Hi,
About some 6 months ago I started with an attempt to bring news with a newsletter "Wikizine". I try to bring different types of news like "Foundation", "Community", "Media" but the section"Technical news" is the most important one.
This list, the server admin log and the diffs of the release notes are the main sources of information. It is not always easy to understand what some rather short technical-cryptic description means but in general most changes can be discovered that way.
But that are all reports about things who are already changed. It would be nice to know in advance about changes to come and the advancement of projects.
Request; can the technical staff make and maintain a page where important planed changes are announced? Changes who have an impact for the user experiences for visitors, users or sysops. And for some large projects, like the universal login, every x weeks an update about how it is going with it.
Sending information directly to the internal news media is also good of course, especially when it is urgent or really important so that is not overlooked. But just putting it on a pages is more convenient I suppose. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Internal_news_media
This way I believe Wikizine, and others like the Signpost, can inform the community better.
Greetings, Walter
The guy from Wikizine http://www.wikizine.org
To subscribe; mailto:request@wikizine.org?subject=subscribe
On 28/06/06, Walter Vermeir walter@wikipedia.be wrote:
This list, the server admin log and the diffs of the release notes are the main sources of information. It is not always easy to understand what some rather short technical-cryptic description means but in general most changes can be discovered that way.
I maintain a sort of change log as a sub page of my En Wikipedia user page, for the Signpost. It's biased towards English Wikipedia users but might be of some use.
Request; can the technical staff make and maintain a page where important planed changes are announced? Changes who have an impact for the user experiences for visitors, users or sysops. And for some large projects, like the universal login, every x weeks an update about how it is going with it.
Where important planned changes that are going to affect most users directly are made, these will almost certainly be announced to this list.
Periodic updates might also be forthcoming in some cases. To take the example of single sign-on; I am 90% certain there will be an announcement from Brion when the code's complete, tested, and when we're ready to start the migration/conflict process.
Sending information directly to the internal news media is also good of course, especially when it is urgent or really important so that is not overlooked. But just putting it on a pages is more convenient I suppose. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Internal_news_media
I thought it was the "ComCom"'s job to handle internal communications, and our job to get on with running the damn web sites?
Rob Church
On 6/28/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
Periodic updates might also be forthcoming in some cases. To take the example of single sign-on; I am 90% certain there will be an announcement from Brion when the code's complete, tested, and when we're ready to start the migration/conflict process.
Out of curiosity, do any of the developers run blogs or even update .plan files about what they're up to?
Steve
On 28/06/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/28/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
Periodic updates might also be forthcoming in some cases. To take the example of single sign-on; I am 90% certain there will be an announcement from Brion when the code's complete, tested, and when we're ready to start the migration/conflict process.
Out of curiosity, do any of the developers run blogs or even update .plan files about what they're up to?
Brion has a development blog at http://leuksman.com somewhere with periodic updates; it's tracking his work on dbzip2 right now. I don't know of others, although anyone who asks me what I'm coding while on IRC usually gets some sort of answer.
Rob Church
On Wed, Jun 28, 2006 at 03:25:15PM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
Brion has a development blog at http://leuksman.com somewhere with periodic updates; it's tracking his work on dbzip2 right now. I don't know of others, although anyone who asks me what I'm coding while on IRC usually gets some sort of answer.
Sure, but the odds that will continue are probably inversely proportional to how many times a day it happens, right? :-)
Cheers, -- jra
On 28/06/06, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com wrote:
On Wed, Jun 28, 2006 at 03:25:15PM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
Brion has a development blog at http://leuksman.com somewhere with periodic updates; it's tracking his work on dbzip2 right now. I don't know of others, although anyone who asks me what I'm coding while on IRC usually gets some sort of answer.
Sure, but the odds that will continue are probably inversely proportional to how many times a day it happens, right? :-)
Well, I don't intend to start a blog.
Rob Church
On Wed, Jun 28, 2006 at 04:19:02PM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
On 28/06/06, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com wrote:
On Wed, Jun 28, 2006 at 03:25:15PM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
Brion has a development blog at http://leuksman.com somewhere with periodic updates; it's tracking his work on dbzip2 right now. I don't know of others, although anyone who asks me what I'm coding while on IRC usually gets some sort of answer.
Sure, but the odds that will continue are probably inversely proportional to how many times a day it happens, right? :-)
Well, I don't intend to start a blog.
Fear not, Rob; I wasn't suggesting you come over to the Dark Side.
Cheers, -- jra
Rob Church schreef:
I maintain a sort of change log as a sub page of my En Wikipedia user page, for the Signpost. It's biased towards English Wikipedia users but might be of some use.
The are now on my watchlist. Thanks.
Where important planned changes that are going to affect most users directly are made, these will almost certainly be announced to this list.
Yes, but that are announcements about changes that are already done or will be done in the very near future. A matter of hours or a day or so. Way to short to be picked up by a weekly news bulletin and find his way downhill to the projects.
Sending information directly to the internal news media is also good of course, especially when it is urgent or really important so that is not overlooked. But just putting it on a pages is more convenient I suppose. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Internal_news_media
I thought it was the "ComCom"'s job to handle internal communications, and our job to get on with running the damn web sites?
Rob Church
This post is by me as the one who primarily makes that newsletter, not the comcom. I am not asking that you send reports. I only provide a link to page I made to make in more easy to report quickly a message to the organized internal news entity's, currently Wikizine and the Signpost. So that who likes to do so can bookmark it and when there is something to report and the feel like it the can do it easily.
I am not trying to annoy anybody here. You, Brion, Kate and the others are trying (and succeeding) to keep the sites online, beside many other duties.
I am trying to give the community the best possible information about what is going on in the Wikimedia-projects, including the technical aspect. And that are not the people who reads this list and possibly can not even read English and because of that there is a translation delay.
The only thing I am asking is that if is known well in advance about changes who have an impact how the wiki works for the users to report that somewhere 10 or 14 days in advance. I am not speaking about small stuff. But changes to the wikis that gives new functions to sysops/bureaucrats or like the inclusion of the system that you need to enter text shown as a image to add an hyperlink to a page or create a new account.
Reporting that things are changed and how it works now is good. But it is better if it can be reported before it goes live.
Greetings, Walter
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org