> > > Hi all, > > > > The OpenSolaris.org web site review committee is > looking for 2 > > volunteers to join the current 3 members (me, Alan > Coopersmith, > > and Alysson Troffer). The intent of the committee > is to review > > the content of those parts of OS.org that are > common to the > > community--things like the home page, etc.--so that > contentious > > issues can be avoided. > > > > The committee will NOT intended to produce content, > but merely > > review stuff for the common areas. Most stuff will > doubtlessly > > be approved without hesitation, but I think its > important that > > we have something in place to perform checks and > balances. > > > > To be clear: each communittee group will continue > to have sole > > discretion over the content of their part of the > web site. > > > > The committee is to be made up of 2 OGB members > plus 3 others, > > with no more than 2 Sun employees. > > why ? is this politics versus pragmatism ? > > Am I thinking too much here and really you need a few > external guys to make > a 50+/50- percentile split of external people versus > Sun people. If that is > the primary criterion then I just don't think you > need anyone else really. > The Sun people involved[1] are just fine and the nay > sayers that question > everything can take a flying leap off a short pier in > Cobourg Ontario. > Pretty cold right about now too. > > Also, the whole idea seems somewhat fuzzy still. > What is the purpose here? > et's suppose there is an update to the homepage with > some snazzy new > graphic but I don't like the colour scheme. So what? > Do I hold up the show > nd say "no, I don't like that shade of fuschia mixed > with magenta."
I don't like stupid PeeCee-ness either, and suspect your average Sun guy is at least as invested (literally, perhaps) in our success as anyone else. However, recalling the whole Indiana thing, I think it can't hurt if _everyone_ follows a common process for community buy-in on some things. You don't see commercial advertisements on the os.o page; a process like that could at least make it more difficult for a reasonable person to believe that Sun initiatives lacking broad community support received preferential treatment. Now, as I understand it, Indiana may not be as scary as some folks made it out to be; at least to some extent, backwards compatibility with existing SVR4 packages (as well as with most unpackaged binaries) should presumably be pretty good, making a lot of it little more than a question of how frightened people are about learning some new commands and conventions. But had there been more _process_ whereby controversy was dealt with, or dissenting opinions also recognized, or somesuch, and updating of the main page done under the auspices of the community, I think there would have been an opportunity to find common ground rather than further accentuate differences. So while I'm not crazy about bureaucracy (and I hope that this approval process will try for quick turnaround and try to inform and guide rather than censor), I think there's a distinct possibility this could end up as an improvement. Incidentally, regarding your comment about color schemes, while I don't think this should represent an opportunity for opposing changes on the basis of arbitrary standards of taste, I think some seeming matters of appearance might also turn out to affect accessibility; so maybe there are some color schemes that should be disqualified, if not by this group then by someone qualified to identify such issues. Indeed, since this group as I understand it would be concerned only with common pages not controlled by a community or project, I suppose that there ought to be a separate technical quality check that happens before stuff even gets this far. Not that I'm complaining: I've seen relatively few problems, dead links, etc, even using multiple different browsers (opera, firefox, IE in that order, and occasionally mozilla or seamonkey, or the different version of opera on my Wii). Most of the trouble I have is with jive (bugs, small default font, less efficient for large volume than a newsreader) rather than with manually created HTML pages. -- This message was posted from opensolaris.org
