[Panel-devel] Joining the team

Matt Broadstone mbroadst at gmail.com
Fri Aug 26 01:29:09 CEST 2005 

On 8/25/05, Wade Olson <wadejolson at gmail.com> wrote:
> And the circular logic finally reaches its origin/destination....
> 
>  First sentence on the website: "This is a wiki put up for the developers of
> Plasma, the next generation desktop for KDE 4.0. We are using DokuWiki,
> which is a standards compliant, simple to use Wiki, mainly aimed at creating
> documentation of any kind."
>  
>  * "desktop for KDE 4.0"
>  * "creating documention of any kind"
>
>  How on earth could someone new to the project think that KDE 4.0 was needed
> or they were free to create documentation based on perceived need?  They'd
> have to be insane.
>  


>  From your announcement on 8/16:
>  
>  "The site is currently pretty sparse, but that's where the users come
>  in :-) I started a little bit of my personal developer page showing
>  off some of my work on Extenders, and Aaron has been filling out the
>  news section as time permits, but it's really up to the community to
>  use this or not at this point. I, for one, hope we do!"
>  
>  
>  So people:
>  1) This wiki should only have content for contributors that have experience
> on this new project that doesn't yet exist and are familiar with an
> undocumented project.
>  2) Please write public documentation in accordance with private
> undocumented conversations.
>  
>  "the point of the wiki is not to inform new people, but to help developers
> who are already familiar with the project work together."  Ahhh KDE, where
> 99% of the projects beg for new blood, and the other 1% actively turn people
> away.
>  
>  As wiki administrator, I'd recommend that you place guidance on your
> expectations for content and growth on the site itself.  Posting stances on
> this mailing fall into the very trap of: "tracking the progress of the
> plethora of ideas revolving around Plasma has been somewhat troublesome, as
> they are scattered throughout the usual channels (IRC,mailing list,
> kde-artists forum)".
>
>  Regards,
>  Wade
>  
>  
Excuse me, perhaps I was not so clear on a few points, it was 5min
after I woke up after all :)

Ok so where to start:
First of all I'd prefer not to think of myself as the wiki
administrator, honestly I have been strictly a developer up until this
point but the lack of a centralized point of reference for the said
"plethora of ideas revolving around Plasma," lead me to ask Aaron to
put it up. Needless to say, the idea of a wiki administrator is almost
nonsensical as it's meant to be a community controlled site.

In talking to Aaron when setting up the wiki my first instinct was to
load it up with information for new developers (after all I was the
person to post those first set of instructions on setting up the KDE
environment to this list) at which point he pointed out quite
correctly that the reason we have a developer section on the main site
at all is to address these exact topics.

Now to provide some (re)definitions:
The point of the Plasma website (not the wiki) is primarily to give an
overview of this project to the world.

The point of the developer section of the Plasma website is to provide
prospective developers with information on what they can do to get
their environment set up (this should obviously be expanded upon as it
is currently a link to my original, and deprecated, instructions. I
totally agree with this) and what they can start reading, and doing to
get involved in the project.

The Plasma Developer Wiki is a tool for developers who have made it
past this step. It is a point of reference where developers (and
artists!) who are familiar with the goals of this project (pointed out
in the main website), have followed steps to get their build
environment set up, and are ready to dig into the project. I want to
stress that this is not a "Plasma Wiki" but instead a "Plasma
Developer Wiki." For the developers, by the developers. Mind you that
this is precisely the reason that there is no link from the initial
Plasma website to the developer wiki, this is not a huge public forum
for discussion on Plasma from any person who happens to show up with a
new idea. It is explicitly referenced in the Developer section under
the assumption that those who will link to it are Developers.

>>1) This wiki should only have content for contributors that have
experience on this new project that doesn't yet exist and are familiar
with an undocumented project.
Did I say this? If so I was mistaken (perhaps you gleaned it from
something I said this morning on irc?), it's not meant just for
contributors that have experience with the project. It is meant to
help merge the gap between the people who have experience with Kicker,
the people who have been currently contributing to Plasma, and those
who are just joining.

Furthermore, this is not a place where people just publicly document
private conversations. On the contrary, many of the topics documented
(or to be documented) on the site are public discussions INSIDE the
project (on our IRC channel, or Mailing list, as I pointed out).
Unfortunately, that information only really resides in past postings
on the list (hard to navigate through), or more often in the minds of
the few people who have been here a while and have read all of it. So
the hope was that the wiki would be used to consolidate that
information, and yes because we are playing a little bit of catchup
that will have to be done by those people who remember (or provided)
those previous conversations (a great example of this is Georges'
SysTray entry, I was silly moving it around so it shows me as the last
author, but he was advised to post his thoughts on the structure of
the SysTray and did so quite well)

>  "the point of the wiki is not to inform new people, but to help developers
> who are already familiar with the project work together."  Ahhh KDE, where
> 99% of the projects beg for new blood, and the other 1% actively turn people
> away.
>  
Please, I hardly think my words amount to rejecting new blood. I was
simply pointing out that you are confused as to the point of this
wiki, and perhaps for good reason. I agree with you that portions of
both of our websites need revision to better stipulate their
respective purposes.

Now to get to your additions:
The pages that you added to the wiki are awesome! When I spoke to them
in the email this morning I was primarily thinking of your page for
the Optimizations, and once again this is probably just my fault for
not filling it out in time. The Optimization namespace is meant to be
a place where developers can discuss different methods and tools used
for measuring the performance of Plasma (I was going to start with a
little blurb about using KCacheGrind on kicker). I think you have the
right idea when adding information because most of it is giving
helpful info to our developers regarding the current state of a given
section of Plasma (like the pages you added for the bindings).

