On 11/05/2015 12:08 PM, Bryan Richter wrote:
> Hello Discuss mailing list,
>
This is still the Dev list. Apologies, but I originally titled the list
"Discussion about…" for lists that were not the main discuss list, which
means it could be that way in your address book.
> I'm moving this over from the Dev mailing list. The question is, how
> do I proceed with visibly broken changes to the mechanism? (I'll
> include the relevant discussion below, but will incorporate it into
> this top-level post.)
>
> I was initially going to pose this as a question, but now I'm just
> going to Let It Be Known: I'm going ahead with visibly-breaking
> changes.
>
> I actually agree with Aaron that breaking things at least *shows
> progress*. It is totally possible to break the mechanism's visible
> aspects without breaking other parts of the site, like tickets or
> discussions or the wiki. Plus, the mechanism is already broken, and
> that fact is already made visible to a greater or lesser extent.
>
> The only reservation I have is, how long will it stay broken?
> I guess I'm the one to answer that question, but unfortunately I don't
> know right now.
>
> Let me fill you in on what's happening. I have been working to
> separate the mechanism logic into its own, self-contained code unit
> ("module"). Doing so broke a couple things, which will be fixed later.
> First, though, I'm going to separate out other modules:
>
> - the wiki
> - notifications
> - discussions
> - tickets
> - others?
>
> That means I won't be fixing the mechanism right away, and in fact, I
> couldn't do so anyway. The other components need to be separated out
> first.
>
> The alternative to breaking things would be to keep this new code on a
> separate branch, but that creates a lot of trouble. Work done in
> parallel is harder to synchronize. Things stagnate. Velocity wanes.
>
> This is just going to be a rocky time right now, but the payoff will
> be huge!
>
> On Wed, Nov 04, 2015 at 09:19:57PM -0500, Stephen Michel wrote:
>>
>>
>> On November 4, 2015 9:14:12 PM EST, Aaron Wolf
>> <aa...@snowdrift.coop> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 11/04/2015 04:56 PM, Bryan Richter wrote:
>>>>
>>>> This is more a question for the discuss@ list, I guess, but what
>>>> do you think? Should I go ahead and "break" the website? The only
>>>> loss will be UI/UX bugs related to the mechanism, and the
>>>> cessation of payouts.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Exciting to hear about the progress. I think it's *much* more
>>> important that the site show changes, breakage, new things, etc.
>>> than that it be stable. Here's what we *need* stable on the site:
>>> access to the wiki pages, editing, commenting, ticket searching and
>>> sorting, discussion, the establishment process…
>>>
>>> The fact that the mechanism is broken means it isn't giving people
>>> a great impression anyway. I am *strongly* in favor of (actually
>>> *want* to see) the updates get to master sooner rather than later,
>>> but only as long as no link just fails, no page is truly broken
>>> broken… i.e. show a "broken for now, update in progress [DATE]"
>>> message which will give people the sense that things are happening!
>>> So we want to be sure every FIXME issue is presented on the
>>> front-end, and then we should merge and deploy even…
>>
>> Agreed in some ways.
>>
>> I when it comes to bugs, I VERY MUCH prefer the visible variety.
>>
>> That said, as a beta tester (or person who is interested in being
>> involved but not in the thick of it), it's frustrating if much time
>> passes without change, and can lead to a lack of engagement and
>> people walking away.
>>
>> Overall I'm leaning towards the 'break it now' option, but I want to
>> make sure that before you break things, there's a plan in motion to
>> fix them.
>>
>>
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--
Aaron Wolf
co-founder, Snowdrift.coop
music teacher, wolftune.com
--
Aaron Wolf Snowdrift.coop <https://snowdrift.coop>
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