Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Cor Nouws]

Hi all,

Although it looks as if there is a big silence.. there has been contact
between members on administration of the existing site end see what is
possible for a test.
Interested users/members are of course welcome to help with the upcoming
efforts.
And looking at the ideas, suggestions and remarks in this thread, it
should be possible that there is a proposal for a first step? One that
may be simpler than the goal we set ourselves, of course.

Cheers,
Cor


Bjoern Michaelsen wrote on 10/14/18 2:37 PM:
> ...

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Andreas Mantke]

Hello,

Am 05.11.18 um 09:58 schrieb Bjoern Michaelsen:
> Hello Andreas,
>
> Thanks for joining the discussion.
first of all, I didn't join the discussion and currently I'm out.
>
> On Sat, Nov 03, 2018 at 10:56:56PM +0100, Andreas Mantke wrote:
>> FYI: because I felt this way of communication inside the project lacked
>> the necessary respect for the volunteer work done for about seven years
>> during spare time, I stopped my work for the project and the website
>> with immidiate effect. I was never included in any discussion about the
>> site before this thread (or better threat) was started. I think this is
>> a behavior that is not appropriate to an open source project that define
>> itself as open and transparent.
> Im sorry that you feel that way. However, the Board and -- I am sure the
> community too -- are deeply grateful for your work here; and as you've been a
> member of the Board from the start, you were included in all discussions --
> both internal and external -- about the struggle around that site though.

Sorry, that I didn't share your view here. There were no real internal
discussions with the board about issues. The last discussion about the
topic extensions website happened during the board call at 27 Feb. 2017.
The summary was 'everyone happy - good work'.

>
> The Good Thing is, this thread did yield at least three volunteers from the
> LibreOffice community wanting to help out with the extension website now that
> they are aware: Maarten, Ilmari and Andreas Kainz. From what I heard, some 
> have
> tried to contact you on how to get involved or proceed, but unfortunately were
> unable to succeed.
>
Andreas was not unable. He got an Plone test instance, that I already
created for him.

I don't know, if he used it already.

But afterwards I was kicked out by this thread. I'm not used to be
pilloried for my work during my spare time. And maybe others too.

Kind regards,
Andreas




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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

Hello Andreas,

Thanks for joining the discussion.

On Sat, Nov 03, 2018 at 10:56:56PM +0100, Andreas Mantke wrote:
> FYI: because I felt this way of communication inside the project lacked
> the necessary respect for the volunteer work done for about seven years
> during spare time, I stopped my work for the project and the website
> with immidiate effect. I was never included in any discussion about the
> site before this thread (or better threat) was started. I think this is
> a behavior that is not appropriate to an open source project that define
> itself as open and transparent.

Im sorry that you feel that way. However, the Board and -- I am sure the
community too -- are deeply grateful for your work here; and as you've been a
member of the Board from the start, you were included in all discussions --
both internal and external -- about the struggle around that site though.

The Good Thing is, this thread did yield at least three volunteers from the
LibreOffice community wanting to help out with the extension website now that
they are aware: Maarten, Ilmari and Andreas Kainz. From what I heard, some have
tried to contact you on how to get involved or proceed, but unfortunately were
unable to succeed.

> Thus the extensions and templates website is not maintained since three
> weeks yet. I will only spend my spare time for tasks where I get in
> return respectful treatment and honest feedback.

That is of course deeply unfortunate, but I thank you that you inform us about
this now. Checking back, I learned the TDF infrastructure team is already aware
of this, but still lacks some bits and pieces of how to operate the site - would
be great if you can share those with them, here or in private, so that that
handover can be closed.

Beyond the immdiate issues: Thank you for the time and the work you put in the
extension website over the all the years. For all the other stuff going on in
the project, we often lost sight of it being an important entrypoint to the
community and the ecosystem around LibreOffice.

Whatever the volunteers of the LibreOffice community come up with for the
future of hosting LibreOffice extensions, we would be happy to welcome you
back to that someday.

Best,

Bjoern

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Andreas Mantke]

Hello all,

FYI: because I felt this way of communication inside the project lacked
the necessary respect for the volunteer work done for about seven years
during spare time, I stopped my work for the project and the website
with immidiate effect. I was never included in any discussion about the
site before this thread (or better threat) was started. I think this is
a behavior that is not appropriate to an open source project that define
itself as open and transparent.

Thus the extensions and templates website is not maintained since three
weeks yet. I will only spend my spare time for tasks where I get in
return respectful treatment and honest feedback.

Kind regards,
Andreas

Am 11.10.18 um 14:58 schrieb Bjoern Michaelsen:

> Hello Design Team,
>
> as you might be aware, the user experience of our extension and template
> website causes users a lot of concern[1]. This is despite volunteer efforts
> trying to move this forward, but stalling due to limited resources, which led
> to TDF even attempting to get commercial support for Plone[2] to augment the
> the limited volunteer ressources available. The latter did not help to
> meaningfully improve the situation either.
>
> So as all current efforts there are stalled, I looked around for alternative
> solutions to our usecase -- which is hosting auxiliary content for LibreOffice
> consumers. We already have a platform that does that, which is 
> ask.libreoffice.org.
>
> ask.libreoffice.org already allows uploading of templates as attachments to
> questions, so it can already be used for templates. Doing so (e.g. by posting 
> a
> self-answered question) is possible, but not exactly intuitive. However, 
> askbot
> also provides:
>
> - various logins including OAuth etc. (which currently is a hassle on Plone)
> - distributed moderation and gamification (which currently is a bottleneck on 
> Plone)
> - better discoveribility, tagging and social media integration
> - markdown, mini-wiki and discussion of content
> - multi-language support
>
> That is, the experience for template creators and consumers is already much 
> better
> on askbot than it is on the current extension and templates website, which is
> stalled and currently has no clear path to even get to a experience comparable
> with askbot -- let alone beyond.
>
> As such, I would like to suggest the design team to investigate, if it is 
> feasable:
>
> - to extend askbots existing UI to offer uploading of templates
>   (well, technically that is already possible: This is just about making the
>   usecase more obvious to users, e.g. with a guided "templates upload wizard")
> - to extend askbots configuration to also allow .oxt files as uploads and 
> offer
>   the same for extensions
> - finally, use e.g. tags to provide a "template" or "extension" view of
>   ask.libreoffice.org
>
> Unlike the rather limited successes we had with Plone, TDF sucessfully 
> triggered
> improvements of askbot in the past[3], so given some well-scoped choices and
> selections made by the design team wrt askbot could help guide the same in the
> future.
>
> Best,
>
> Bjoern
>
>
> [1] Seen e.g. by:
> a/ repeated cries for help on twitter, some examples:
>https://twitter.com/nimbleslides/status/1020899933161848832
>https://twitter.com/FloraCanou/status/1020517686453735424
> b/ currently no presentation templates being offered there, despite this
>being the most common use case:
>
> https://extensions.libreoffice.org/templates?getCategories=Presentation=any
>and massive template collections actually being hosted elsewhere e.g.:
>https://github.com/dohliam/libreoffice-impress-templates
> [2] see entry for 2016-02-18 on 
> https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/BoD_Decisions
> [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Askbot
>


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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Maarten Brouwers (murb)]

Hi Cor,

> My impression is not that people in this discussion think that it will
> be easy per see.

I got a bit different impression, and still see the extensive requirements doc 
(also the new one) highly contrasting with what I read as the idea of ‘just 
start iterating from ask.libreoffice.org ’ (I 
know, no-one said that as simply). Sure you can do your bookkeeping in Writer, 
no need for Calc (or Base), but I just wonder if you should even considering 
starting with Writer.

> Since there are some advantages on Askbot, and the fact that boosting
> the existing extensions site to a certain level somehow didn't work, we

I’d suggest we first start with ’somehow’, much of what is specced is already 
working to some extend.

- Lack of integration with LibreOffice? -> Create an API on top of the current 
database and integrate it with LibreOffice (another thing that I guess would be 
hard to realize with a foundation based on Askbot)
- Lack of downloaders? -> 
   - Maybe the site wasn’t looking professional enough? 
   - Lack of discoverability, where to find a link to the extensions-site 
(Under “Discover?", that’s where you start before you’ve downloaded 
LibreOffice, not when you’re using it)
   - Maybe the screenshots were too small to even get an idea of what they’re 
getting?
   - Maybe the focus on ’new’ instead of ‘popular' made people wary of the 
quality of what is on offer?
   - Maybe the majority of the users don’t even care as much about extensions 
as much as we’d hope they do, and users don’t expect to find templates there as 
well?
- Lack of contributors? -> All of the above + Maybe a function of the lack of 
downloaders? (no reward in creating & maintaining stuff that is not being used 
as much as you’d hoped for?)
- Lack of moderators? -> All of the above?

I really doubt that OAuth or not has anything to do with it. Localisation, 
probably yes.

g.,


Maarten
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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Maarten Brouwers (murb)]

Hi Bjoern,

> That -- and the fact that we have 45.000 accounts on it -- are the reason I
> brought up Askbot. Content and accounts are the things that are hard earned 
> on a
> platform, maintainers and moderators are a bit easier, but still hard. The
> pure technical platform is the easiest part.

