[Gimp-web] Re: Re: Re: anyone try the news out?

[Raphaël Quinet]

On Wed, 2 Apr 2003 19:04:54 -0500, Carol Spears <carol@gimp.org> wrote:
> On 2003-04-02 at 2230.44 +0200, Rapha?l Quinet typed this:
> > On Tue, 1 Apr 2003 09:49:37 -0500, Carol Spears <carol@gimp.org> wrote:
> > > apparently no one will try the news site out.
> > [...]
> > > how about if we bundle up what we have done and put it all on ebay? i
> > > would consider sending news of the sites closing to this nice working
> > > news interface, but i don't think anyone comes here.
> > 
> > Well, well, well...  You seem to give up a bit too quickly.  :-)
> > 
> March 5 was when i asked that people at least test the contest.  perhaps
> i didn't give it a whole month for a response.

Hmmm...  The only message that I saw on this list dated from the 5th of
March is the one in which you announce that you have put the files in
CVS, but that message does not contain the word "test".  ;-)

> truly, i think that the site is too little and too late.
> 

Don't give up!  We still need a new site.  I don't want to spend the
rest of my GIMP life maintaining the old web site.

You should not call it quits so easily.  First, because a lot of
progress has been made so far and the results are starting to look
nice.  Second, because you have some responsability for the new site
now (he he he... this is a double-edged sword).  Starting something
and then giving up because others do not seem to care or because some
of them are not happy with the results is a sure way to kill a free
software or open source project.  Because as soon as you start
something and announce it to the community, most of those who could
have worked on a similar thing stop their work (and in the best case
decide to join your effort).  Since your baby mmmaybe.gimp.org is now
the official GIMP prince, you should not kill it while so many people
are waiting for it to become the new king.  Instead, let's kill the
old king as soon as the prince has grown up a bit, and long live the
new king!

> i learned recently that better than a how-to, the developers prefer to
> hold your hand and give you the instructions step by step.  

Many developers are bad at writing documentation (myself included).
Helping someone step by step may be a quick and easy way to help a
person and it saves you the trouble of having to think about how to
write a clear and well-structured how-to.  But this does not scale.
A developer cannot hold 1000 hands at the same time.  That's why we
have documentation.

If no developer is able or willing to write these how-to's, then let's
hope that some volunteers who are better at writing this stuff can
work in close cooperation with the relevant developers and produce a
nice document.  Sure, we need some volunteers.  But maybe we can start
with a limited set of documents, get the new site up and running, and
then call for help.  I am convinced that we would get more help if
people could see that a lot of progress has been made with the web
site.  They will be more likely to contribute if they see that the
site is alive and actively maintained.

> also, something about the tutorial presentation.  they seem new and
> wonderful and brand new, when i paste the original locations url.  but
> go unnoticed on the alpha site.

I have to admit that I never looked at the tutorials section.  There
seem to be lots of good stuff there!  But there are many things listed
on this page and I am sure that I would not see if you add or remove a
couple of links from one day to the next.  What we need is a
conditional text next to each link that can display something like
"Updated 2003-04-03" (using appropriately bright colors) if a page was
added or updated less than a month ago.  After one month, this text
would be automatically removed from the page.

> too little too late.  i think it should be put into a tarball and placed
> in that nice little place on sourceforge where failed ideas go.

Tsk tsk tsk...  For the Nth time: you give up too quickly!  ;-)

-Raphaël