Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] [libreplanet-discuss] Help Wanted Site for Free Software Projects

[Nicolás A . Ortega]

On Sun, Apr 23, 2017 at 05:21:49PM -0400, Assaf Gordon wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> (joining late to the discussion, adding few tidbits)
> 
> 1.
> Regarding "outdated" posts:
> It might surprise you (it definitely surprised me) that some of these posts 
> you consider "outdated" are not outdated at all. They are old, that's true - 
> but not outdated.
> In fact, I personally contacted many submitters, and many of them insisted 
> that their posts remain as-is, even if they have been unchanged for years. 
> Many also refused to update or refresh their posts.
> 
> You can read a bit more about our attempts here:
>    sr #106581: doing something about stale jobs?
>    https://savannah.gnu.org/support/?106581
> 

When I went through the list e-mailing project maintainers I got 0
responses. This is just anecdotal evidence, but it is what I
experienced.

> 2.
> Regarding "automated removal":
> At the time of the discussion (see link above), automatic removal was frowned 
> upon.
> There was a suggestion to manually contact posters and ask if the post is 
> still
> relevant, and if so update it.
> From my humble experience with administrating savannah - I *highly* recommend 
> against
> anything that requires manual work.
> If you do implement a new "help wanted" website - have an automated way to 
> expire posts.
> Of course, you might want to have a more sophisticated mechanism
> to send email alerts about coming expirations, etc. - but that's
> more complicated to implement.
> Anything that requires manual work (and requires volunteers' time) will 
> quickly
> become a chore.
> 

I highly agree with you on this one, it would also reassure us that the
posts are up-to-date. I'd say that rather than an 'automatic removal' it
should be a 'renewal process', allowing users to renew their notices.
Making it automatic would be ideal, I am unsure of how difficult this
would be to implement (I don't think it would be much more difficult
than validation e-mails for registrations).

> 3.
> > On Sun, Apr 23, 2017 at 01:38:49PM -0600, Bob Proulx wrote:
> >>  Also the
> >> Savane web interface has been suffering from a lack of volunteers for
> >> updates for some time.  Therefore I can see the attraction of setting
> >> up an independent site for this information.
> 
> On one hand, if there are volunteers out there that want to
> improve the "help wanted" pages - why not hack directly on the savannah 
> interface?
> we always welcome more hackers, and the best place to start is here:
>  https://savannah.gnu.org/maintenance/RunningSavaneLocally/
>  https://savannah.gnu.org/maintenance/SavannahHackingIdeas/
> 
> On the other hand, starting from scratch is usually more fun
> (and you won't be bound by FSF policies).
> 

The 'old looking' site is not something I really have issues with. I
typically dislike websites that take forever to load because of tons of
JS and complex markdown/styling. I have no complaints about that. What's
more, as websites get more complex they tend to become more incompatible
with my privacy settings. I believe that if the Savane 'Help Wanted'
section can easily be extracted from Savane itself, then it would make
much more sense to use the Savane infrastructure (although perhaps with
a fork depending on how much we wish to change).

> > Practically speaking, how easy would it be to extract just the 'help
> > wanted' section of Savane and modify it to have the improvements I
> > mentioned earlier (ie. expiring posts and such)?
> 
> If you want a database-dump of the relevant tables - that's easy.
> Contact write to us at address@hidden and we
> can find a way to make it work.
> 
> When you write "modify it" - do you mean the PHP code?
> The links above are the best place to start to hack on the PHP code.
> 
> Alternatively,
> There's also an attempt to write python/flask code to view the savannah
> database - eventually it'll include the "help wanted" pages as well:
>   https://varanusex.housegordon.org
> 

I see, I'll look into this then. However I am not very good at anything
web dev.

> Lastly (and this is only my personal opinion and is not necessarily
> shared with other savannah hackers or FSF):
> I'm fully supportive of moving savannah's "Help Wanted" section elsewhere,
> and removing it from savannah.
> 

Thanks for your support :)

-- 
Nicolás Ortega Froysa (Deathsbreed)
https://themusicinnoise.net/
http://uk7ewohr7xpjuaca.onion/
Public PGP Key:
https://themusicinnoise.net/address@hidden
http://uk7ewohr7xpjuaca.onion/address@hidden

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