On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 2:20 PM, Michael Foord <mich...@voidspace.org.uk> wrote: > > One of the big problems we have right now is the complexity of the toolchain > and the work required to get new contributors. I'm really hoping the new > system solves this problem.
(disclaimer: the text below may hurt feelings, as usual, nothing personal) The main problem is not the toolchain complexity, but the process, people, and as a result - time required to get approval for changes. A lot of open source Python projects have everything OK with the web part, and python.org is a central for many of them. I doubt anybody would resist from testing your skills against python.org challenge. Unless discouraged. Toolchain is the last reason why no volunteers step up to improve the things. It starts with the pydotorg crew. If it was more inclusive for new contributors, more open and thought about new volunteer's needs instead of teaching "their own ways" or at least try to understand the problems new people may have with the whole process, then the situation can be different. I'd say that pydotorg crew should make the first step to welcome new contributors and proactively attract them. If pydotorg crew doesn't do this - it is dead. By attracting I mean giving at least one talk about pydotorg stuff on each local PyCon, listing current problems and reporint status. Right no there is no even tracker - I have to open my own 'personal' tracker for python.org just to list things I like to be fixed [1], [2]. Ideally, python.org could be an exemplary project where "eating your own dogfood" principle could lead to the evolution of Python on the web. A place, where design decisions could be weighed, argumented and protected. There could be a book listing all historical approaches to evolution of request processing in different frameworks. There could be a DB listing user stories and problems encountered to match them against one framework or the other. But, of course, there should be a place first to discuss the development process and the ways to improve it. pydotorg development team is dead. It doesn't have name, doesn't have members, goals and public place. From outside it looks that the team is Martin alone, and his sole goal is getting stuff fixed - not community support or making the stuff more attractive for newcomers. There are some people who maintain python.org services in private pydotorg mailing list (sorry guys, don't remember your names), and while I suspect that they should be doing something important, I don't really know what exactly they do. Last time I've tried to remove damn /moin/ suffix from wiki.python.org, I have not only to persuade people who don't use wiki as much as I do, but also teach how to do this without any access to configuration files. I've tired. There is no guarantee that buying python.org will make it alive. It may have an opposite effect. I'd say the starting point is to make the process open. Take OpenStack as an example. Ask them what is to be open and how to make it work. It is not that I am not going to persuade anybody myself - it just seem pointless from the point a well-known troll. Why am I not doing anything myself? Well, until `pydotorg` list is a closed list and public volunteers are not looking more important than some "regents collective" (even if it is not so in reality), my OCD doesn't allow me to concentrate on anything else. I hope this raises some points. 1. http://psf.upfronthosting.co.za/roundup/meta/issue340 2. http://code.google.com/p/pydotorg/issues/list -- anatoly t. _______________________________________________ pydotorg-www mailing list pydotorg-www@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pydotorg-www
