I couldn't find the exact message where I mentioned making a new item on the To-Do List page about an Advocacy Team leader. But this point in the discussion was pretty close.
So it's at the bottom of the list. Please feel free to tweak, or if you don't have website access, tell me what to change, and I will.
https://inkscape.org/en/contribute/to-do-list/?edit_off=true
All best, brynn
-----Original Message----- From: Bryce Harrington Sent: Monday, January 30, 2017 12:19 PM To: brynn Cc: C R ; inkscape-devel ; Martin Owens Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] User Involvement Was: Post-Mortum: Line heightbug
On Sun, Jan 29, 2017 at 01:29:31PM -0700, brynn wrote:
(Martin copied in, just fyi, no specific reply needed)
Sorry, fairly long reply (tldr for most readers)
Ditto, but I'll try and be brief in reply.
The sections look good. Would it make sense to reverse the order? ____________________
That's interesting thought. I seem to recall my first version of the page, the sections were reversed. I was thinking - list them from easiest to hardest, or things that take less skill, to things that take more skill.
But someone else said to have the coding stuff at the top, because that's what the project needs the most. I'm personally neutral on this, and I'm happy to make whatever changes are needed.
If you remember who that person was, might be worthwhile to loop them in on this discussion. (Heck, could have even been me!) It's certainly true coding is important but again we have the whole Develop top section devoted to it, so I really think we're ok on that count. Other things beyond coding are also critical to the project, and as most visitors to our site are probably non-coders I feel we really need to ensure we have an inviting-looking place for them, and I would worry leading with Coding might put them off.
(E.g. the opening sentence
of Contribute and Promote ought to be more engaging.)
I agree that would be a good idea, and I'll make a rough draft, maybe using the first paragraph of that last bit of info in the wiki (which I like). But C R has offered to make suggestions too. Should I just make working page, that we could all access and tweak on? I don't remember if C R is a website editor.
Sounds like a good starting point.
I really like the Community To-Do List page (contribute/to-do-list) and
I had hoped that this would be a useful page. But no one seems to be interested in those projects that are listed. Maybe because a lot of them need significant experience with the project.
I think that may be true. They did strike me as a bit advanced. I will try and help with ideas of more things we can include here. Bug me if I forget.
It's also likely people just aren't aware of the page, so once we flesh it out more it would be good to evangelize it a bit (more on this below).
I don't see "non-coding" as less important. When I read the title, I get excited, because here's something I could actually help with. It doesn't make me feel bad about myself, and I think my self-esteem is fairly intact.
*Grin* Fair enough!
But I understand that "non-" is a negative, and something more positive might be better. I just can't think of a good alternative. Suggestions? What's the opposite of coding or programming or hacking? "Other" would probably be too vague.
Yeah Other would be too vague, I almost suggested General but that's also vague. I suppose since I don't have any better ideas leave it as is and if I think of something later or someone else comes up with a brilliant idea, we can tackle it then. Maybe a differing perspective would give some better ideas.
I'm not sure if the Promote page might be ill-conceived or not. All of it really contributes to the project (everything on both Contribute and Promote pages), but it's too much material for one page. And Promote was the best thing I could come up with for a page name. Open to suggestions.
How about "Evangelism"?
I've heard that term used in other FOSS projects and it has a nice ring to me.
I do think this is an important role in the project, one that I wish we had more people engaged on. Announcing releases would be a crucial duty here, and a number of the activities the Board is engaged in would work much better if we had a better organized team focusing on this.
As I've written previously, what makes FOSS projects like Inkscape successful is not vast userbases or lots of income - it's people like us contributing to the code and community in myriad ways both tangible and intangible. So a #1 purpose for an evangelism team would be contributor community building. Not necessarily like hard-sell 'recruitment' but more building connections between people and ensuring there are easily accessible on-ramps for people to join in.
A lot of things would fall under such a group, from establishing presence in software and artistic communities both online and off, sending reps and presenters to artist-focused events, arranging training opportunities (both user-focused and development-focused), writing, pushing news items on our site, and more.
The Helping Other Inkscape Users should be moved from the Promote page
to its own page.
That section is a little longer than Spread the Word, but still makes for a pretty short page, by itself. I guess I wouldn't have any objections. But if it could be expanded, would be better, imo. I just can't think of any other ways for helping other users.
Ok, seems sensible. It can always be broken out later if/when there's more content for it.
The Translations section looks fine.
Yes, I think Maren has tweaked that page to perfection. Unfortunately, I think she wants to take a break from website editing, except for translation-related things. I'll try to use it as a guide for the others. And if anyone else wants to help, of course let us know!
Understandable, and yes this would be a great area to bring in more people.
The Bugs section I think could be made more specific to just Review and
Verify Existing Bug Reports.
For the Bugs section, Testing, and Working with Code, I don't have the knowledge for making all the changes you described. I can move Report Bugs into the Testing section. But I can't make any of the other changes to Testing that you mentioned. I just don't have that knowledge.
Yes, totally understood. I mentioned it more because it is something that "needs to be on our collective todo list" and realize drafting something sensible will be a large project. I will try and work on it as I have time and keep an eye out for folks that could assist.
I can move Packaging to the top level Develop page, and delete the Write Extensions section, if you like. I don't follow your logic, but it's probably because I don't understand programming.
Sounds good.
Are you saying you want a page on the website, rather than a wiki page, for Website Development? I don't have the right kind of knowledge to be able to write such a page. All I could do is copy the wiki page over to the website. Glad to do it, but also welcome help in spicing it up.
Right, exactly. I'm anticipating that Martin will have a place in mind to direct potential web developers to for orientation on website work, so am just suggesting we should point to that from here.
Thanks, Bryce