HI All,
After some thought, I have a suggestion for how to order the the
listings on the pay for page which I hope is both fair, accurate, has
longevity, and is useful to the people visiting the page for whom we're
providing the info.
In the past we've ordered by region and we've ordered alphabetically. At
the moment the suggestion is to order by date joined and I don't think
that's a good idea (see below for why).
FIRST 3-4 PLACES
I'd like to propose that the first "3" positions (possibly more but no
more than 4), be ordered by current release manager position held in the
community, and that after that, depending on how many listings we have,
they be ordered by region & alphabetically.
I'd like to see the first position on the list be given to the current
release manager's company (Lilime ATM). I think that the job of current
release manager is huge, and that the company who is currently providing
the resources/employment of the release manager deserves all the support
and credit we can give, even if they joined yesterday! I agree with Josh
that there can seem like not much benefit to being the release manager
(or being their boss!), and so this seems to me like a "no brainer".
ALSO if I was a library wanting to get some development done then that's
the first thing I would want to know, and lets face it, we want to
encourage those libraries who DO want development done.
The second position on the list would be given to the current release
maintainer- ie the release manager for the current stable release (Bib
Libre ATM). Again, I think this is a big job, they are still doing a lot
of patching, answering a lot of questions on lists and generally
putting in a goodly amount of time and effort getting the current
release more stable, mostly I'm sure not directly funded. Again I think
that supporting the company that is providing the resources for someone
to do this job is the least we can do. It again would mean that a
library was "buying into" the idea of supporting the current stable release.
The third & fourth positions on the list could be to either the
immediate past release maintainer (in our case v 2.x - assuming they are
a different company), or the next company providing the most tangible
support to the community.
I think however that we stop this system after the top 3-4 positions,
because it is less useful after that. It may be that when there is a KSF
(or similar) there are some other positions which because of the amount
of work they entail, justify giving this same privileged to their
supporting company in which case we can extend it, and have clear rules
around it too.
I quite like the idea of the immediate past release managers being
listed (ie if they have stopped being current and aren't funding another
release themselves), because again being release manager is such a big
job, I think they deserve recognition beyond their "active term" - and
it kinda means they get a guaranteed "cash in" time for all that hard
work, even if they need to pass the torch to someone else for the next
release and concentrate or just building their own business.
REST OF THE LIST
THEN thinking about our actual website users, I imagine that what they
mostly want is to see who supports their area, so I'd like to see the
list split into countries or regions, ordered alphabetically, and with
the vendors listed alphabetically within them, including info on
contributions, positions held etc, if they are on/members of a KSF or
similar. It may be that we get big enough it's worth having the company
who supports or is principle sponsor of the local usergroup get first
position in that grouping - but that's a bit down the track.
WHY - well I think it's easier to read and understand, and to re-find a
company that way.
It will also make it easier to split up the list into "sane" chunks if
it gets to big for one "page". Ie it's pretty easy to have a North
America page, a South America page, a European Page, An African page, an
Australasian page etc in the future, and will make more sense to the
libraries trying to use it I think that having a "started in 2005" page.
WHY NOT BY DATE
I don't think that date joined is the best way to actually indicate who
is a good company (or person) to deal with, and date joined is no
inherent indicator of current involvement in a release, or even that the
company would be a good choice for getting the current release installed
& supported.
Katipo is a prime example of why not list by date (Even before selling
to Liblime), we had not funded a release manager for a few years, and
hadn't as a company been able to afford much official involvement in the
project, even though individuals still participated. I don't think that
it would be fair particularly, for us to be top of a page when others
were doing so much more (and indeed we listed alphabetically in part to
avoid that temptation).
While at the moment, the longest involved (listed) companies are at the
top of the page, I would would like to see us have a policy that
effectively achieves the same thing because I think those companies
should be at the top of the listings, but is "defensible", and
understandable for both libraries and vendors, and that allows for other
worthy companies in years to come to also get a spot in the sun if they
put in the hard yards like these guys have.
Cheers
Rachel
--
-----------------------------
Rachel Hamilton-Williams
General Manager
Katipo Communications Ltd
Phone: +64-4-934 1285
Mobile: 021 389 128
E-mail: rac...@katipo.co.nz
Web: www.katipo.co.nz
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