I wonder how important having existing accounts is for an extension site. I’d 
like to be convinced otherwise, but I think that a usable submission & 
maintenance process will convince people to contribute their extensions. A more 
prominent call for volunteers could help registering the few people needed for 
occasional quality assurance (which with all security threats these days is not 
something you want to do with simply up and down votes [1]). Registering for 
one more account is the least part of creating a good extension / template 
(although it would be a nice to have if you wouldn’t have to). Big exception 
where every hassle of creating accounts might hold back user contributions back 
is feedback from users (star-ratings / comments / up/down-votes). Maybe the ask 
libreoffice org platform could help there (like discourse can be used to allow 
for discussion on pages), but I strongly believe that getting the UX right for 
a good extension website is the hard part, which also requires quite some 
technical skill if you build something like that [2] from scratch (building a 
template site from a Q/A platform is basically building from scratch, support 
for templates is just scratching the surface of what is needed [again, 2]).

g.,


Maarten

[1] I wonder to what extend installing extensions can be called safe in 
LibreOffice. I was wondering if I could make a nice looking extension that does 
something useful and simultaneously sends some user data to a server?
[2] Euh, this: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/E5RX5xK6jxQPLdK





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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Maarten Brouwers (murb)]

Forgot that Bjoern actually mentioned some of the somehows

Technical infrastructure was lacking for contributors:
> [1] Seen e.g. by:
>a/ repeated cries for help on twitter, some examples: (both technical 
> issues)
>   https://twitter.com/nimbleslides/status/1020899933161848832 
>  
>   https://twitter.com/FloraCanou/status/1020517686453735424 
> 
and lack of categorisation-ability which makes it useless for sharing certain 
templates:
>b/ currently no presentation templates being offered there, despite this
>   being the most common use case:
>   
> https://extensions.libreoffice.org/templates?getCategories=Presentation=any
>  
> 
>   and massive template collections actually being hosted elsewhere e.g.:
>   https://github.com/dohliam/libreoffice-impress-templates 
> 

Those look mainly like technical problems to me. I’m not sure Plone is the 
right basis (don't know it), but maybe helping the current maintainer out and 
addressing the right issues may be a more fruitful attempt to keep a good 
extension site running than starting from scratch and rediscovering the same 
old problems. As said, I’m happy to assist him/her, but just redrafting 
requirements without any observation-based ideas about what makes a great 
template site (and I just don’t buy the idea that is mainly about the 
user-accounts) doesn’t end really well anywhere in my book. Maintaining 
software doesn’t become easier when you build a complex tool (an extensions 
website) on something that isn’t meant for it (a Q/A site).

Yours,


Maarten



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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Maarten Brouwers (murb)]

Hi Bjoern,

> Stating that a classic CMS is by definition better suited for the task at hand
> than something more interactive like discourse is a foregone conclusion. Given
> that the lack of community involvement is the core reason for many limitations
> of the current setup, its not a valid one.

I think the quickest route to success is adopting a proven framework for 
hosting extensions. If you want to build something unique start from scratch, 
I’d use a generic framework (again, not sure about Plone, I couldn’t find the 
repo for the current site), but really never a framework made for a very 
specific function. I’ve been there (helping others professionaly) and pulling 
my hair out as a developer when I was asked to add some new functionality that 
didn’t align with the core functionality that that specific framework offered. 

> 
>> - Lack of integration with LibreOffice? -> Create an API on top of the
>> current database and integrate it with LibreOffice (another thing that I
>> guess would be hard to realize with a foundation based on Askbot)
>> [...]
>> - Lack of moderators? -> All of the above?
> 
> Please dont guess or speculate on this, you will likely get it wrong. This is
> something that needs to be evaluated by trying.

Sure, these are questions. But I’d always want to try the simplest route that 
also is promising for future development and do basic experiments in the 
current situation when possible that will learn us something more about the 
requirements. You’ve been suggesting starting with a MVP on ask.libreoffice.org 
. Sure, try the templates function, you always 
learn, but I can assure you it will be a deadlock when you want to grow it into 
a full fledged extensions site. Look at the growing list of ideas. One day you 
want features comparable to other platforms and I can’t see how a Q/A platform 
will get us there.

>> I really doubt that OAuth or not has anything to do with it. Localisation, 
>> probably yes.
> 
> Well, where do the 45.000 accounts on askbot come from? The site is far from
> being perfect, but still doing better that all other forums we have. OAuth 
> etc.
> certainly has a role in that, as does gamification, badges and social media
> integration.

Sure, but again, I doubt it matters to an extensions website. Mozilla has no 
OAuth, and still has imho a great extensions website. In an ideal world 
everyone contributes and consumes, but in reality it is just a small 
percentage. Especially when it comes to more complicated stuff like building 
extensions and quality themes.

> For the community the decision should go with the team that gets the most
> content, interaction and users on their platform. 

Interaction & users should imho not be the primary goal for an extensions 
website, great extensions should be. If clearly communicated, I strongly 
believe the 1% of users that is willing to volunteer will step up, but until 
the moment you opened the thread there wasn’t really a way I could see this was 
something I could help out, and I’m subscribed to a list oriented toward 
LibreOffice’s end-user experience (this list). 

g.,


Maarten


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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

Hi,

On Sun, Oct 14, 2018 at 03:54:13PM +0200, Maarten Brouwers (murb) wrote:
> Sure, but again, I doubt it matters to an extensions website. Mozilla has no
> OAuth, and still has imho a great extensions website. In an ideal world
> everyone contributes and consumes, but in reality it is just a small
> percentage. Especially when it comes to more complicated stuff like building
> extensions and quality themes.

Mozilla has an full discourse forum for extensions:

- https://discourse.mozilla.org/c/add-ons

which allow signing on with Firefox/Github/Google and plain email.

> Interaction & users should imho not be the primary goal for an extensions
> website, great extensions should be.

There is nothing an extension website can do to improve the content uploaded to
it as long as the upload is resonably simple. ... Except building a broad
community (users) and easy feedback, discussion and cooperation (interactions).

Best,

Bjoern

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

Hi Maarten,

On Sun, Oct 14, 2018 at 01:55:38PM +0200, Maarten Brouwers (murb) wrote:
> Maintaining software doesn’t become easier when you build a complex tool (an
> extensions website) on something that isn’t meant for it (a Q/A site).

Its really simple:

Dont tell others "Do not consider askbot/nextcloud/discourse".
I will not tell others "Do not consider plone" either.

Decisions will have to be made on the result in the end, which are: content,
users, interactions. However a team delivers that from the tech side is
irrelevant to the decision[1]. I will gladly support a platform that I dont like
technically, if it delivers results.

Best,

Bjoern

[1] Modulo some annoying things like e.g. legal or security considerations.

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

Hi,

addendum:

On Sun, Oct 14, 2018 at 02:14:36PM +0200, Bjoern Michaelsen wrote:
> For the community the decision should go with the team that gets the most
> content, interaction and users on their platform. I dont care if someone 
> thinks
> the platform was not made for the task -- it there is a team that makes the
> experience awesome and grows content, users and interaction on it.

the caveat being that in general having more platforms is worse than having
one, as it splits the community and causes friction. So we shouldnt just let
everyone run with their proposal and then end up with five extension websites,
which are all badly maintained by too small teams.

But: For making that call, a team argueing "we can grow content, users accounts
and interactions with $foo" ~always trumps "I think platform $bar was
originally made for the task."

Best,

Bjoern

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

Hi,

On Sun, Oct 14, 2018 at 01:24:10PM +0200, Maarten Brouwers (murb) wrote:
> I got a bit different impression, and still see the extensive requirements
> doc (also the new one) highly contrasting with what I read as the idea of
> ‘just start iterating from ask.libreoffice.org ’
> (I know, no-one said that as simply). Sure you can do your bookkeeping in
> Writer, no need for Calc (or Base), but I just wonder if you should even
> considering starting with Writer.

Stating that a classic CMS is by definition better suited for the task at hand
than something more interactive like discourse is a foregone conclusion. Given
that the lack of community involvement is the core reason for many limitations
of the current setup, its not a valid one.

> - Lack of integration with LibreOffice? -> Create an API on top of the
> current database and integrate it with LibreOffice (another thing that I
> guess would be hard to realize with a foundation based on Askbot)
> [...]
> - Lack of moderators? -> All of the above?

Please dont guess or speculate on this, you will likely get it wrong. This is
something that needs to be evaluated by trying. To get integration with
LibreOffice right, the API or hosting is the smallest problem.

The hard problems are:
1/ verification of content (Codereview by humans)
2/ signing of content (ensuring that what was review is what is installed)

Again: Hosting and even integrating this is easy, compared to the social task
of verification, feedback and interaction. As such, the platform underneath is
not much of a relevant destinction -- unless on the latter. Reviewing or even
casual reviewing is the hard part. It requires manpower => which requires an
active community => which requires a platform that encourages interaction.

> I really doubt that OAuth or not has anything to do with it. Localisation, 
> probably yes.

Well, where do the 45.000 accounts on askbot come from? The site is far from
being perfect, but still doing better that all other forums we have. OAuth etc.
certainly has a role in that, as does gamification, badges and social media
integration.

Finally, it should be obvious that is better to do custom development on our
specific (extension hosting) needs on a platform that provides broad generic
features (social media integration, gamification, oauth) than using a specific
platform for "extension hosting" and trying to add a lot of missing generic
features to it. The reason is doing custom development for social media
integration, gamification, OAuth will drown us in constant maintainance of those
custom build features.

Anyways: The start of this thread was "please consider more than one platform"
and the repeatedly given rationale is that bringing together users and content
are harder than bringing together moderators and maintainers and that is harder
than customizing a base technology. This remains universally true and as such
please stop speculating about the base technologies in a way that tries to
suggest to only use one technology.

For the community the decision should go with the team that gets the most
content, interaction and users on their platform. I dont care if someone thinks
the platform was not made for the task -- it there is a team that makes the
experience awesome and grows content, users and interaction on it.

Best,

Bjoern

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Cor Nouws]

Hi Maarten,

Maarten Brouwers (murb) wrote on 14-10-18 11:57:

> I wonder how important having existing accounts is for an extension
> site. I’d like to be convinced otherwise, but I think that a usable
> submission & maintenance process will convince people to contribute
> their extensions. A more prominent call for volunteers could help
> registering the few people needed for occasional quality assurance
> (which with all security threats these days is not something you want
> to do with simply up and down votes [1]).

I thought of this subject too, but have the idea that at the moment
there is no quality/safety check either?
Anyway, good that you mention, because having something in place (by
moderation maybe) looks wise.

