On 10-Mar-08, at 11:10 PM, Satoshi Tanabe wrote:

This site tries to solve the problems that I listed in the
following document:

What's wrong with the current Mailman official site? http://gnu.mailman.googlepages.com/wrong.txt

I'd love to have your feedback. Also, I listed several questions in the document above, so I'd appreciate if any of you could answer or comment on them (Some questions are not about the official site per se).

I haven't had a chance to seriously look at all the content or your
comments and questions, but wow, you do seem to be spot on about
simplifying the webpage being an improvement!

I'd like to sit down and nitpick some stuff, but I know I won't have
time this week, so for now I just want to say that I'm very much in
favour of using this as a springboard to redesign the main site.

Terri

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On Mar 10, 2008, at 11:10 PM, Satoshi Tanabe wrote:

Currently I'm creating an unofficial site of GNU Mailman. It's not done yet, but the goal is to make the current official site more accessible and usable. The content is almost the same.

Satoshi, this is very cool. I'm sorry for not responding sooner, but
I think it would be great to flesh these ideas out more, probably with
Terri's help.

I think you've accurately identified some of the problems with the
current web site. It's also true that we're building it with 1996
technology and web design sensibility (not unlike Mailman's web u/i ;).

I do think it's important to consider that the tools used to build the
site be free software. I'd like people to be able to hack the web
building tools just like they can hack the software.

It's also important to consider what information is better suited for
the wiki and what is better suited for the static main site. I agree
that there's a lot of duplication of information, and I tend to think
that a large amount of that belongs on the wiki instead. Relying
heavily on the wiki[1] allows the entire community to participate, and
as Terri has shown, even the documentation written on the wiki can be
exported to other formats that are more easily printed.

I would like to keep some of the same color schemes and logos we
currently use, unless there is a strong desire to update them. I
still like the logo though. :)

One other question you raise: I would like to move the bug trackers
off of SourceForge at some point. I think Jira is no longer a viable
option, so we should consider alternatives. Once again, Launchpad
seems a natural, but I'm open to suggestions, given our constraints
(we don't currently have the resources to maintain our own tracker
instances).

• -Barry

[1] Admittedly the wiki is not running on free software. As much as I
like Confluence, this is an issue for a GNU project like Mailman.
However, again I don't think we yet have the resources to maintain our
own wiki, let alone import the existing content into a free wiki.
IMO, having a non-free wiki is more useful to the community than not
having a wiki at all, but I'm open to volunteers coming forward to
help rectify the situation.

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Thanks Barry for your comments and thoughts. I waited for your reply :-)

Several comments on what you said:

• I used gedit to create all the html files, so "pages being build using non-free software" is not an issue at least with my part.

• As you pointed out, which Wiki to use, whether to use a non-free wiki service, and which content should be placed in the wiki site all remain an issue.

• All color scheme is defined in the CSS file, so changing the color scheme should be trivial. (And no, I'm not insisting using green instead of the current color scheme :-) It just happened to be.)

• Thanks for the comment on the Jira no longer being an option. I'll update that part.

• Satoshi

2008/4/9, Barry Warsaw barry@list.org:

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On Mar 10, 2008, at 11:10 PM, Satoshi Tanabe wrote:

...

Currently I'm creating an unofficial site of GNU Mailman. It's not done yet, but the goal is to make the current official site more accessible and usable. The content is almost the same.

Satoshi, this is very cool. I'm sorry for not responding sooner, but I think it would be great to flesh these ideas out more, probably with Terri's help.

I think you've accurately identified some of the problems with the current web site. It's also true that we're building it with 1996 technology and web design sensibility (not unlike Mailman's web u/i ;).

I do think it's important to consider that the tools used to build the site be free software. I'd like people to be able to hack the web building tools just like they can hack the software.

It's also important to consider what information is better suited for the wiki and what is better suited for the static main site. I agree that there's a lot of duplication of information, and I tend to think that a large amount of that belongs on the wiki instead. Relying heavily on the wiki[1] allows the entire community to participate, and as Terri has shown, even the documentation written on the wiki can be exported to other formats that are more easily printed.

I would like to keep some of the same color schemes and logos we currently use, unless there is a strong desire to update them. I still like the logo though. :)

One other question you raise: I would like to move the bug trackers off of SourceForge at some point. I think Jira is no longer a viable option, so we should consider alternatives. Once again, Launchpad seems a natural, but I'm open to suggestions, given our constraints (we don't currently have the resources to maintain our own tracker instances).

• -Barry

[1] Admittedly the wiki is not running on free software. As much as I like Confluence, this is an issue for a GNU project like Mailman. However, again I don't think we yet have the resources to maintain our own wiki, let alone import the existing content into a free wiki. IMO, having a non-free wiki is more useful to the community than not having a wiki at all, but I'm open to volunteers coming forward to help rectify the situation.

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On Apr 8, 2008, at 11:55 PM, Cristóbal Palmer wrote:

On Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 11:08:57PM -0400, Barry Warsaw wrote:

...

