Hi all,
I was wondering why this list is a bit dead (?!) and hoping to gain
some ideas for maybe reviving it.
I totally understand that most people at openbsd are devs and would
like to focus more on coding than advocacy so I was wondering if people
like me who are not that techy (mostly small ports) can help with
this part.
I am open to constructive criticism, so please forgive me if I seem
out of touch. I have been subscribed for close to a month and didn't
notice a lot of things happening around here :( so I was hoping
to spice things up a tiny bit.
Most of the ways in which I have tried previously is my creating
whole bunch of small openbsd github projects and sharing them on reddit
and twitter. But like this is barely scratching the surface of social
media. I feel like there is a lot more that could be done :)
Some of the basic things which I feel like are low hanging fruits
(1) Showcasing tutorials on setting up small projects.
One of the things that people get a good feeling from (me included)
is when we manage to get some service running, no matter how small
or insignificant it is. Like getting my znc setup, I was riding on
that high for like 2 weeks (I know this sounds a bit dumb cuz I am
a noob, but it was pretty nice to feel like I accomplished something).
So it might be nice to show how to set up small services.
I mean things like setting up a blog (using worpress or similar),
or a wiki, or a hugo/jekyll website.
There are a lot of really nice blog posts by a lot of cool people
which show work arounds (for quirks) for these things in OpenBSD.
It might be nice to have some kind of highlights page at openbsd
which shows these nice links. (I know undeadly.org exists but is
not pointed to by openbsd.org, would be nice if that could be done
if nothng else is possible)
I feel like while OpenBSD has really awesome benefits, the communication
of these with the community could do with some work.
(2) Having a bit more of a social presence
Doesn't need to be facebook/twitter. I know undeadly.org has some really nice
articles with highlight for nice things happening in the tech/ports lists
but unfortunately undeadly is not that well known
While I am by no means a social media expert I still feel the lack of
presence of OpenBSD in general media articles and published stories.
I am open to some idea about how to try and increase this part.
Some ways I can think of:
A) Getting in contact with news letter publishers and letting them
know of nice developments that have happened. I don't think that
linux news letters would be averse to having openbsd information
sent on them.
I am sure a lot of them would love if we send them information
and do some of the work of finding articles for them, which ties
into my previous part of having a highlights page
B) Having an official blog
I feel like this is a pretty important thing, especially in nowadays,
where most things are spread online. Having an official blog will make
things very easy for a lot of people to get interested. I am sure that
there are quite a lot of people willing to chip in for this part if it
was announced that there is going to be such an endeavor.
C) (A controversial point) Trying to make things look a bit more
stylistic (please don't kill me T.T )
While I agree that clarity is the most important part a small amount
of color in the official documentation is not the worst thing in
the world. I am open to this part being thrown out.
(3) Showcasing a page for people to get involved in various parts of
the project
Currently the pipeline to get involved seems like
try out obsd -> find something you find is not working or you don't like ->
find person working on it -> contact them -> bug report/patch to change
(have I missed something?)
This seems to be a tried and true pipeline which has worked so far.
It might also be good to have a page of open quests/projects in openbsd
where new people can contribute without having to delve too deep into
system code. This was inspired by my recent forays into string algorithms
on OpenBSD (nothing wrong with them, just that I was looking around and
trying to see what could be changed/improved).
Having devs post TODOs and help needed/appreciated into a web page allows for
interested parties to get a better look at ongoing projects.
Currently I haven't figured out anyway to see what current new projects
are being developed in OpenBSD. I feel like showcasing ongoing projects
is just as important as showing completed ones in the highlights.
(While watching presentations are conferences is definitely one way to see
ongoing projects it is nowhere near and optimal approach)
----
These three were my main points in sending this email.
Sorry that it got a bit long in the process.
Any things that I might be wrong about, I assure you I mean nothing harmful
so do let me know what I have missed and erred on.
I am only started using OpenBSD for a short while for less than 7-8 months
but I feel like in those 7-8 months a lot of the things that I have learned
could
have benefited from the above points to make the transition simpler :)
These are my personal thoughts so take them with handful of salt.
Hope you all are staying safe,
Aisha