> to do with simply up and down votes [1]). Registering for one more
> account is the least part of creating a good extension / template
> (although it would be a nice to have if you wouldn’t have to). Big
> exception where every hassle of creating accounts might hold back
> user contributions back is feedback from users (star-ratings /
> comments / up/down-votes). Maybe the ask libreoffice org platform
> could help there (like discourse can be used to allow for discussion
> on pages), but I strongly believe that getting the UX right for a
> good extension website is the hard part, which also requires quite
> some technical skill if you build something like that [2] from

My impression is not that people in this discussion think that it will
be easy per see.
Since there are some advantages on Askbot, and the fact that boosting
the existing extensions site to a certain level somehow didn't work, we
can take this as an opportunity to look at the situation from scratch:
what can we do in a simple way to help people make templates &
extensions available easily.

> scratch (building a template site from a Q/A platform is basically
> building from scratch, support for templates is just scratching the
> surface of what is needed [again, 2]).

Depends. If you want to do versioning of extensions, it will definitely
be hard. If you skip that, leave it to the author on how to make that
clear (or not), it may be much easier. Tags to help finding stuff of
course is a must. But I think I start to repeat what already has been
expressed before.

Best,
Cor

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

Hi,

On Sat, Oct 13, 2018 at 01:14:09PM +0200, kainz.a wrote:
> Is it possible to use libreoffice online and nextcloud for templates and
> extensions?

as said: You can host stuff on pretty much any platform. However, nextcloud
originated with a mission closer to a plain Filehosting/Intranet a la
Sharepoint or maybe Dropbox(*). That is even _less_ interactive for a broad 
public
than CMSes like Silverstripe/Wordpress/Plone. And Askbot and e.g. discourse.org
are more interactive for a public audiences than CMSes by default.

That -- and the fact that we have 45.000 accounts on it -- are the reason I
brought up Askbot. Content and accounts are the things that are hard earned on a
platform, maintainers and moderators are a bit easier, but still hard. The
pure technical platform is the easiest part.

Best,

Bjoern

(*) Those are a good fit for cooperation of a smallish group, e.g. a company or
TDF members though. Less so for involving $RANDOM_INTERNET_PERSON with the
project and the community.

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[kainz.a]

Is it possible to use libreoffice online and nextcloud for templates and
extensions?

Cor Nouws  schrieb am Sa., 13. Okt. 2018, 10:56:

> Bjoern Michaelsen wrote on 13-10-18 10:09:
>
> > That is not really an argument against _evaluating_ AskBot as a platform.
> > Evaluating means looking into what can be done with a platform and what
> the
> > challenges are.
> >
> > Beyond that, I have to say I am not too surprised that finding something
> in
> > Askbots 29000 entries is task a bit harder than finding a template in
> the ...
> > twelve[1] templates hosted on the extensions website.
> >
> > Proper tagging (which can be done programmatically) should make twelve
> > templates searchable with AskBot even if it misses things sometimes with
> 29000
> > other entries.
>
> True, tagging will help a lot.
> The availability of a proper way to find, search, however, is a
> condition we know in advance that we have to meet. So good to explicitly
> state it.
> It was by the way the only thing I missed in the nice sum up by Andreas,
> yesterday:
>   https://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/msg08889.html
>
> Now up to the thread Heiko started, with the link to "Requirements
> (2018-Sep-06)"
>   https://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/msg08899.html
>
> Cheers,
> Cor
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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Cor Nouws]

Bjoern Michaelsen wrote on 13-10-18 10:09:

> That is not really an argument against _evaluating_ AskBot as a platform.
> Evaluating means looking into what can be done with a platform and what the
> challenges are.
> 
> Beyond that, I have to say I am not too surprised that finding something in
> Askbots 29000 entries is task a bit harder than finding a template in the ...
> twelve[1] templates hosted on the extensions website.
> 
> Proper tagging (which can be done programmatically) should make twelve
> templates searchable with AskBot even if it misses things sometimes with 29000
> other entries.

True, tagging will help a lot.
The availability of a proper way to find, search, however, is a
condition we know in advance that we have to meet. So good to explicitly
state it.
It was by the way the only thing I missed in the nice sum up by Andreas,
yesterday:
  https://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/msg08889.html

Now up to the thread Heiko started, with the link to "Requirements
(2018-Sep-06)"
  https://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/msg08899.html

Cheers,
Cor
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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Heiko Tietze]

Am 12-Oct-18 um 18:18 schrieb Maarten Brouwers (murb):




So tl;dr: This is the design list, we do 1/ "Identify core needs and usecases"
here. No tools/platform discussion[1]. Next up would be finding enthusiastic
people willing to work on this.

... I agree with the critiques that the old ‘requirements’-document has way too 
many requirements.
It was a _description_ of the current site, basis for a discussion how 
to improve, and served now for the new requirements document that 
consider needs from the scratch. I recommend to keep this thread plain 
as "check askbot" and to do the usability work in the other thread I 
started this morning.



Let’s start with some stake holders (not extensive):

The users
- Want to find extensions that solve their needs (and that are trustworthy / 
reliable / of quality)
Moderators
- Want to help users find the best extensions as simply as possible
The extension creators
- Want to make their extension findable
LibreOffice.org 
- Wants the site to be maintained well
I definitely like this way to think. What always bothers me is 
"extension and template" as if there is code (macros) and templates. We 
can and do share more right now (color palettes, icon themes, gallery 
images etc.) and plan to offer more. Thus two types of "creators" 
contribute: those who could also share their stuff on Github and others 
who are not too tech-savvy.
As for the users I wish to not need to go to some ther place but have 
direct access in the program 
https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2016/11/11/additions-to-libreoffice/. 
Nevertheless we need it for some use cases.


Thanks for commenting,
Heiko

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

Hi,

On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 10:45:48AM -0600, Taylor Jenkins wrote:
> The only way, architecturally, that I see ask.libreoffice.org being able to
> play a role in an extension repository, is if the uploaded extensions were
> stored to a remotely queriable database for access by a separate front end
> at libreoffice.org. In fact, it would be really great if the
> ask.libreoffice.org message board could also be embedded in this front end,
> to make for a seamless UX.

Yes, those are some of the benefits I was considering. Especially as Askbot
provides some commenting, feedback and wiki functionality that the current
extension website is missing.

Best,

Bjoern

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

Hi,

On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 09:48:35PM +, toki wrote:
> Until/unless the search function on ask.libreoffice is fixed, migrating
> there is going to ensure that absolutely, positively ensure that nobody
> will ever find the extension that they are looking for. 

That is not really an argument against _evaluating_ AskBot as a platform.
Evaluating means looking into what can be done with a platform and what the
challenges are.

Beyond that, I have to say I am not too surprised that finding something in
Askbots 29000 entries is task a bit harder than finding a template in the ...
twelve[1] templates hosted on the extensions website.

Proper tagging (which can be done programmatically) should make twelve
templates searchable with AskBot even if it misses things sometimes with 29000
other entries.

Best,

Bjoern

[1] "Currently there are 12 LibreOffice template project(s) with 20 release(s) 
available."
https://extensions.libreoffice.org/ 

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Taylor Jenkins]

As a user of libreoffice interested in searching for an available
extension, the logical place to look is libreoffice.org. While
ask.libreoffice.org may be easy for contributors to upload and discuss
extensions,  it is a nightmare to navigate for someone simply trying to
find available extensions, and I seriously doubt it can be configured in
such a way as to make the search pleasant.

The only way, architecturally, that I see ask.libreoffice.org being able to
play a role in an extension repository, is if the uploaded extensions were
stored to a remotely queriable database for access by a separate front end
at libreoffice.org. In fact, it would be really great if the
ask.libreoffice.org message board could also be embedded in this front end,
to make for a seamless UX.

On Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 10:02 AM MiguelAngel  wrote:

> Hi Bjoern,
>
> I have been at ask since the beginning, so let me think that I can talk
> with some knowledge.
>
> Is it successful? Apparently maybe, many users is the only place they
> know. But many people remains in the AOo forums specially volunteers
> because don't like Ask.
>
> For me Its usability is far from optimal.Basics like messages from
> threads, badly works.
>
> IMHO, unless Ask has some hidden capabilities for that purpose, I cannot
> see how it can serve to improve the current situation for extensions and
> templates. Sure I need to review the graduation of my contact lenses.:)
>
> Anyway, if it's so good or the better solution in this situation, I
> think you don't need of anyone for that, so please just do it. We can
> live with two places at once.
>
> Miguel Ángel
>
> El 12/10/18 a las 1:12, Bjoern Michaelsen escribió:
> > Hi Miguel,
> >
> > (you do not seem to be subscribed to the design@ list, so others will
> not see
> > your mail. I will reply anyway, but please consider subscribing to the
> mailing
> > list when discussing there.)
> >
> > On Thu, Oct 11, 2018 at 10:56:43PM +0200, Miguel Ángel Ríos Vázquez
> wrote:
> >> Can we really think about using Ask for that?
> > yes. The problems are well-known, have repeatedly communicated in the
> project
> > since at least 2013. There really isnt any news here. Unfortunately,
> there has
> > been little movement, the community around the old extension webpage did
> not
> > grow despite efforts to do so and even external commercial support wasnt
> > unlocking the situation.
> >
> > OTOH, my mail clearly stated that I would like to invite the design team
> to
> > consider thinking outside of the box and ALSO think about
> ask.libreoffice.org
> > as a platform. This e.g. doesnt mean that the old Plone site _needs_ to
> die --
> > but it should not be the only platform considered to provide the much
> needed
> > content hosting.
> >
> > If this results in three to four people volunteering to push the old page
> > forward in a coordinated effort, I am a happy bunny. BUT: Given this has
> been
> > tried since 2013 at least and given the feedback I heard from even
> commercial
> > suppliers about the state of things, I am not too optimistic.
> >
> >> My impression is that it is not even very well accepted as a forum. Not
> an
> >> example of success.
> > Impressions are odd in that. ask.libreoffice.org is certainly the most
> > successful forum LibreOffice currently hosts.
> >
> > https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/users/  shows currently 1547 pages of 30
> users
> > each, so >45.000 registered accounts on ask.libreoffice.org. For
> comparison:
> > wiki.documentfoundation.org has ~17.000 accounts. I'd assume all other
> TDF
> > infra has less accounts.
> >
> > https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/questions/  has >29.000 _english_
> questions
> > alone. For comparision: wiki.documentfoundation.org has ~22.000 pages
> in all
> > languages.
> >
> > While there is always room for improvement, ask.libreoffice.org is our
> most
> > successful platform -- by far.
> >
> >> And on the other hand we could be more thankful with the volunteer work
> of
> >> the people in the project, whether we like it or not.
> > That is also true for those content creators trying to use the extension
> > website to publish content. I posted some random tweets that show their
> > experience. Unfortunately, that feedback isnt too hard to find and has
> been
> > around for years. People uploading their first extension or template are
> > newcomers to the community -- and as active contributors we should make
> sure
> > their experience is not too aweful. The tweets -- together with the fact
> that
> > so many extensions and templates are hosted elsewhere (e.g. on github)
> shows
> > that we are loosing contributors and miss the opportunity to integrate
> them
> > with the wider community. We let those future contributors down.
> >
> >
> > So: tl;dr: I encouraged the design team to look ALSO look at
> ask.libreoffice.org
> > for allowing content publication, esp. since we had good past experience
> with
> > getting commercial support for it for well-defined feature 

Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Maarten Brouwers (murb)]

Hi Bjoern,

> So tl;dr: This is the design list, we do 1/ "Identify core needs and usecases"
> here. No tools/platform discussion[1]. Next up would be finding enthusiastic
> people willing to work on this. 

Ok, so one of the core needs you actually emphasise is actual support by 
*multiple* volunteers, not relying on a single person to do moderation and/or 
maintenance, which is currently a problem with extensions.libreoffice.org 
. Very valid point indeed.

A Q/A site by definition gets a lot of users, and satisfied users turn into 
actual contributors on such sites. Good to learn that it is also maintained 
properly. But from that it doesn’t follow that it is the right tool for the job 
of serving extensions & templates. As the earlier mentioned GDoc pointed out, 
there are other requirements than having moderators and maintainers, even 
though no UGC-site can really exist without them. Having said that, I agree 
with the critiques that the old ‘requirements’-document has way too many 
requirements.

Let’s start with some stake holders (not extensive):

The users
- Want to find extensions that solve their needs (and that are trustworthy / 
reliable / of quality)
Moderators
- Want to help users find the best extensions as simply as possible
The extension creators
- Want to make their extension findable
LibreOffice.org 
- Wants the site to be maintained well

I believe you came to the design list mainly reasoning problems that 
LibreOffice.org  is having with the current 
extensions-site as an organisation. I guess most on this list think primarily 
from a users’ perspective, secondary extension creators perspective. A design 
list-member cannot guarantee any long term support from maintainers (requires 
technical skills) and moderators (requires experimentation), although they may 
be able to point out why a current solution is not working well for any of the 
people involved (although again, maintenance is quite a different skill). I’d 
like to assume that a popular site should be able to get the (possibly paid) 
maintenance it requires.

A pragmatic approach to this problem, which I believe you’re after, requires 
not only design list involvement, but also people who want to maintain (and or 
build) it, otherwise we’re after a waterfall style approach where the design 
team is thinking of great features which are too hard to implement and will 
never turn into something that is properly realised.

From what I can see now: adapting ask.libreoffice.org 
 requires way more effort to turn it into a proper 
extension-site than either adapting the current extensions-site or adopting an 
existing solution of another project, because I believe ask.libreoffice.org 
 currently lacks:

* Structured storing of metadata, most importantly: versions that it works 
with, screenshot(s), authorship, license, links to further documentation / 
source (automatically extracted or not)
* Listing should feature part of this metadata directly (title and votes is not 
enough)
* Should communicate ‘Extensions-site’ (it should at least quack like a duck if 
it wants to be a duck), not Q/A
* Clear separation of certain categories (most importantly Extensions & 
Templates, but I could imagine Language support as another main category, not 
just a random collection of ’tags’)

I was unaware of the extensions’ site problem with lack of volunteers actually. 
Some call for volunteers in that respect there would help :) To be honest, I 
don’t even have extensions installed. I think it is partly caused by the lack 
of end-user centric design; as extensions weren’t really well promoted in the 
first place it looked a bit amateurish. I’m actually able to help there (as a 
front-end developer) and think a few things would help a lot already:

* First and mostly: Remove the focus from ‘most recent’ and focus on most 
popular; currently some 
* Allow for more (high resolution) screenshots that can better communicate what 
the extensions are doing
* Promote the download link
* Downplay ‘requirements’ if those requirements are being fulfilled by the 
default installations of 5.x and greater release already (isn’t Python UNO part 
of the default installation?)
* Ask for moderators on the site if there aren’t really any :)

I’d hope that more volunteers would follow from a more used & usable 
extensions-site.

Maybe we should move the discussion to a spot where all stakeholders and 
potential volunteers are involved. I’m happy to subscribe to that spot :)

g.,


Maarten






> Op 12 okt. 2018, om 16:02 heeft Bjoern Michaelsen 
>  het volgende geschreven:
> 
> Hi Maarten,
> 
> On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 02:06:54PM +0200, Maarten Brouwers (murb) wrote:
>> What about adapting Mozilla’s extension-site? 
> 
> So lets phrase the problem differently: We are not lacking tools or platforms.
> We are lacking 

Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[toki]

On 10/12/18 8:05 PM, Bjoern Michaelsen wrote:

> site is already capable to host templates, and allows some of the things 
> missing on the current extension site.

Until/unless the search function on ask.libreoffice is fixed, migrating
there is going to ensure that absolutely, positively ensure that nobody
will ever find the extension that they are looking for. (What on earth
does setting up margins in Write have to do with Impress templates? Yet
that was the first response to my search for Impress templates.)

> But IMHO we should also look into what can be done with AskBot starting with 
> evaluating template hosting. Evaluating means just that: to learn what is 
> possible.

a) Can you describe any existing template with enough specificity that
somebody who is unfamiliar with ask.libreoffice will see the template,
as the first hit, when they search for it?

b) Are there enough _active_ moderators, so that the inevitable spam
being presented as templates, get culled often enough so as to not
pollute and render ask.libreoffice completely useless across the board?

Now wondering if those so-called templates that were nothing more than
the name of stores in small towns across the US, have been removed.

jonathon

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RE : Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[sophie]

Hivall

 Message d'origine 
De : Bjoern Michaelsen  
Date : 12/10/2018  22:05  (GMT+01:00) 
À : "Maarten Brouwers (murb)"  
Cc : Miguel Ángel Ríos Vázquez , 
design@global.libreoffice.org 
Objet : Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate:
  Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org 

Hi,

On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 06:18:24PM +0200, Maarten Brouwers (murb) wrote:
> From what I can see now: adapting ask.libreoffice.org
>  requires way more effort to turn it into a
> proper extension-site than either adapting the current extensions-site or
> adopting an existing solution of another project

I dont think we should speculate on this too much without giving it a try.
Given the things missing on the extension site (OAuth Logins etc., user
feedback on content) its still a long way to go. FWIW, as noted, the AskBot
site is already capable to host templates, and allows some of the things
missing on the current extension site.
Ask also handles localization of the UI and the content, what we miss for a 
long time to get international community to contribute and help.
I don't care the tool as long as it serves the whole community and I don't 
think it's a technical problem either.I also would like to thank Andreas for 
his work and dedication to the project, it has been an awesome contribution, we 
won't be discussing without it.CheersSophie
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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

Hi,

On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 06:18:24PM +0200, Maarten Brouwers (murb) wrote:
> From what I can see now: adapting ask.libreoffice.org
>  requires way more effort to turn it into a
> proper extension-site than either adapting the current extensions-site or
> adopting an existing solution of another project

I dont think we should speculate on this too much without giving it a try.
Given the things missing on the extension site (OAuth Logins etc., user
feedback on content) its still a long way to go. FWIW, as noted, the AskBot
site is already capable to host templates, and allows some of the things
missing on the current extension site.

As such, improving the extension website is a good thing. But IMHO we should
also look into what can be done with AskBot starting with evaluating template
hosting. Evaluating means just that: to learn what is possible.

> Ok, so one of the core needs you actually emphasise is actual support by
> *multiple* volunteers, not relying on a single person to do moderation and/or
> maintenance, which is currently a problem with extensions.libreoffice.org
> . Very valid point indeed.

Yes.

> I was unaware of the extensions’ site problem with lack of volunteers
> actually. Some call for volunteers in that respect there would help :)

You can pretty much assume that all parts of the LibreOffice always have use
for volunteers. ;)

> I’m actually able to help there (as a front-end developer) and think a few
> things would help a lot already:
> [...]
> I’d hope that more volunteers would follow from a more used & usable 
> extensions-site.

That is most appreciated! The more volunteers try themselves on working with our
systems, the better we can decide on how to proceed.

Best,

Bjoern

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[toki]

On 10/12/18 11:36 AM, Bjoern Michaelsen wrote:
> The second question then is how to get that metadata. E.g. the license has to
> be in the extension itself. So why bothering to ask the uploader about it,
> possibly causing even mismatched metadata, because the manual entry had a
> different value than what is in the metadata of the extension itself.

FWIW, I've come across several instances where the page displaying the
extension, the  page that displays the license when installing the
extension, the license within the package, and the actual license were
all very different. In one instance, the real license was a very
restrictive ARR, whilst the others were either Open Source, or could
have passed as being an open source crayon license.

> Having a metric ton of metadata "just in case" we _might_ _possibly_ use it 
> one
> day is BAD. Asking uploaders for huge amount of metadata in errorprone manual
> entry is WORSE, esp. if that metadata is not useful for meaningful queries.

Based on more than a decade of browsing various repositories, I have
strong doubts that the uploader can provide accurate meta-data.

> that metadata is not needed for a relevant and useful query to find 
> extensions.

For an extension, the minimum required information is:
* What version of LibO was it created for;
* What component of LibO does it work with;
* A description, in less than five English words, of what the extension
does;
* What License is it distributed under;
* How big is it?

I'm including that last one, because some extensions are huge:
* CASS comes in at just under 1 GB;
* A full blown installation of Language Tool is the best part of 40 GB.
(I'm currently at 32 GB, and haven't finished installing it.)
* One of the clip-art extensions comes in at just under 1 GB in size;

> [1] E.g. Sure: we can query extension for the license they are published under
> and only list those that have one specific license. But is there a
> realistic use case for that? How many people will do that really?

I for one, don't want to download what looks like a promising extension,
or template, that claims to use an OpenSource license, only to discover
that it really uses a a closed source license along the lines of "All
your Bases, they belong to us". (In either the LibO or AOo extension
repository, there is an extension with a crayon license along those lines.)

> [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_Viable_Product

Where does that leave the template/extension combination that
masquerades as an accounting package, whose license prohibits usage
within a commercial context?

jonathon

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[toki]

On 10/12/18 9:28 AM, kainz.a wrote:
> Template contributor: Share his template, don't care about LibO version

As a template contributor, in theory, I'm not concerned about the
specific version of LibO that is used.

Two of the templates I've uploaded, haven't been broken by changes
within LibO.

For the third set of templates I've uploaded, every recent point release
of LibO has broken something within the template.  Usually trivial, and
easy to fix. For template bug reports, LibO version number is mandatory
and template version number is irrelevant, simple because the LibO
version is the only thing I need, to fix 99.% of reported issues.
In that 0.0001% where LibO isn't the culprit, I usually have an updated
version of the template, that has a fix for their issue.

jonathon

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[MiguelAngel]

Hi Bjoern,

I have been at ask since the beginning, so let me think that I can talk 
with some knowledge.


Is it successful? Apparently maybe, many users is the only place they 
know. But many people remains in the AOo forums specially volunteers 
because don't like Ask.


For me Its usability is far from optimal.Basics like messages from 
threads, badly works.


IMHO, unless Ask has some hidden capabilities for that purpose, I cannot 
see how it can serve to improve the current situation for extensions and 
templates. Sure I need to review the graduation of my contact lenses.:)


Anyway, if it's so good or the better solution in this situation, I 
think you don't need of anyone for that, so please just do it. We can 
live with two places at once.


Miguel Ángel

El 12/10/18 a las 1:12, Bjoern Michaelsen escribió:

Hi Miguel,

(you do not seem to be subscribed to the design@ list, so others will not see
your mail. I will reply anyway, but please consider subscribing to the mailing
list when discussing there.)

On Thu, Oct 11, 2018 at 10:56:43PM +0200, Miguel Ángel Ríos Vázquez wrote:

Can we really think about using Ask for that?

yes. The problems are well-known, have repeatedly communicated in the project
since at least 2013. There really isnt any news here. Unfortunately, there has
been little movement, the community around the old extension webpage did not
grow despite efforts to do so and even external commercial support wasnt
unlocking the situation.

OTOH, my mail clearly stated that I would like to invite the design team to
consider thinking outside of the box and ALSO think about ask.libreoffice.org
as a platform. This e.g. doesnt mean that the old Plone site _needs_ to die --
but it should not be the only platform considered to provide the much needed
content hosting.

If this results in three to four people volunteering to push the old page
forward in a coordinated effort, I am a happy bunny. BUT: Given this has been
tried since 2013 at least and given the feedback I heard from even commercial
suppliers about the state of things, I am not too optimistic.
  

My impression is that it is not even very well accepted as a forum. Not an
example of success.

Impressions are odd in that. ask.libreoffice.org is certainly the most
successful forum LibreOffice currently hosts.

https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/users/  shows currently 1547 pages of 30 users
each, so >45.000 registered accounts on ask.libreoffice.org. For comparison:
wiki.documentfoundation.org has ~17.000 accounts. I'd assume all other TDF
infra has less accounts.

https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/questions/  has >29.000 _english_ questions
alone. For comparision: wiki.documentfoundation.org has ~22.000 pages in all
languages.

While there is always room for improvement, ask.libreoffice.org is our most
successful platform -- by far.


And on the other hand we could be more thankful with the volunteer work of
the people in the project, whether we like it or not.

That is also true for those content creators trying to use the extension
website to publish content. I posted some random tweets that show their
experience. Unfortunately, that feedback isnt too hard to find and has been
around for years. People uploading their first extension or template are
newcomers to the community -- and as active contributors we should make sure
their experience is not too aweful. The tweets -- together with the fact that
so many extensions and templates are hosted elsewhere (e.g. on github) shows
that we are loosing contributors and miss the opportunity to integrate them
with the wider community. We let those future contributors down.


So: tl;dr: I encouraged the design team to look ALSO look at ask.libreoffice.org
for allowing content publication, esp. since we had good past experience with
getting commercial support for it for well-defined feature requests. That
doesnt rule out Plone as a platform should we (finally) find enough volunteers
for it to gain some more inertia. So if you like the old extension site, feel 
free
to contribute to it (and find some others to do the same).

Best,

Bjoern




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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

Hi,

On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 04:45:51PM +0200, kainz.a wrote:
> When I look at popular webpages where you can share your content like image
> webpages, openclipart, ... they are all very simple. 
> [...]
> The page can be used for extensions, templates, documentations, ...

Yes.

So Im going to discuss tools/platforms here one more time -- mostly to show how
futile it is to discuss platforms and feature checklists. ;)

E.g. a well-configured discourse.org forum could likely replace:
- Nabble forums
- Extension hosting
- Template hosting
- AskBot

Still, I would object to simply "setup an instance" hard. Why? Because it would
be yet-another-platform to maintain. The discourse maintainer would shout at
the askbot maintainer that they should stop their stuff and really help with
discourse. The askbot maintainer would shout at the Plone maintainer to stop
their stuff and really help with askbot. The Plone maintainer would shout at
the discourse maintainer to stop their stuff and help with Plone.

Content (accounts, posts and entries) is king. Adding new CMSes without
migrating old content over to it is splitting up our volunteer forces and
leaving us with too little on all of them.

So, to allow our volunteers to build awesome platforms, we need to have them
focused. This is why consolidating content is important: If we have fewer
platforms, we can have more hands and more content on those. Also, it makes it
easier to migrate should we need to change platforms again someday, if our
content is on fewer platforms.

As such, wrt the "identify core usecases" task for the design mailing list, it
is really about identifying the essential core functionality that we cannot
live without and that have to be kept even over a migration to a new
platform. Setting up a new platform requires having a plan to migrate existing
content and user accounts. The fewer existing platforms need to be migrated,
the better. Therefore adding platforms is always a burden for the future.

The design mailing list OTOH should not be so much about identifying
"nice-to-have"s. As a volunteer project, we do not have to priotize those: They
get done, if a volunteer is excited by the idea and spends his time to
implement it.

Best,

Bjoern

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[kainz.a]

When I look at popular webpages where you can share your content like image
webpages, openclipart, ... they are all very simple.

One overview page with Screenshots and description how is the developer and
categories.

Upload page with uploader, title, description, category and licence. Maybe
tested with version.

Detail page show the selected item and related stuff like other stuff from
user, related things.

Page moderator can edit categories and block content.

Users can rate and review stuff. Maybe it could be useful that users can
submit updates and the origin contributor can review it or update it. So
something like collaborative work.

Contributors have an profile with links to payment pages like patrons, ...
on each template or extensions page you see user information and patron
page links.

The page can be used for extensions, templates, documentations, ...

Nice things would be to have something like a connection to libreoffice
online where you can see if the template, extensions work (for page
moderators).

Categories: each app is an category and than some (not more than 10) other
categories.

Bjoern Michaelsen  schrieb am Fr., 12.
Okt. 2018, 16:02:

> Hi Maarten,
>
> On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 02:06:54PM +0200, Maarten Brouwers (murb) wrote:
> > What about adapting Mozilla’s extension-site?
>
> So lets phrase the problem differently: We are not lacking tools or
> platforms.
> We are lacking volunteers to maintain, develop and moderate on platforms.
> So if
> you find a team of 2 to 3 enthusiastic volunteers that are willing to push
> a
> platform forward that is great. That platform can be Mozilla Addons,
> Askbot,
> Plone or something else.
>
> OTOH that is for later: This is the design list and the focus should be on
> identifying the vital core features needed on a solution. I opened the
> discussion with Askbot as it provides this:
> - We currently have a well-maintained instance.
> - We currently have active moderators on that site.
> - We were able to purchase development on AskBot.
>
> So the workflow has to be:
>
> 1/ Identify core needs and usecases
> 2/ Find volunteers, enthusiasts and maintainers, who can provide these core
>usecases with ~whatever tool they want.
> 3/ Implement MVP on a platform and extend usecases as volunteer resources
> allow
>(maybe topped up with some payed development, if that is worth it)
>
> The tools are NOT the important part of this. People are. Considering
> AskBot,
> which has 100 to 1000 moderators:
>
> https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/badges/14/supporter/
> https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/badges/9/critic/
>
> instead of _only_ considering Plone, because "we always used it" is putting
> people first.
>
> So tl;dr: This is the design list, we do 1/ "Identify core needs and
> usecases"
> here. No tools/platform discussion[1]. Next up would be finding
> enthusiastic
> people willing to work on this. For the most part, they can use whatever
> tool
> they want, if they get stuff done. Even if I think their tool is horrible
> or
> "a bus turned into a car", I am happy, if the users of the site are happy
> and
> there is an active set of volunteers[2] maintaining it.
>
> Best,
>
> Bjoern
>
>
> [1] And again: Saying "Do not limit yourself to Plone" is exactly that: It
> keeps the tools out of a discussion that should identify core usecases.
> [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor
>
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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

Hi Maarten,

On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 02:06:54PM +0200, Maarten Brouwers (murb) wrote:
> What about adapting Mozilla’s extension-site? 

