Documentation Team. Consensus, votes, how YOUR OPINION COUNTS!

Justin Wong stryderjzw at gmail.com
Fri Jul 25 06:37:50 CEST 2008


Hey Stroller,

I'm going to stop debating philosophically about how to organize
volunteer teams because it's not going to help the Openmoko project.

We don't need to involve Michael in this and there was never any
suggestions to make someone boss and hand out work that people don't
want to do. :P I'm quite interested in project management and such,
and we can discuss the merits of different management styles offline.
:)

It looks like from your other emails that you've given good thoughts
to some of the problems. I'll respond to some of those and see if we
can, all together, come up with good strategies to solve them.

Cheers!
Justin



On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 8:31 PM, Stroller
<stroller at stellar.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:
>
> On 24 Jul 2008, at 20:21, Justin Wong wrote:
>> ...
>> I must say, though, that with a team of any significant size, we'll
>> unlikely be getting consensus on every matter. What happens then?
>
> Votes!
>
> This is not quite the same thing as consensus, but needs must.
> Ideally we make suggestions and they get modified by discussion and
> compromise into something we can all agree on (that IS consensus!).
>
> There may be some stuff that we have to say to Michael & Brenda,
> "please go away and check with Openmoko management that this is OK"
> but for most everyday, "how do we organise pages which deal with this
> matter?" subjects we should be able to say "what do you think of
> this?" and get useful opinions.
>
> For heck's sake! Most of the reorganisation and tidying that needs
> doing is OBVIOUS, and we're only dithering because we're each
> reluctant to be seen as assuming a "wild west" approach.
>
> I think it's Linus who may have said that managing open-source
> contributors is like herding cats, but whatever, it's true! Things
> aren't going to get done for some "leader" who hands us chores we
> don't want to do. That would eventually, nay quickly, lead to
> volunteers leaving.
>
> We have a dozen people listed on the "Wiki Maintainers" page. I think
> that's basically the volunteers from the original -comminity request
> for help. That means that everytime someone makes a proposal we take
> it seriously and at least half a dozen people say "yay" or "nay".
> <rant> I'm sorry - I don't see what's so difficult about this. Why
> won't anyone talk to me?!?!?! </rant>
>
> All it takes is us all being co-operative and respecting each other.
> If someone comes up with an idea, take the time to read it, consider
> it, and reply. When there's resounding approval the volunteer can get
> on with undertaking the task he's proposed; when there's disagreement
> we have to trust each other to have respect for the other team
> members' opinions, to wait and reconsider their suggestions.
>
> Michael: you represent Openmoko here. Am I right here? Or waaaaay off-
> base? Who's the boss? Are you? Are we ALL the boss, together?
>
>> I see quite a bit of work going into the wiki right now, but how does
>> this work fit into the overall big picture plans to fix the
>> documentation?  Is this bigger picture written down somewhere so wiki
>> maintainers know what they're doing is right or is there currently
>> only a list of "random" tasks to accomplish?
>
> I think if  you look back over the posts of the last few days there
> may be a page (or several!) like that.
>
> I don't personally see a great deal of benefit to arbitrary lists of
> stuff, because I don't see how they motivate people.
>
> Tasks have to be interesting if we want volunteers to do them.
>
> I am much more likely to check periodically a page which is
> automatically generated and which shows every page with a {{FIXME}}
> tag on it. This has the advantage of being easily contributed by
> regular users - they see something that needs contributing to the
> main wiki, type up a paragraph or two and see that an additional
> explanation would be useful. They have already added something useful
> to the wiki, but by simply adding {{FIXME:may be problematic if your
> router assigns eth0 an address in the 192.168.0.x range}} they enable
> anyone checking the FIXME category page to see an opportunity for
> their own contribution to improve the wiki and complete the work. All
> it needs is half a dozen people to say "yes, this is a good idea" and
> (following a few days for the implementation details) it'll get done.
>
>> Example, how do we know we need a FAQ?
>> Who is the FAQ targeted towards?
>
> Well, this has been raised already. Same old problem: no answers
> (well, few of them).
>
> I suppose we know we need an FAQ because some questions are
> frequently asked, and the point of an FAQ is to answer them once to
> save us having to do so repeatedly.
>
> As such, I see the "Getting Started FAQ" [1] as being in the "true
> spirit" of FAQfulness. It consists of questions I have this week seen
> asked repeatedly on IRC and mailing lists. The current main FAQ is a
> big horrible & outdated mess, and I don't want to go near it with a
> dirty long stick. Nevertheless there are lots of questions which (I
> guess) are frequently asked, but which don't belong in the "getting
> started" category. "Can I use the Freerunner as my main phone?" is a
> good one.
>
> I guess I personally see the main page as something we should "target
> towards" specific groups of people and the FAQ as, yes, a big fairly
> random collection of questions and answers, whatever happens to
> frequently come up.
>
> As I say, right now the main FAQ is horrible, and I can't see that
> many of those questions really ARE frequently asked, not half as much
> as "Can I use the Freerunner as my main phone?" is. The questions
> "what is Openmoko?" and "what is the Freerunner?" are clearly
> distinct from "does the Freerunner have a camera?", "what GUI widgets
> can I run on Openmoko?" and "what GPS software runs on Openmoko?"
> Ferenc (I think) disapproves of multiple FAQs, so for the moment at
> least, we could break a main FAQ into sections (about us (??),
> hardware, software &c).
>
> I hope you find these opinions useful,
>
> Stroller.
>
>
> [1] http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Getting_Started_FAQ
>
>
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