[openi18n-im:01240] Re: Communications & Tools for the project

Leon Ho wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I thought of this topic for a while and finally I got a chance to finish
> dropping all the points. There are couple of things that we should look
> into to improve communication - both inwards (between contributors) and
> outwards (toward users).
> 
> Inwards communication accelerates our development.
> Outwards communication increases wider adoption of the project.
> 
> -- Discussions/Info --
> Initially we have used mailing list extensively.
> 
> Recently we have added IRC which quite a lot of people like it.
> 
> Mailing list is good for discussion in certain extends, but it is not a
> media to store outcome/notes. Archive does not serve this purpose well.
> 
> Meeting. As we have a common goal and schedule now. Do we need one to
> keep updated from each other and discuss any common issues?
> 
> Web page for IIIMF. Any improvement on this area? Is it an info riching
> area, and does it allow you to request/add information easily?
> 
> Should we use tool like like Wiki? How much information on IIIMF you
> want to share but there aren't any place for it?
> 
> Blog? If you have Blog, how much information are you putting out on
> IIIMF? Will Blog aggregator be useful to show all the contributor's
> blogs?
> 

SUMMARY

(high change) IRC -> Mailing List -> Wiki -> IIIMF Website (low change)


PROPOSAL

I think a combination of a few of these methods would serve us best. For 
example, IRC is good for quick up-to-the-minute discussions. The 
mailing-lists may be used for the purpose of announcements and major 
changes. Next, a Wiki can hold all the interesting design decisions, 
group decisions, etc. And finally, there is the official IIIMF website 
for mostly permanent information like project road-map, related 
projects, etc.

Perhaps this is too exhaustive, but I think it would organize 
information and decisions in a logical manner. This organization is 
also similar to how some projects have separate mailing lists for 
developers, announcements, etc.


RISKS

The proposed method of organization presents a major task of passing 
information from frequently changing mediums to infrequently changing 
ones (i.e. from left to right on the summary above). That is, someone 
must monitor a medium, look for useful information/decisions, and pass 
them to the next medium of infrequent-change.

Though this may sound daunting at first, we all do perform such tasks to 
some degree, such as storing interesting items from mailing lists in our 
computer. Thus interesting information/decisions will naturally be 
passed to infrequently changing mediums by us.

Now that we have some system of (somewhat) automatic passing of relevant 
information to infrequently changing medium, we run into a problem of 
disorganization. There will be too many interesting items; all of which 
are thrown together randomly. Also, old interesting items may not be too 
relevant for us anymore, so those need to be removed from the 
main-stream and put into archives.

Once again, this is not as bad as it sounds, because there are already 
some of authority amongst us, who administer the mailing lists, official 
IIIMF website, etc.


CONCLUSION

Those are my overall thoughts for the information-management problem. I 
am eager to see what ideas others have and what decision is made on this 
problem.

Cheers!

> -- Development --
> Bug Tracking system. This is important because it is a central place for
> user/QA/Developers to exchange information. Have we used it well enough?
> If not what is the obstacle that prevent you using it?
> 
> Version control system. Do you find any difficulties or thought of
> enhancements we should make?
> 
> I hope this will open a dialog for us to create some discussions on
> improvements.
> 
> Regards,
> Leon
> 
>