So lets phrase the problem differently: We are not lacking tools or platforms.
We are lacking volunteers to maintain, develop and moderate on platforms. So if
you find a team of 2 to 3 enthusiastic volunteers that are willing to push a
platform forward that is great. That platform can be Mozilla Addons, Askbot,
Plone or something else.

OTOH that is for later: This is the design list and the focus should be on
identifying the vital core features needed on a solution. I opened the
discussion with Askbot as it provides this:
- We currently have a well-maintained instance.
- We currently have active moderators on that site.
- We were able to purchase development on AskBot.

So the workflow has to be:

1/ Identify core needs and usecases
2/ Find volunteers, enthusiasts and maintainers, who can provide these core
   usecases with ~whatever tool they want.
3/ Implement MVP on a platform and extend usecases as volunteer resources allow
   (maybe topped up with some payed development, if that is worth it)

The tools are NOT the important part of this. People are. Considering AskBot,
which has 100 to 1000 moderators:

https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/badges/14/supporter/
https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/badges/9/critic/

instead of _only_ considering Plone, because "we always used it" is putting
people first.

So tl;dr: This is the design list, we do 1/ "Identify core needs and usecases"
here. No tools/platform discussion[1]. Next up would be finding enthusiastic
people willing to work on this. For the most part, they can use whatever tool
they want, if they get stuff done. Even if I think their tool is horrible or
"a bus turned into a car", I am happy, if the users of the site are happy and
there is an active set of volunteers[2] maintaining it.

Best,

Bjoern


[1] And again: Saying "Do not limit yourself to Plone" is exactly that: It
keeps the tools out of a discussion that should identify core usecases.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Maarten Brouwers (murb)]

What about adapting Mozilla’s extension-site? From an and-user’s perspective I 
think they’ve well figured out how such site should work, at least from a 
consumer’s perspective. Adopting a Q/A site for something that allows for a 
structured presentation of an extension looks like turning a bus into a car. 
Sure it will function, but I wouldn’t expect the UX to gain anything from it. 

Live site: https://addons.mozilla.org 

Source:
https://github.com/mozilla/addons-server 
 (Python / Django based)
https://github.com/mozilla/addons-frontend 
 (JavaScript / React based)


g.,


Maarten Brouwers

> Op 11 okt. 2018, om 22:56 heeft Miguel Ángel Ríos Vázquez 
>  het volgende geschreven:
> 
> Can we really think about using Ask for that?
> 
> My impression is that it is not even very well accepted as a forum. Not an 
> example of success.
> 
> For me the current web of extensions looks and works well enough.
> 
> And on the other hand we could be more thankful with the volunteer work of 
> the people in the project, whether we like it or not.
> 
> Miguel Ángel.
> 
> El 11/10/18 a las 14:58, Bjoern Michaelsen escribió:
>> Hello Design Team,
>> as you might be aware, the user experience of our extension and template
>> website causes users a lot of concern[1]. This is despite volunteer efforts
>> trying to move this forward, but stalling due to limited resources, which led
>> to TDF even attempting to get commercial support for Plone[2] to augment the
>> the limited volunteer ressources available. The latter did not help to
>> meaningfully improve the situation either.
>> So as all current efforts there are stalled, I looked around for alternative
>> solutions to our usecase -- which is hosting auxiliary content for 
>> LibreOffice
>> consumers. We already have a platform that does that, which is 
>> ask.libreoffice.org.
>> ask.libreoffice.org already allows uploading of templates as attachments to
>> questions, so it can already be used for templates. Doing so (e.g. by 
>> posting a
>> self-answered question) is possible, but not exactly intuitive. However, 
>> askbot
>> also provides:
>> - various logins including OAuth etc. (which currently is a hassle on Plone)
>> - distributed moderation and gamification (which currently is a bottleneck 
>> on Plone)
>> - better discoveribility, tagging and social media integration
>> - markdown, mini-wiki and discussion of content
>> - multi-language support
>> That is, the experience for template creators and consumers is already much 
>> better
>> on askbot than it is on the current extension and templates website, which is
>> stalled and currently has no clear path to even get to a experience 
>> comparable
>> with askbot -- let alone beyond.
>> As such, I would like to suggest the design team to investigate, if it is 
>> feasable:
>> - to extend askbots existing UI to offer uploading of templates
>>   (well, technically that is already possible: This is just about making the
>>   usecase more obvious to users, e.g. with a guided "templates upload 
>> wizard")
>> - to extend askbots configuration to also allow .oxt files as uploads and 
>> offer
>>   the same for extensions
>> - finally, use e.g. tags to provide a "template" or "extension" view of
>>   ask.libreoffice.org
>> Unlike the rather limited successes we had with Plone, TDF sucessfully 
>> triggered
>> improvements of askbot in the past[3], so given some well-scoped choices and
>> selections made by the design team wrt askbot could help guide the same in 
>> the
>> future.
>> Best,
>> Bjoern
>> [1] Seen e.g. by:
>> a/ repeated cries for help on twitter, some examples:
>>https://twitter.com/nimbleslides/status/1020899933161848832
>>https://twitter.com/FloraCanou/status/1020517686453735424
>> b/ currently no presentation templates being offered there, despite this
>>being the most common use case:
>>
>> https://extensions.libreoffice.org/templates?getCategories=Presentation=any
>>and massive template collections actually being hosted elsewhere e.g.:
>>https://github.com/dohliam/libreoffice-impress-templates
>> [2] see entry for 2016-02-18 on 
>> https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/BoD_Decisions
>> [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Askbot
> 
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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 01:06:41PM +0200, Cor Nouws wrote:
> Bjoern Michaelsen wrote on 12-10-18 12:08:
> 
> > Yes, please. That document is already exploring the rarest cornercases:
> > 
> > - Bookkeeping a bazillion entries of metadata shouldnt be an end to itself:
> >   The webpage should handle metadata about extensions, if there is a 
> > reasonable
> >   usecase for using it e.g. in a query. However even basic querying -- apart
> >   from maybe for tags -- is already an advanced feature that 99% of users 
> > wont
> >   use.
> > - If metadata is extracted for search and querying, it should be parsed from
> 
> So the idea is that Ask. will do that?

Well, the first question is: do we need all that metadata at all? It would only
be useful if its of help in meaningful queries by users. Once we found that
there is a useful query which requires the website to be aware of metadata
about an extension and have a realistic meaningful usecase for that -- and only
then -- we should decide on implementing that[1].

The second question then is how to get that metadata. E.g. the license has to
be in the extension itself. So why bothering to ask the uploader about it,
possibly causing even mismatched metadata, because the manual entry had a
different value than what is in the metadata of the extension itself.


But more broadly my point is: We should start with a MVP[2] and then extend
upon that as we find meaningful user stories (features) to add. That also means
we should ONLY add metadata when we need it and also have a fetaure that makes
having that metadata useful.

Having a metric ton of metadata "just in case" we _might_ _possibly_ use it one
day is BAD. Asking uploaders for huge amount of metadata in errorprone manual
entry is WORSE, esp. if that metadata is not useful for meaningful queries.

So this is more about how to do iterative development: Start with a minimal
core feature set and make that right, and then incrementally add features one
by one. Do NOT start to collect metadata for the next feature "just in case", if
you havent completed putting the metadata from the current feature to best use
in queries etc.

Essentially, we never want to burden users with having to provide metadata, if
that metadata is not needed for a relevant and useful query to find extensions.

FWIW, this is mostly irrelevant for a decision between Askbot or Plone. For
that the relevant question is: For which do we find more contributors and
moderators and as means of last resort: commercial external support.

Best,

Bjoern

[1] E.g. Sure: we can query extension for the license they are published under
and only list those that have one specific license. But is there a
realisitic use case for that? How many people will do that really?
[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_Viable_Product

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Cor Nouws]

Bjoern Michaelsen wrote on 12-10-18 12:08:

> Yes, please. That document is already exploring the rarest cornercases:
> 
> - Bookkeeping a bazillion entries of metadata shouldnt be an end to itself:
>   The webpage should handle metadata about extensions, if there is a 
> reasonable
>   usecase for using it e.g. in a query. However even basic querying -- apart
>   from maybe for tags -- is already an advanced feature that 99% of users wont
>   use.
> - If metadata is extracted for search and querying, it should be parsed from

So the idea is that Ask. will do that?

>   the extension itself and not manually entered (or even duplicated: most of
>   the stuff is already in the extension itself)
> 
>> Define the different users and what they want.
> 
> 99% of extensions are:

well, maybe 95+%.

> - single revision
> - single author
> - cross platform
> 
> That is the usecase we should optimize for. Adding features for the 1% other
> extensions should not be done if it adds complexity for the majority of
> uploaders.

If adding limited number of extra features is simple, and doesn't put a
burden on all users, that would be fine.

> So in fact, half of the features in the google doc should be moved aside for
> really, really pinning down a simple workflow for those 99% of uploaders that
> wrote some single revision StarBasic or Python extension on their own.

So practical: the design, and thus the UI burden, can be reduced by
skipping the project-idea. A project is useful for an extension that has
more revisions, maybe for various versions of LibreOffice. But in those
cases, the maker of the extension can just upload another one, and add a
note to the previous version about the new one.
Things like that.

Cheers,
Cor

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[MiguelAngel]

https://planet.documentfoundation.org/
October 11/2018
Andreas comment about, nothing else to say.
Miguel Ángel.

