, when it was last touched and the other categorisation details. In this respect, the fishbowl is currently completely arse about face ;-) - We need to find a way to scale the process of pushing proposals through to projects. Hierarchical management based on trust metrics? - There needs to be much more clarity on what should happen when a proposal is approved, rejected, ignored, whatever, by the community. Not so important right now... The last one is very important IMHO. I just looked, and there are currently 15 proposals in the awaiting resources state, meaning that the general idea seems to have met with approval by the developer community and that now someone needs to actually sign up to _do_ it. I suspect this is because people don't even know these projects exist, once this has been addressed with the points that had me worshiping, I'm betting this problem will disappear of its own accord... Unfortunately, I have not been approached by anyone about any of these proposals, except for occasional flame-o-grams demanding to know why they are not done yet. Those'll happen when someone does eventually bump into these dormant proposals/projects, sees they haven't been touched for 2 months and suddenly gets all irate jumping around: why the fuck hasn't someone done something on this very important issue?! Part of this, I'm sure, is that the community of committers is still fairly small and still getting their bearings. Not to mention suffering the same resource problems that ZC suffers right now :-( Ken has written a fair amount on the current fishbowl problems at: http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/FishbowlManageability That's the first time I've heard of that other than other posts in this thread ;-) How should we go about getting from that + this thread to some concrete solutions? Sounds like we need to build a decent fish pond, and _please_ can we unify it with the collector. cheers, Chris ___ Zope-Dev maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
SV: SV: [Zope-dev] Re: Fishbowl?
Well, that checkin was done to the cvs 4 days ago. If you haven't read the one line at dev.zope.org about it being available in the cvs, or if you dont subscribe to the cvs mailinglist, how are you supposed to know that it exists? :-P Actually, he sent an email to zope-dev on 11/26. Version control went to zope-dev on 10/23. Between the two, one email of discussion. Yes. You are right. I found the message. I subscribe to 11 zope mailinglists, and I really try to read them all, but I must have missed this one. This is why I'm leery of thinking this is simply a tool issue. I think we'll need more creativity, hijacking notwithstanding. :^) I don't agree. I read the proposal when Brian wrote it, I even got a snapshot from him a while back. Still, I missed the release. The current tool, the Wiki at http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Projects/WebServicesForZope/FrontPage, does not contain the info that he sent in the mail, and it got some links pointing at non-existing pages. I thought I'd fix that, but it says that Only the owners may edit this page... But, everything is not bad, the Webservice package looks really good! :-) /Magnus ___ Zope-Dev maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
Re: SV: [Zope-dev] Re: Fishbowl?
Magnus Heino wrote: This is just a guess, but I suspect that this is a sort of unfortunate cycle developing: people post proposals, get (understandably) dismayed at the response time and end up not spending much time there, either contributing or providing feedback. Well, lets move this discussion to a wiki and see how it goes... This is a tool issue. I'd like to propose this crazy tool called email. :^) Anybody that thinks they'd like to participate in the building of a better fishbowl (particularly if your name is Chris :^), trot on over to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Let's hash it out, perhaps starting with Ken's proposal. Let's then make a proposal back to zope-dev and see what people think. --Paul ___ Zope-Dev maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
Re: [Zope-dev] Re: Fishbowl?
Brian Lloyd wrote: [snip] When we first opened the fishbowl, it was with the certainty that we wouldn't get it right immediately. That's why we went with the intentially low-tech approach of a pile of Wikis. That first step actually worked pretty well for a while until we hit critical-Wiki-mass and there were suddenly too many proposals / projects to follow easily. So please don't think that we are somehow attached to the current fishbowl implementation as some sort of be-all-end-all. When we first put it in place, we were minimal with the fishbowl, applying Jim's second law of engineering (You can't solve a problem until you know the answer.) Now I think we a lot more about the answer: [snip] This bears repeating: the fishbowl was _never_ intended to be thought of as a tool. Rather, it should be thought of as an approach, methodology, or culture. You can rip out the Wiki and replace it with the Collector or Bugzilla, and you'd still have the fishbowl. Months ago we reached critical-Wiki-mass. However, we've now reached the point where some people are volunteering to do something about it. --Paul ___ Zope-Dev maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
Re: [Zope-dev] Re: Fishbowl?
IMO, Bugzilla won't fix these kinds of problems. I think the first step is to refine what we have while finding better ways to work together. We definitely need a ZOPE-based approach. What I really don't get is this: We all seem to be building Zope-based systems for communities, public administration, education, etc. to make information flow, from shops to CRM and knowledge management systems. Why the h** can't we do it for ourselves? Joachim ___ Zope-Dev maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
Re: [Zope-dev] Re: Fishbowl?
When we first opened the fishbowl, it was with the certainty that we wouldn't get it right immediately. That's why we went with the intentially low-tech approach of a pile of Wikis. That first step actually worked pretty well for a while until we hit critical-Wiki-mass and there were suddenly too many proposals / projects to follow easily. So please don't think that we are somehow attached to the current fishbowl implementation as some sort of be-all-end-all. I think that there ARE problems that can not be solved on a mailing list or in the fishbowl. One of them is doing a good general design (which we MIGHT need for some of the Zope 3.0 issues). I followed all the stuff about the CMF and formerly PTK and knew that it was heading to a direction I didn't want, but at the same time I felt that it would not help if I just contributed to the mailing list. Maybe this was a personal problem of mine, but I don't think so. IMHO, there are two possible approaches to problems like that (major design issues I mean): a) dictatorship, if the dictator is really good in his job (e.g. Jim Fulton has done a great job with regard to the design of the ZODB ) b) meeting in real live (or at least in real time) Some of the core architecture of the KDE KParts component model was developed on the KDE 2 conference AFAIK. I think we might have to do sessions like that at the upcoming Zope/Python conferences ... Joachim ___ Zope-Dev maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
[Zope-dev] Re: Fishbowl not problem centered enough
Ken Manheimer [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: WikiForNow project. As soon as i'm clear form a current project i *may* be able to concentrate on at least formulating a reasonable quick-and-dirty way to do notifications, and getting it done for the Hey Ken - since you used the magic words quick-and-dirty - search for PageSubscribers at http://zwiki.org/zwikidir/ZWikiPage.py . I'm using it now in a client project. Comments (not edits) are cc'd to email addresses listed on the page. I'm not sure it would handle large lists of zope.org subscribers (but I'd like to find out). I'm very interested in closing the loop, so you can reply to these and have your mail appended to the page. And in fact I'm about to do some work on this so if you or anyone else gets into it, let's share notes. -Simon ___ Zope-Dev maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