One other question you raise: I would like to move the bug trackers off of SourceForge at some point. I think Jira is no longer a viable option, so we should consider alternatives. Once again, Launchpad seems a natural

Launchpad++

Slowness aside, that platform looks like a perfect fit.

If people reeeaaaally don't like that idea, I know a certain .org that might host other tracking software for the mailman team....

There doesn't seem to have been much debate on this, but I'm up for
moving it. I think the two options at this point are probably
Launchpad or trying to get a Roundup instance up on python.org. I
think Martin just did something similar for setuptools so he might be
open to helping us get one for Mailman.

I'd like to get Mark's feedback on this since he's been doing most of
the bug closing these days (to my shame).

• -Barry

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Barry Warsaw writes:

Maybe not though. Ideally, most of the www content really could live
on the wiki. We'd lose the mirrors, but I'm not really sure how much
value there is in them anyway. Radical thought: with a front page we
can better design, and pages we can lock down from editing, can www be
completely wiki?

Why not? One thing that would be nice for this kind of thing would be a wiki that lives on top of a VCS, with page sources on "official" and "public-editable" branches. The idea of the "official" manual is that this is created by developers (preferably by merging from the public branch :-), and is the source for the next distribution manual.

I don't think this wiki exists yet, though.

Hello,

2008/4/20, Barry Warsaw barry@list.org:

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On Apr 9, 2008, at 12:28 AM, Satoshi Tanabe wrote:

...

Thanks Barry for your comments and thoughts. I waited for your reply :-)

Several comments on what you said:

• I used gedit to create all the html files, so "pages being build using non-free software" is not an issue at least with my part.

Ah, so you're not using any kind of general templating or site building software? Just manually writing .html files? Don't we need something to ensure consistent layout, links, etc?

No, I didn't use any site building software, and yes, I created all html files with gedit (with the help of the powerful snippet plugin). CSS takes care of the consistent layout part.

Maybe not though. Ideally, most of the www content really could live on the wiki. We'd lose the mirrors, but I'm not really sure how much value there is in them anyway. Radical thought: with a front page we can better design, and pages we can lock down from editing, can www be completely wiki?

I'm not really sure how much benefit we get by making the site 100% wiki... (unless we create the Mailman Encyclopedia or something of that sort.) I see the benefit in the documentation and QandA part (because people can constantly improve and add contents to them), but other than that, wouldn't static HTML (plus links to those Wiki pages) do the job? Wikis are nice, but at the same time it seems to create otherwise unnecessary management issues (spamming, user accounts, etc).

What do you think?

• Satoshi

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On Apr 20, 2008, at 6:04 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

Barry Warsaw writes:

...

There doesn't seem to have been much debate on this, but I'm up for moving it. I think the two options at this point are probably Launchpad or trying to get a Roundup instance up on python.org. I think Martin just did something similar for setuptools so he might be open to helping us get one for Mailman.

I don't necessarily advocate this path for Mailman, but I'm doing a Roundup tracker for XEmacs and would be able to help with it if that's the way you want to go.

...

I'd like to get Mark's feedback on this since he's been doing most of the bug closing these days (to my shame).

Why waste time on being ashamed of yourself when you could be proud of the job Mark's been doing instead?<wink>

Good point! :)

• -Barry

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On Apr 20, 2008, at 6:27 PM, Satoshi Tanabe wrote:

...

Maybe not though. Ideally, most of the www content really could
live on the wiki. We'd lose the mirrors, but I'm not really sure how much
value there is in them anyway. Radical thought: with a front page we can
better design, and pages we can lock down from editing, can www be
completely wiki?

I'm not really sure how much benefit we get by making the site 100% wiki... (unless we create the Mailman Encyclopedia or something of that sort.) I see the benefit in the documentation and QandA part (because people can constantly improve and add contents to them), but other than that, wouldn't static HTML (plus links to those Wiki pages) do the job? Wikis are nice, but at the same time it seems to create otherwise unnecessary management issues (spamming, user accounts, etc).

What do you think?

The real benefit of a wiki is that the community can really
participate in its improvement and upkeep.

• -Barry

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On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 09:01:38PM -0400, Barry Warsaw wrote:

Confluence does support getting a dump of its pages in XML format,
which I've done. I'm leery of publishing the url widely though
because I haven't had a chance to look through it, so I don't know if
there is any sensitive information in there. Andrew, I'll send you
the url if you want to take a look.

I've looked through it and it's straightforward to pull out the text of wiki pages; the complicated task would be converting them from Confluence's wiki markup to MoinMoin. The dump does include a list of users, their e-mail addresses, and hashed versions of their passwords, so you shouldn't post it publicly.

Do you want me to actually start working on this conversion, or are you still deciding whether to use some alternative? It would be a good impetus to make me upgrade python.org to MoinMoin 1.6. (No rush here; it would probably be a few weeks before the upgrade can be completed because I can't work on it this week.)

--amk

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On Apr 21, 2008, at 8:47 AM, A.M. Kuchling wrote:

On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 09:01:38PM -0400, Barry Warsaw wrote:

...