El 12/10/18 a las 11:28, kainz.a escribió:

HI,

for the basic UX there are still some ideas from the design team
https://docs.google.com/document/d/12dbdmzi3dy5TwNsIao0MXZSnl7X4jMk5zKwy8Azeohg
(sorry that it is on gdocs)

I also want to say if we have an good extension layout for templates
it can be used also for the documentation webpage
cause both show the same content templates show an template to download
and bocumentation show an book, ... whatever to download.

And please keep it simple. Define the different users and what they want.
LibO user: Install the extension and keep it up to date
Template contributor: Share his template, don't care about LibO version
extension contributor: Extend LibO functionality
Maintainer: Easy setup with collaborative workflow

I'm sorry that Andi didn't join the discussion,
cause it should support his work
and hopefully find new contributors.

Cheers
Andreas



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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Heiko Tietze]

On 10/12/18 11:59 AM, Cor Nouws wrote:
> kainz.a wrote on 12-10-18 11:28:
>> https://docs.google.com/document/d/12dbdmzi3dy5TwNsIao0MXZSnl7X4jMk5zKwy8Azeohg
> 
> It is an interesting mixture of really useful stuff and some overkill -
> IMO. Just as the current site.

It _was_ a description of the current site with the idea to improve based on 
requirements discussion. The document is out-dated.


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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

Hi,

On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 12:08:32PM +0200, Bjoern Michaelsen wrote:
> So in fact, half of the features in the google doc should be moved aside for
> really, really pinning down a simple workflow for those 99% of uploaders that
> wrote some single revision StarBasic or Python extension on their own.

Or rather:

Split the document up in two sections: First one for:

- single author
- single revision
- cross plattform

uploads (99%), the second for everything else (1%). You can create persona for
these two uploaders too, if it makes you happy.

Best,

Bjoern

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 11:28:08AM +0200, kainz.a wrote:
> for the basic UX there are still some ideas from the design team
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/12dbdmzi3dy5TwNsIao0MXZSnl7X4jMk5zKwy8Azeohg
> (sorry that it is on gdocs)

Commented.

> And please keep it simple.

Yes, please. That document is already exploring the rarest cornercases:

- Bookkeeping a bazillion entries of metadata shouldnt be an end to itself:
  The webpage should handle metadata about extensions, if there is a reasonable
  usecase for using it e.g. in a query. However even basic querying -- apart
  from maybe for tags -- is already an advanced feature that 99% of users wont
  use.
- If metadata is extracted for search and querying, it should be parsed from
  the extension itself and not manually entered (or even duplicated: most of
  the stuff is already in the extension itself)

> Define the different users and what they want.

99% of extensions are:
- single revision
- single author
- cross platform

That is the usecase we should optimize for. Adding features for the 1% other
extensions should not be done if it adds complexity for the majority of
uploaders.

So in fact, half of the features in the google doc should be moved aside for
really, really pinning down a simple workflow for those 99% of uploaders that
wrote some single revision StarBasic or Python extension on their own.

Best,

Bjoern

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Cor Nouws]

kainz.a wrote on 12-10-18 11:28:

> for the basic UX there are still some ideas from the design team
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/12dbdmzi3dy5TwNsIao0MXZSnl7X4jMk5zKwy8Azeohg
> (sorry that it is on gdocs)

It is an interesting mixture of really useful stuff and some overkill -
IMO. Just as the current site.


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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[kainz.a]

HI,

for the basic UX there are still some ideas from the design team
https://docs.google.com/document/d/12dbdmzi3dy5TwNsIao0MXZSnl7X4jMk5zKwy8Azeohg
(sorry that it is on gdocs)

I also want to say if we have an good extension layout for templates
it can be used also for the documentation webpage
cause both show the same content templates show an template to download
and bocumentation show an book, ... whatever to download.

And please keep it simple. Define the different users and what they want.
LibO user: Install the extension and keep it up to date
Template contributor: Share his template, don't care about LibO version
extension contributor: Extend LibO functionality
Maintainer: Easy setup with collaborative workflow

I'm sorry that Andi didn't join the discussion,
cause it should support his work
and hopefully find new contributors.

Cheers
Andreas

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

Hi,

On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 08:23:52AM +0200, kainz.a wrote:
> For me templates and extension didn't have the same "developer" group.
> extensions should have ongoing releases so a git orientated workflow is
> more usefull. The source of a lot extensions are on githab or gitlab, ...
> Templates will be done by office users so an simple upload will be usefull.

Yes, source hosting is another issue -- and one were neither Plone nor Askbot
provide an solution yet. If an extension developer publishes on github/gitlab
anyway, I think their main remaining need is discoverability.

We see that on the existing extension webpage, were a lot of content was not
hosted on extensions.libreoffice.org, but just linked to
github/gitlab/whereever. Both Plone and Askbot can provide that, but the Askbot
experience is much simpler because of e.g. OAuth login, distributed moderation,
discussion/mini-wiki being available.

So, I wouldnt want to block on solving the source-hosting problem for now and
leave it for later. Lets solve the basic UX first.

> Another big question is about development. Which platform supports a
> community orientated development, which mean when there is a group how do
> they work together on the webpage / platform. As example Andi do the
> extension page maintanance someone would like to play around with different
> design layouts, does the platform support cooperative work and an
> "playground" for new developments?

I think this is the key here: So far, Andi being a lone warrior here has been
the limiting factor -- not by lack of skill, but by being alone. If there are
multiple people willing to work on this with Plone, that is great. But at this
point, I would not want to turn down a solution based on e.g. Askbot if that
shows more prospect.

Best,

Bjoern

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

Hi,

On Thu, Oct 11, 2018 at 09:16:34PM -0300, Daniel A. Rodriguez wrote:
> So, if the problems are well known and no platform cover all the
> project needs, what about a tender to get something from scratch?

That would broaden the scope of this in major way and increase the change of
failure: If only tenders were always "I write down what I want, pay and get
what I imagined.": But they arent and unfortunately for complex topics like
this one, verifying a tender result is almost as much work as the
implementation itself[1].

Also there is a cost in maintanance that we have to pay (or have to ensure
volunteer to be available for) for each and every CMS we host. That cost is
higher the more different CMS we have and the more customized our workflows on
them are.

We currently have:
- Silverstripe for static content
- Wordpress for news
- MediaWiki for project development resources (development on LibreOffice 
itself)
- Askbot (content on top of LibreOffice)
- Plone

Best,

Bjoern


[1] Also, as migration paths are hard, there is a certain risk this will end as
https://xkcd.com/927/

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

Hi,

On Thu, Oct 11, 2018 at 09:27:09PM -0300, Ricardo Dos Santos wrote:
> Is there a possibility of an adaptation of the pages and continue using
> Plone?
> Or the effort does not pay?

In theory, you can build pretty much anything on any platform or language. In
practice, the available volunteers are limiting what can be done.

Andi is neither stupid nor missing enthusiasm, but he is ALONE and has been for
years. So despite his heroic effort, what can be accomplished for the extension
website is limited compared to what is likely possible with other platforms
(where there might be more features available out-of-the-box and more
volunteers able or willing to contribute).

This is why other platform should be IMHO considered too.

Best,

Bjoern

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Miguel Ángel Ríos Vázquez]

Can we really think about using Ask for that?

My impression is that it is not even very well accepted as a forum. Not 
an example of success.


For me the current web of extensions looks and works well enough.

And on the other hand we could be more thankful with the volunteer work 
of the people in the project, whether we like it or not.


Miguel Ángel.

El 11/10/18 a las 14:58, Bjoern Michaelsen escribió:

Hello Design Team,

as you might be aware, the user experience of our extension and template
website causes users a lot of concern[1]. This is despite volunteer efforts
trying to move this forward, but stalling due to limited resources, which led
to TDF even attempting to get commercial support for Plone[2] to augment the
the limited volunteer ressources available. The latter did not help to
meaningfully improve the situation either.

So as all current efforts there are stalled, I looked around for alternative
solutions to our usecase -- which is hosting auxiliary content for LibreOffice
consumers. We already have a platform that does that, which is 
ask.libreoffice.org.

ask.libreoffice.org already allows uploading of templates as attachments to
questions, so it can already be used for templates. Doing so (e.g. by posting a
self-answered question) is possible, but not exactly intuitive. However, askbot
also provides:

- various logins including OAuth etc. (which currently is a hassle on Plone)
- distributed moderation and gamification (which currently is a bottleneck on 
Plone)
- better discoveribility, tagging and social media integration
- markdown, mini-wiki and discussion of content
- multi-language support

That is, the experience for template creators and consumers is already much 
better
on askbot than it is on the current extension and templates website, which is
stalled and currently has no clear path to even get to a experience comparable
with askbot -- let alone beyond.

As such, I would like to suggest the design team to investigate, if it is 
feasable:

- to extend askbots existing UI to offer uploading of templates
   (well, technically that is already possible: This is just about making the
   usecase more obvious to users, e.g. with a guided "templates upload wizard")
- to extend askbots configuration to also allow .oxt files as uploads and offer
   the same for extensions
- finally, use e.g. tags to provide a "template" or "extension" view of
   ask.libreoffice.org

Unlike the rather limited successes we had with Plone, TDF sucessfully triggered
improvements of askbot in the past[3], so given some well-scoped choices and
selections made by the design team wrt askbot could help guide the same in the
future.

Best,

Bjoern


[1] Seen e.g. by:
 a/ repeated cries for help on twitter, some examples:
https://twitter.com/nimbleslides/status/1020899933161848832
https://twitter.com/FloraCanou/status/1020517686453735424
 b/ currently no presentation templates being offered there, despite this
being the most common use case:

https://extensions.libreoffice.org/templates?getCategories=Presentation=any
and massive template collections actually being hosted elsewhere e.g.:
https://github.com/dohliam/libreoffice-impress-templates
[2] see entry for 2016-02-18 on 
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/BoD_Decisions
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Askbot



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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[kainz.a]

Hi,

first thanks for ask the question about the extension webpage. And thanks
to Andi that he maintain the page since a long time now.

