[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen Web Site Strategy

[Anoop Atre]

Dan
Thanks for taking the time to read and respond!

> At a very low-level, I'm not sure whether these requirements allow for
> multiple web sites. "an easy-to-use, comprehensive portal" suggests
> one Web site to rule them all, which would be (in my opinion) a
> mistake. For example, I would argue that our adoption of Launchpad,
> perhaps in combination with the wiki, is "a mechanism for Evergreen
> users to share development plans, co-sponsor development projects, and
> submit development requests and bug reports", and it would seem to me
> to be a huge waste of resources to try to recreate it.

The current website is doing this "portal" thing to an extent already 
say by pulling in the blog entries, being a central website so people 
don't have to check 5 different places for information/updates.

For example I want to see the SVN and Launchpad entries get pulled in to 
a pretty section on the website so someone who isn't subscribed for 
updates from those sites could see all the great work that has been done 
at a glance.

I wish I could snap my fingers and have the Fedora website you'd 
mentioned [ [ http://fedoraproject.org/ ] which is what I'd like us to 
get to one day.

> Hmm. When you list strategic goals for the Web site, I pretty much
> immediately wonder whether these are aligned with the community's
> strategic goals (and then I hate myself for thinking like an
> administrator, but that's a different issue). WIG could adopt the
> draft as working strategic goals, but if we think we have an overall
> mission for Evergreen, that should be front and centre on the landing
> page of http://evergreen-ils.org/ shouldn't it? Taking that approach,
> the mission for Evergreen on the development side, since at least
> 2006, is that it be "stable, robust, flexible, secure, and
> user-friendly". Perhaps we need a separate discussion to tease out an
> overall mission for Evergreen.

I agree that the WIG is going to use them as working strategic goals, 
the draft was not proposed for the overall Evergreen mission. I will 
leave the bigger discussion to be brought up by the governance folks to 
the community.

> I think that we could and should drop some of the oblique terminology
> where possible, as this would help drive out requirements and/or steps
> to take to address certain goals. For example, if "Strategic Goal #3:
> Facilitate development of multi-faceted support network for Evergreen
> users." really means "Reduce Evergreen's reliance on Equinox for the
> bulk of its development and support needs", it seems like this
> overlaps with "Strategic Goal #2: Encourage growth of a healthy
> developer community" ... and in either case, rather than jumping
> directly to "What do we need to do with the Web site to achieve this
> goal?", it might be better answered by steps such as "Hire developers
> locally, give them training and time to develop their
> Evergreen-specific skills, and set an expectation that they will
> participate in the Evergreen development community" and perhaps "Get
> Evergreen packaged in Linux distributions so that it will be much more
> accessible to a broader audience of potential developers", as just
> some initial thoughts.

2 & 3 are slightly different. 3 is not only necessarily just reduce 
reliance on Equinox but also provide a list of service providers which 
is easy to find for libraries looking on our site. Encourage community 
sharing and communication, even with the mailing list there is a lot of 
ideas and works not being communicated when it comes to non-devs. Chris 
Sharp is setting up a jabber server which the communications team thinks 
will be less intimidating than IRC for their discussions/chats.

Regarding 2 your suggestions are what we want to provide on the website, 
I think the oblique terminology doesn't help : ) and the strategies are 
what the website should keep working towards.

I second re-wording the language, if the folks from the communications 
group (including me) could take a stab at this on the dokuwiki page it 
would be great. Just because they came up with draft. I'd like the 
comments to the initial draft coming to this thread to keep things together.

http://www.evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=webteam.strategic_goals_requirements

> "Provide technical information needed by current and future Evergreen
> developers" identifies a broad gap that's much more than just the Web
> site in scope; it's really "Produce more entry-level developer
> documentation, training, and sample code" (some of which will probably
> live on the Web site, but a lot of writing and curriculum development
> needs to happen before the Web site needs to get involved).

+1

> On a similar angle, "Strategic Goal #4: Encourage widespread adoption
> of Evergreen by the library community worldwide." may be an implicit
> goal for the community, for which the Web site could take tactical
> steps (for example, "Web pages should be able to be translated and
> maintained in sync across all languages") vs. non-Web site tactics
> such as advocacy requirements ("Send Evergreen community members to
> international library conferences in exotic locations to spread the
> word about Evergreen" -- okay, more realistically, dent and tweet and
> blog -- or even more importantly -- create a great stable, robust,
> flexible, secure, and user-friendly library system and provide
> excellent, up-to-date documentation for it) and development
> requirements ("Support right-to-left languages", "Add
> internationalization support to pages developed using
> Template::Toolkit") and community requirements ("Find an
> internationalization coordinator"). But listing that as a strategic
> goal for the Web site itself seems like it's over-reaching.

I would second this also.

> That might be the primary thing that bothers me about a fragmented
> approach like this: rather than starting with a general discussion
> about a problem the community has, and what steps we can take to
> tackle those problems on various fronts, and who can actually do the
> work required to tackle those problems, starting from the perspective
> of just one particular Interest Group skews the discussion
> significantly.
>
> Of course, we can talk about goals and requirements and tactics, but I
> think we would all agree that the current Web site could use some
> love, and I know the WIG wants to give it some love, but ultimately it
> takes people doing work to make a tangible difference. So could I
> suggest a parallel approach (assuming that there will be some other
> discussion about community-level goals and challenges)? Could WIG be
> redefined to mean "Web site Implementation Group", and start by
> finding one concrete gap between our community's needs for a website
> and our current Web presence that you think needs to be tackled
> (perhaps drawn from the current draft list of goals/requirements),
> discuss that particular gap that you want to tackle with possible
> solutions in more detail on the mailing list, and then actually tackle
> the problem (perhaps in a few different ways, depending on how much
> effort is required), inviting feedback while the solution to that
> problem gets developed?

As Lori mentioned the "Web site Interest Group" did get sucked into the 
Communications group and then created a sub group to wade through the 
existing site/content. The sub group "Web site Implementation Group" 
still needs to meet and plan the attack on the website.

I was supposed to send the strategies out earlier than I did and should 
have probably highlighted the changes in the WIG/Communications group. 
As the kids say "my bad".

Hopefully this helps clarify things a bit for you and others. If we want 
to use this thread to discuss what's lacking on the website and what 
folks want to see fixed/changed/added that'd be fine with me.

Please email me or anyone on the communications committee if you think 
something does not make sense and you don't feel like mailing the list 
(I'll make sure the community also gets notified the clarification 
requested by the anonymous person).

Again the strategies/goals are more a guideline for what we think the 
the website needs to provide.

Dan thanks again for your thoughts, I'd like to see some more discussion 
on this so please chime in folks.

Cheers

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Anoop Atre
IS Developer & Integrator, MnPALS
PH: 507.389.5060
OF: 3022 Memorial Library (Office-ML 3022)
--
"Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens"
  ~ Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller