Hi Miguel, Kevin, Paulo, all, I already wrote a very(!) long mail, so I try to shorten it and send this version first...
Miguel Boto wrote: > On Saturday, 29 January, 2011 at 8:07 PM, Kevin Soviero wrote: > > > I would agree with you, except, you guys are the design team... I read in one of the previous mails that someone (Andy?) referred to unstable Internet connections. It would be much easier if you had kept the phrase you cite here (and the name of the poster). Reading several hundred LibO mails a day this would spare me some time I coudl spend on design work... > > That means your jobs are to work with graphic design among other > > things. If a user is paying per kilobyte, it will be difficult to > > contribute > > graphics and artwork, not to mention visiting the wiki, and download all > > those images on WIP pages... Please think about the people reading this mailing list because their area of interest is related to Design: developers, marketers, website and native-lang teams. They didn't have to do anything but subscribing to another mailing list and can follow the threads they are interested in. With mailing lists this is possible with poor connections too. > > A forum would not limit them anymore than they already are. Not the main contributors - but perhaps someone able to contribute only from time to time (e.g via Internet cafe) > > > > -- > > Kevin Soviero [... removed your phone number... ] > > > > > That´s true. Having or not a forum will not make things easier > or harder than what they already are. People without broadband > access still have to access the images to comment or improve > one way or another. Reading the mails first and deciding afterwards, if the linked graphic is worth spending time and money is a difference I think. > > > Usually there´s options in the forum control panel where the user > can disable the display of signatures, avatars and so forth. I don't see any necessity for avatars and long signatures - but this might help others perhaps in their workflow... > There´s > also administration options to limit the size of the images posted by > users in threads to make the forum more accessible for those without > broadband connections. Limitation per thread might be problematic - who knows how many iterations will be necessary to finalze a design? > And optionally those " thumbnails" can be > linked to full size images. This allows the user choose if it´s worth or > not to load the full version of the image. This is an advantage - no question. Perhaps we could allow very small attachments (up to 20 or 50 kB) to this list too? We'd have to ask Florian ... > > > It´s certainly not the perfect solution for everyone, but it has some > advantages that may be worth considering. It is important to keep an eye on the goals and find the best workflow to reach it. Some parts are easier in a forum, others are better handled in a mailing list. I'll try to sum up what is important to me: ACCESSIBILITY: 1. With unreliable and expensive Internet access following a ML is easier than a forum. It is no option to reduce the desing members to the ones with the best Internet access. Even if they have to go to (e.g.) Internet cafe's for better bandwidth we don't wan to exclude anybody. Especially community members in other related teams (developers, marketers, website and native lang group members) should be able to follow our discussions. As they don't contribute at the moment (possibly in future - who knows?), they can read our mails without good connections. 2. Mailing lists are necessary for people working offline (like me). 3. Employers block forum URL while webmail is allowed (here). 4. Community needs people working in different teams to transport interrelated questions and development. They profit from a unified workflow. PRESENTATION OF WORK: 1. Some small previews, intermediate mockups and proposals don't need to be stored in a central place, if they are only related to the posting. Here attachments to a forum or attachments to the ML are reasonable. Both are easier than uploading the image to an external image server and provide the link. 2. Iterative work needs to be stored centrally, so people can download one version and upload the next one to the same place. This can't be done with a forum or a ML, we need the wiki for the majority of our work. 3. Comparison of alternative proposals is easy in the wiki, because the work is accessible by adding the name of the file to the wiki page. I don't know if anything similar is possible with forum attachments, it is probably similar to ML postings (if attachments are allowed), where the attachment is stored with a more or less cryptic URL. 4. Presentation of our activities (even if they are work in progress) invite others to join our group - leading to more and better contributions. Here the wiki is crucial! EASE OF USE 1. For mailing lists you have to use a good client, providing citation, threading, filtering and marking the mails. With this tools a sufficient workflow should be possible. 2. Forums provide threads very easily, postings can be marked too - I don't know if custom filters are possible to sort the mails in other categories than the predefined ones. 3. Replying to several parts of a posting is easy in mailng lists (just reply to the mail, snip the unrelated content and reply to every part of the mail directly below the citation). In forums it depends on the layout: Adding citation tags, copying and pasting the original mail several times might be problematic. Full quotes are very time consuming to read and distract from the important parts of the postings. INTEGRATED APPROACH This would be the best way to handle the needs and interests of most of the team members. But mailing lists need to stay the central part of the work in order to allow other teams to contribute easily and follow the evolution of our design. When the website team will start again to evaluate Drupal for our main website (probably in a few months), there might be an option for integrated mailing lists and forums inside our infrastructure. But as our mailing lists contain thousands of mails the capacity of these services need to be evaluated very thoroughly. MY PERSONAL CONCLUSION I'd like to learn more about the integrated mailinglist/forum Paulo wrote about, but I still think that we can work with properly sorted mails from the mailing list without major drawbacks against a forum. If you want to, we could ask Florain, if it is possible to allow (small) attachments to this list. At the moment I see other - directly design related - work to be done more urgently (and I spent two hours for these two mails). If I can help anybody with threads, filters and marks in mails to make it easier to follow the discussions in our mail clients, I'd be happy to do so. > > > Sorry my limited English :( Most of us here aren't native speaker, so don't be afraid, your English is very good to understand. The longer I've been present on these international mailing lists, the more I improved my English :-) Best regards Bernhard -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