I'm always for concentrate stuff as it's easier to maintain and easier for
people to use.

For me templates and extension didn't have the same "developer" group.
extensions should have ongoing releases so a git orientated workflow is
more usefull. The source of a lot extensions are on githab or gitlab, ...
Templates will be done by office users so an simple upload will be usefull.

From design point of view I would love to have everything together on
libreoffice.org everywhere the same css file and the same layout.

Another big question is about development. Which platform supports a
community orientated development, which mean when there is a group how do
they work together on the webpage / platform. As example Andi do the
extension page maintanance someone would like to play around with different
design layouts, does the platform support cooperative work and an
"playground" for new developments?

Cheers
Andreas Kainz



Am Fr., 12. Okt. 2018 um 02:27 Uhr schrieb Ricardo Dos Santos <
ricardo.uxdesig...@gmail.com>:

> Hello,
>
> Is there a possibility of an adaptation of the pages and continue using
> Plone?
>
> Or the effort does not pay?
>
> Thanks for attention,
>
> Ricardo
>
> Em qui, 11 de out de 2018 21:17, Daniel A. Rodriguez <
> drodrig...@libreoffice.org> escreveu:
>
> > El jue., 11 oct. 2018 a las 20:24, Thorsten Behrens
> > () escribió:
> > >
> > > Hi Bjoern, *,
> > >
> > > Bjoern Michaelsen wrote:
> > > > This is despite volunteer efforts trying to move this forward, but
> > > > stalling due to limited resources, which led to TDF even attempting
> > > > to get commercial support for Plone[2] to augment the the limited
> > > > volunteer ressources available.
> > > >
> > > Just to spell the above out a bit - despite heroic efforts from Andi,
> > > indeed it appeared the plone site never attracted enough other
> > > contributors.
> > >
> > > So tons of kudos go to Andi here; still I agree with Bjoern that it
> > > would be good to also look for alternative solutions now.
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > >
> > > -- Thorsten
> >
> >
> > So, if the problems are well known and no platform cover all the
> > project needs, what about a tender to get something from scratch?
> >
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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Ricardo Dos Santos]

Hello,

Is there a possibility of an adaptation of the pages and continue using
Plone?

Or the effort does not pay?

Thanks for attention,

Ricardo

Em qui, 11 de out de 2018 21:17, Daniel A. Rodriguez <
drodrig...@libreoffice.org> escreveu:

> El jue., 11 oct. 2018 a las 20:24, Thorsten Behrens
> () escribió:
> >
> > Hi Bjoern, *,
> >
> > Bjoern Michaelsen wrote:
> > > This is despite volunteer efforts trying to move this forward, but
> > > stalling due to limited resources, which led to TDF even attempting
> > > to get commercial support for Plone[2] to augment the the limited
> > > volunteer ressources available.
> > >
> > Just to spell the above out a bit - despite heroic efforts from Andi,
> > indeed it appeared the plone site never attracted enough other
> > contributors.
> >
> > So tons of kudos go to Andi here; still I agree with Bjoern that it
> > would be good to also look for alternative solutions now.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > -- Thorsten
>
>
> So, if the problems are well known and no platform cover all the
> project needs, what about a tender to get something from scratch?
>
> --
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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Daniel A. Rodriguez]

El jue., 11 oct. 2018 a las 20:24, Thorsten Behrens
() escribió:
>
> Hi Bjoern, *,
>
> Bjoern Michaelsen wrote:
> > This is despite volunteer efforts trying to move this forward, but
> > stalling due to limited resources, which led to TDF even attempting
> > to get commercial support for Plone[2] to augment the the limited
> > volunteer ressources available.
> >
> Just to spell the above out a bit - despite heroic efforts from Andi,
> indeed it appeared the plone site never attracted enough other
> contributors.
>
> So tons of kudos go to Andi here; still I agree with Bjoern that it
> would be good to also look for alternative solutions now.
>
> Cheers,
>
> -- Thorsten


So, if the problems are well known and no platform cover all the
project needs, what about a tender to get something from scratch?

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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Thorsten Behrens]

Hi Bjoern, *,

Bjoern Michaelsen wrote:
> This is despite volunteer efforts trying to move this forward, but
> stalling due to limited resources, which led to TDF even attempting
> to get commercial support for Plone[2] to augment the the limited
> volunteer ressources available.
>
Just to spell the above out a bit - despite heroic efforts from Andi,
indeed it appeared the plone site never attracted enough other
contributors.

So tons of kudos go to Andi here; still I agree with Bjoern that it
would be good to also look for alternative solutions now.

Cheers,

-- Thorsten
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Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

Hi Miguel,

(you do not seem to be subscribed to the design@ list, so others will not see
your mail. I will reply anyway, but please consider subscribing to the mailing
list when discussing there.)

On Thu, Oct 11, 2018 at 10:56:43PM +0200, Miguel Ángel Ríos Vázquez wrote:
> Can we really think about using Ask for that?

yes. The problems are well-known, have repeatedly communicated in the project
since at least 2013. There really isnt any news here. Unfortunately, there has
been little movement, the community around the old extension webpage did not
grow despite efforts to do so and even external commercial support wasnt
unlocking the situation.

OTOH, my mail clearly stated that I would like to invite the design team to
consider thinking outside of the box and ALSO think about ask.libreoffice.org
as a platform. This e.g. doesnt mean that the old Plone site _needs_ to die --
but it should not be the only platform considered to provide the much needed
content hosting.

If this results in three to four people volunteering to push the old page
forward in a coordinated effort, I am a happy bunny. BUT: Given this has been
tried since 2013 at least and given the feedback I heard from even commercial
suppliers about the state of things, I am not too optimistic.
 
> My impression is that it is not even very well accepted as a forum. Not an
> example of success.

Impressions are odd in that. ask.libreoffice.org is certainly the most
successful forum LibreOffice currently hosts. 

https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/users/ shows currently 1547 pages of 30 users
each, so >45.000 registered accounts on ask.libreoffice.org. For comparison:
wiki.documentfoundation.org has ~17.000 accounts. I'd assume all other TDF
infra has less accounts.

https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/questions/ has >29.000 _english_ questions
alone. For comparision: wiki.documentfoundation.org has ~22.000 pages in all
languages.

While there is always room for improvement, ask.libreoffice.org is our most
successful platform -- by far.

> And on the other hand we could be more thankful with the volunteer work of
> the people in the project, whether we like it or not.

That is also true for those content creators trying to use the extension
website to publish content. I posted some random tweets that show their
experience. Unfortunately, that feedback isnt too hard to find and has been
around for years. People uploading their first extension or template are
newcomers to the community -- and as active contributors we should make sure
their experience is not too aweful. The tweets -- together with the fact that
so many extensions and templates are hosted elsewhere (e.g. on github) shows
that we are loosing contributors and miss the opportunity to integrate them
with the wider community. We let those future contributors down.


So: tl;dr: I encouraged the design team to look ALSO look at ask.libreoffice.org
for allowing content publication, esp. since we had good past experience with
getting commercial support for it for well-defined feature requests. That
doesnt rule out Plone as a platform should we (finally) find enough volunteers
for it to gain some more inertia. So if you like the old extension site, feel 
free
to contribute to it (and find some others to do the same).

Best,

Bjoern

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[libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

Hello Design Team,

as you might be aware, the user experience of our extension and template
website causes users a lot of concern[1]. This is despite volunteer efforts
trying to move this forward, but stalling due to limited resources, which led
to TDF even attempting to get commercial support for Plone[2] to augment the
the limited volunteer ressources available. The latter did not help to
meaningfully improve the situation either.

So as all current efforts there are stalled, I looked around for alternative
solutions to our usecase -- which is hosting auxiliary content for LibreOffice
consumers. We already have a platform that does that, which is 
ask.libreoffice.org.

ask.libreoffice.org already allows uploading of templates as attachments to
questions, so it can already be used for templates. Doing so (e.g. by posting a
self-answered question) is possible, but not exactly intuitive. However, askbot
also provides:

- various logins including OAuth etc. (which currently is a hassle on Plone)
- distributed moderation and gamification (which currently is a bottleneck on 
Plone)
- better discoveribility, tagging and social media integration
- markdown, mini-wiki and discussion of content
- multi-language support

That is, the experience for template creators and consumers is already much 
better
on askbot than it is on the current extension and templates website, which is
stalled and currently has no clear path to even get to a experience comparable
with askbot -- let alone beyond.

As such, I would like to suggest the design team to investigate, if it is 
feasable:

- to extend askbots existing UI to offer uploading of templates
  (well, technically that is already possible: This is just about making the
  usecase more obvious to users, e.g. with a guided "templates upload wizard")
- to extend askbots configuration to also allow .oxt files as uploads and offer
  the same for extensions
- finally, use e.g. tags to provide a "template" or "extension" view of
  ask.libreoffice.org

Unlike the rather limited successes we had with Plone, TDF sucessfully triggered
improvements of askbot in the past[3], so given some well-scoped choices and
selections made by the design team wrt askbot could help guide the same in the
future.

Best,

Bjoern


[1] Seen e.g. by:
a/ repeated cries for help on twitter, some examples:
   https://twitter.com/nimbleslides/status/1020899933161848832
   https://twitter.com/FloraCanou/status/1020517686453735424
b/ currently no presentation templates being offered there, despite this
   being the most common use case:
   
https://extensions.libreoffice.org/templates?getCategories=Presentation=any
   and massive template collections actually being hosted elsewhere e.g.:
   https://github.com/dohliam/libreoffice-impress-templates
[2] see entry for 2016-02-18 on 
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/BoD_Decisions
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Askbot

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