Re: Hosting of the cookbook

On 2004-04-22 21:57:03 +0100 Anton van Straaten 
<[email protected]> wrote:

>> I know you are capable of better than challenging someone
>> who has described their current lack of time to build or
>> research concrete examples.
> I'm not challenging you.

"Show alternatives" and "I don't see a problem" seem common refrains 
in this thread, repeating frequently.

Reproducing WebIt's formatting didn't seem to produce anything new 
itself, but it was done anyway. Maybe not all actions need to be 
individually productive?

>> How about:
>> 1. agree that a published book is our target;
> I see it as one target.  Long before we reach that point, though, I 
> expect
> the cookbook to be a useful online resource.

There are other sorts of publishing (online) and other benefits than 
the ultimate target.

>> 2. find consensus on what the path there should look like
>> (ignoring its construction);
> I think our first issue would be to define consensus. [...]

http://www.dict.org/

>> 3. implement automated ways to measure whether we are on
>> such a path and moving towards the target;
> What do you have in mind?

We have no answer to 2, so discussing this is premature (and is also 
why 5 and 6 are ill-defined).

>>> Producing an HTML version
>>> should be fairly straightforward using wget, as Noel suggested. 
>>> [...]
>> wget is flawed for anything more than a simplistic mirror.
> What are we looking for, other than a simplistic mirror?

An online book.

>>> Are we deferring some work?  Sure.  But I don't think we're
>>> creating a big project that wouldn't exist otherwise.
>> You are making certain a big project which might be avoided.
> I don't agree.

Fine. Enjoy.

> I've explained a bit more about my perspective on the book
> organization in my earlier post. [...]

Is it accurate to paraphrase it as "We'll figure it out some other 
time"?

> You're asking lots of
> questions, but you're not saying "I think we should do X", where X is
> something *much* more specific and achievable than "implement 
> automated
> ways to measure our progress".

I'm asking questions because if no questions are asked, then there is 
no understanding. I cannot give SMART targets, because there is no 
definition worth the name yet. There's no point having us all posting 
"I think we should do X" with no reasoning as to why we should be 
doing that. There's even less point all doing what we think we should, 
but that doesn't stop it.


	"It is clearly visible that something is happening! But are the right 
things being done? Are they in the right order? You can never be sure 
until you discover what has been done or what assumptions have been 
made in error! Then you are faced with rework which takes up much time 
and effort.
	"Think of planning as an investment to save time later." -- Trevor 
Young "To Plan a Project" Kogan Page.


Finally, for someone who isn't repeatedly challenging me to build 
things...

> More importantly, alternatives aren't exactly jumping out at us.

> no-one seems to be advocating any specific alternatives

> I'd need to
> see either [...] or specific alternative proposals.

> If there were promising alternatives, I'd be exploring them, but 
> there's
> been very little by way of "take a look at package X, I think it can 
> do
> what we want".

> I'm not convinced that significantly better
> alternatives exist as free software.

> I can't think of
> anything that's really going to help us.

> What do you have in mind?

> Those don't qualify as concrete suggestions.

> you're not saying "I think we should do X", where X is
> something *much* more specific and achievable

> If you want to influence what they do,
> you're going to have to do a good job of providing a rationale and
> recommendations for what they/we should be doing.

> you don't offer some idea of what you see as
> possible solutions, or what kind of solutions would satisfy you

...you certainly ask for concrete solutions frequently.

-- 
MJR/slef     My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ [email protected]
  Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/


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