Anyway, I hope this clears up a few things. By all means contact me
with suggestions for the front page of the wiki, I know it needs some
work (the text describing DokuWiki is literally a portion of the
standard template text, so admittedly that text could use a lot of
work), and the reason the front page is locked to general user is
basically for security (we don't want random people smearing the front
of our wiki).

So now its my turn for proposition. You seem to be somewhat interested
in the presentation of this project, perhaps you'd be interested in
taking an active role in updating portions of our website and wiki to
provide the kind of information you're looking for?

    -- Matt


>  
> On 8/25/05, Matt Broadstone <mbroadst at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > On 8/25/05, Wade Olson <wade at corefunction.com> wrote:
> > >  I agree.
> > >
> > >  You must have been spying on me through my webcam
> (need...more...tinfoil)
> > > as I updated about 10 wiki pages last night. 
> > >
> > >  Alas, it's 5:15 am now and I have to drive straight to a consulting
> > > engagement in another state.  But I will try to put in some of this
> > > information later tonight.
> > >
> > >  Thanks, 
> > >  Wade
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >  Vinay Khaitan wrote:
> > >  Don't you think, All of this should have gone to plasma Wiki ?
> > > Well, I already though about contacting Aaron. I really feel,
> > > manything is missing in plasma wiki for new developers. The wiki 
> > > should detail the process.
> > >
> > No it should not.. Aaron and I talked about this when I was first
> > setting up the wiki. The wiki is not meant to be a place where you can
> > find out how to get involved and get started, but instead a place 
> > where you can find lots of specific reference information on the
> > internals of Plasma. For instance, this is the reason we have not
> > posted instructions on setting up the kde4 environment on the wiki,
> > information like this belongs on the main web page. A lot of wade's 
> > information is OK, but the point of the wiki is not to inform new
> > people, but to help developers who are already familiar with the
> > project work together.
> > 
> > >
> > > On 8/24/05, Wade Olson < wadejolson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >  Hi Markus,
> > >
> > >  Thanks for the email and welcome!
> > >
> > >  I know that interest is booming for Plasma, which is turning into both
> a
> > > blessing and a curse for Aaron. Hopefully with aKademy coming up
> shortly, 
> > > more information and immediate tasks will be forthcoming.
> > >
> > >  In the interim, for people who are just joining this young project, can
> I
> > > recommend:
> > >  * Give everyone a brief synopsis of your background
> (student/professional, 
> > > home country, software experience, KDE experience)
> > >  * List where you think you might fit in initially (and remember that
> not
> > > everyone can just step in and do the fun work of drawing on a whiteboard
> and 
> > > having legions do their C++ bidding)
> > >  * Do your project homework. Learn as much about Plasma as you can from:
> > >  http://plasma.kde.org/cms/1086
> > >   http://plasma.kde.org/wiki/
> > >
> > >
> http://kde-artists.org/main/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,48/expv,0/board,5.0
> > >  http://appeal.kde.org/wiki/Appeal
> > >  http://netdragon.sourceforge.net/ssuperkaramba.html 
> > > (for historical reference)
> > >  Competitive analysis: Apple, MS, Gnome, 3rd party widgets
> > >  * Do your functional homework. For example, if you plan on helping with
> > > usability, make sure you are familiar with sites like: 
> > >  http://www.openusability.org/
> > >  http://www.kde.org/areas/guidelines/html/
> > >  (and many other interface guidelines...like apple.com's work)
> > >  Or, if you plan on coding, of course you want to be familiar with:
> > >  http://developer.kde.org/
> > >   http://www.trolltech.com/developer/
> > >  http://qtdeveloper.net/
> > >  Any site that help with OOA/OOD/Design Patterns
> > >
> > >  These simple steps can help others learn more about you, help Aaron 
> > > organize skill sets and person-power, and minimize initial delays due to
> > > lack of preparation.
> > >
> > >  No matter how people feel about software development bureaucracy, there
> are
> > > very basic project planning and resourcing tasks that have to be
> coordinated 
> > > with such a large disparate group forming so quickly.
> > >
> > >  Not only is Plasma going to be unbelievable, but it's really going to
> get
> > > people to learn about more sophisticated programming techniques,
> usability 
> > > and various testing methodologies. I'd say this group is a microcosm of
> > > what going to go on with KDE in general as it expreiences growing pains.
> > >
> > >  So welcome, and hold tight while things get organized, but hopefully 
> > > there's plenty everyone can do in the meantime to sharpen their skills
> and
> > > familiarity.
> > >
> > >  Wade
> > >
> > >  *Note: This email does not necessarily reflect the views of those that
> know
> > > their head from their arse.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > On 8/24/05, Markus Hofmann <markus.hofmann at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >  Hi everybody,
> > > 
> > > I want to join the plasma team too.
> > >
> > > For four weeks I read an interesting article about the plasma project
> > > and I subscribed theailing list. With the help of Hans I got kde4
> > > compiled on my computer. 
> > >
> > > I don't have experience in QT programming but I'm interested to learn.
> > >
> > > I'm really motivated to help you.
> > >
> > > Greeting
> > >
> > > Markus
> > > _______________________________________________ 
> > > Panel-devel mailing list
> > > Panel-devel at kde.org
> > > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/panel-devel 
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Panel-devel mailing list
> > > Panel-devel at kde.org
> > > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/panel-devel
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Panel-devel mailing list
> > > Panel-devel at kde.org
> > > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/panel-devel
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Panel-devel mailing list
> > Panel-devel at kde.org
> > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/panel-devel
> > 
>  
>  
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