[webteam] radical simplicity

[Matthew Wild]

On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 1:41 AM, Robert Martinez <mail at mray.de> wrote:
> I think you're only partially right, too. Jabber isn't _just_ an
> infrastructure.
>

It can be either, but it is a collection of protocols, and
applications which use that protocol. The *only* people interested in
joining a community around a protocol are the geeky type, and
developers. They are the only people who will be contributing to the
site.

The people *using* the site are different, they just learnt about
Jabber, and they are looking for a client/server/library they can use
it with. www.jabber.org to them is a merely a waypoint on their
journey to communication freedom :)

> A community driven hub to promote the use of xmpp related projects.
> (If I'm not entirely mistaken this is what we want! With all the great
> features we "could" integrate into that)
>

Sure, I can see it being for users, but still the people who really
hang around to contribute will be the geeky ones :)

> I'm kind of an example for the non-technical contributors. I cannot code and
> have never send any XML streams manually.
> Despite that I found myself building the structure for the website that
> seems to be interesting for tech-nerd only.
> (I'm unhappy with the current state of things, too. If I had a choice I
> would choose to do "design-only" )
>

For someone who can't code, you're doing quite well :)

> I think that the attitude - "jabber.org can't have 'fanboys/productive
> community' because there is no PRODUCT"  is not necessarily true.
>
> And if we want to get more people, we have to build something to participate
> to.
>
> "radical simplicity" does not really invite non-technical people to
> participate in a large scale.
> Drupal does.
>

Now, I certainly don't see how "radical simplicity" excludes anyone. I
don't see how Drupal (as complicated as it is) *includes* anyone.

> What we need now is just a _bit_ more technical nerds that want to help
> building a nice and stable drupal-driven community page.
>

I would like to help, really, but I don't know where to start. Drupal
is broken, badly. Sadly I don't know how to fix it. If the fix were
radically simple I am sure it would have been done by now.

Even if our current issues with Drupal get fixed, I don't want to
imagine the pain when it comes to upgrading to the next release, and
the one after that, and...

>> How long do we live with a broken website? I don't know the answer, but
>> I do know that I find the current site to be embarrassing. It looks
>> great thanks to mray's work, but the db errors and inability to display
>> simple software pages is sad.
>>
>>
>
> I think I'm not only to blame for the look. I also worked on many backend
> stuff in the CMS (and therefore in the db).
> And I'm also a embarrassed. Actually I was so right from the first second
> when you put the page online so early :P !
>

It might be possible to pull the data out of the db into whatever we
decide to use. I haven't seen Drupal's database schema, or is the one
storing the clients/etc. custom?

Naturally any change should preserve as much of what we have worked on
already as possible. Nobody should feel that all this work was for
nothing, because that is simply not true.

> Finally  I have to say: If we don't get some Drupal manpower into jabber.org
> soon it really might be the better idea to fall back to a "xml-whatever
> -hand-coded-thing" you had in mind. (At least until a stable drupal page
> isn't ready).
>

Currently this is looking like the simplest path to a working site.

Matthew.