[Gimp-web] responses to website redesign discussion...

[Sven Neumann]

Hi,

On Wed, 2007-03-07 at 23:37 +0000, Ronnie Tucker wrote:

> > I vote for a mediawiki type of site.
> I'm always dubious of wiki sites due to the fact that anyone could add junk or 
> misinformation to the site. One example of that was the recent newspaper 
> articles about the Professor who was trusted with editing large parts of 
> Wikipedia and wasn't a Professor at all!

A Wiki doesn't need to be editable by everyone. Just like with any other
content management system, you can create accounts for a group of
authors and no one else will be able to edit the site. The advantage is
that it is very easy to use and doesn't require potential authors to
learn yet another CMS.

> > A redesign of the GIMP web pages is long overdue. I doubt however that
> > it is a good idea to let a single person do this. But perhaps you can
> > find more people interested in this. A team effort to redo the web pages
> > would be very much welcomed.
> I agree with you there, but once Joomla is installed, its settings are put in 
> place and a theme installed the site is effectively ready to go and the 
> webmaster, with the designated authors and publishers, can put the 
> information into the new site...

Look at it this way: We have a system that is installed, ready to use.
Authors and publishers can already add information to our web-site and
edit what's there. Still there aren't many contributions. What is Joomla
going to change about that? In my opinion it is much more important to
focus on content and structure. The choice of the CMS shouldn't be the
major aspect of a redesign.

> > What kind of help would an ordinary user who does not want to use
> > mailing-lists and irc be able to offer?
> I'm sure that many could offer distribution help, proof read documentation, 
> write documentation and so on? I can use mailing lists and IRC but I really 
> believe it should be easier to get in contact with people, most people who 
> may want to volunteer services will probably just think; 'I cant be bothered 
> going through all this hassle to volunteer'...

Again, how are people supposed to work with the authors of the
user-manual without talking to them? And that effectively means being
subscribed to the gimp-docs mailing-list. Seriously, if someone isn't
willing to go through a little hassle to volunteer, then maybe there
isn't really that much interest to contribute?

> I searched gimp.org for quite a while and couldn't find an easy way to contact 
> anyone (outwith mailing lists and irc) so i'm really not surprised there's no 
> contributions. I think the website should make it simple to send in/add 
> something to the site...

I agree. But how do you propose that this is being changed? You said you
don't want a public Wiki. So people willing to volunteer will have to
ask for an account on the web-site?

Currently you can at least checkout the web-site from Subversion, build
it locally, edit pages and prepare patches. Something that you probably
won't be able to do if we switch to a more dynamic CMS.

> Thanks for reading over my proposal, I really hope that something can be done 
> to get the website more up to date and get people downloading Gimp because I 
> feel the website is holding it back, if anything, rather than promoting it.

Getting more downloads is really not a priority of the GIMP project. We
are trying to make good software and we like to have fun working on it.
More downloads doesn't do much to improve the fun we have in developing
GIMP.

But yes, I would love to see the web-site being redesigned and I agree
with a lot of points you have brought up. I am also not saying that the
next generation of gimp.org shouldn't be using Joomla. I just haven't
seen a compelling argument for it yet and I am missing a decent proposal
for the structure and content of the new website.


Sven