Confluence does support getting a dump of its pages in XML format, which I've done. I'm leery of publishing the url widely though because I haven't had a chance to look through it, so I don't know if there is any sensitive information in there. Andrew, I'll send you the url if you want to take a look.

I've looked through it and it's straightforward to pull out the text of wiki pages; the complicated task would be converting them from Confluence's wiki markup to MoinMoin. The dump does include a list of users, their e-mail addresses, and hashed versions of their passwords, so you shouldn't post it publicly.

Do you want me to actually start working on this conversion, or are you still deciding whether to use some alternative? It would be a good impetus to make me upgrade python.org to MoinMoin 1.6. (No rush here; it would probably be a few weeks before the upgrade can be completed because I can't work on it this week.)

Hi Andrew, thanks for taking a look at this. It's not a high priority
for me, but I know the FSF is interested in this.

One question though (for Terri). I know that she was thinking about
migrating the documentation to the wiki, and using the PDF export
feature of Confluence to provide hard copy. Is this something that we
can do with Moin?

• -Barry

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Back in April, Satoshi Tanabe did a really nifty site redesign for
Mailman. Barry asked for a couple of changes, including a version
which uses the current colour scheme, and before the discussion got
sidetracked talking about wiki software.

I was needing a break from research this afternoon, so I tried to put
together the things that came up:

http://terri.zone12.com/mm-website/

It's taking a lot of content from Satoshi Tanabe's original redesign,
plus things from the original website and the wiki. As far as I can
tell, all the information from the original site is either there or
linked (some of the docs are moved to the wiki).

I used the original site colours. If you hate the beige, here's what
the front page would like like with gray instead:

http://terri.zone12.com/mm-website/alt.html

So... thoughts?

If I don't hear any huge objections, I can set about taking those 7
pages and replacing our current site with something a bit more
modern. ;) But I'd at least one person to sanity check it for me and
see if anything got missed, or if there are broken links we need to
update, etc.

Terri

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Hi Terri,

this is neat and simple, I like it :-)

I think the links color (light blue) is much too pale, and makes them difficult to read against the white background

On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 10:17 PM, Terri Oda terri@zone12.com wrote:

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On 25-Jun-08, at 3:44 PM, Terri Oda wrote:

...

Back in April,

Err, my bad, it was actually March. Clearly we're overdue for some action on this. ;)

Terri

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---

Mailman-Developers mailing list Mailman-Developers@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-developers Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-developers%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-developers/fil%40rezo.net

Security Policy: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq01.027.htp

-- Fil

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On Jul 8, 2008, at 11:53 AM, Barry Warsaw wrote:

I wonder if we should consider using this system to write the new
site in:

http://sphinx.pocoo.org/

Okay, I'm an idiot too. docs.python.org is built with Sphinx, not the
main web site.

• -Barry

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On Jul 8, 2008, at 12:35 PM, Terri Oda wrote:

I was cleaning up a mess some spammers made of a friend's server,
and my time's just opened up again now. So your timing is
impeccable! ;)

:)

...

A couple of quick thoughts. I don't mind the beige, but what if
the color scheme were a little closer to the logo? That might be
unreadable though. If so, the gray looks nice.

I'll experiment with some reds/pinks later this week and see if
anything works. One complaint about the gray is that the whole page
is very cool then and it could use some warmth, but even those who
commented on that didn't think that the beige was necessarily the
right *source* of warmth as a solution. One of the web designers
who took a peek did suggest using the gray but with the pink/reds of
the logo as link colours there, so I'll try that.

Yes, a warmer site would definitely be nice.

Do we have a higher res version of the logo anywhere? One of the
graphic designers who looked over the site pointed out that it's
looking a little jpeg-artifact abused, beyond the intentional
fuzzing. I can probably bribe a graphic designer with cookies to
try to get it cleaned up or remade, but it'd be exceptionally lovely
if we had one hanging around already.

What's on the web page is all that I know of. Those were the logos
donated to the FSF. I'm graphic designers love cookies though!

Also, the menu's going to need to have an extra donate link now. :)

Indeed!

...

It took me a little bit of work to get Sphinx running on my Mac,
but it's not too bad. What do you think?

I'm not picky -- I could probably write the menu-generating script
in straight python if need be. In fact, it's simple enough that
that might not be a bad idea, now that I think about it.

I think it would be nice if we could use reST to generate the pages.
It's a fairly easy markup language. But feel free to experiment and
see what you come up with!

• -Barry

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I've done a bit more work with the site redesign, and updated the
working content I had.

The latest version is here:

http://terri.zone12.com/mm-website/

So, that's using some red/pink from the logo as link colours as
someone suggested to me. It looks fine to me on this macbook, but
I'm at the Ottawa Linux Symposium and don't have my usual array of
desktops to test from, so someone please let me know if it's
unreadable. (I've cc'ed mailman-users to get more eyes.)

Here's one wit the same idea, using darker reds: http://terri.zone12.com/mm-website/?css=mailman-dark

And the original two, both beige and gray are here: http://terri.zone12.com/mm-website/?css=mailman-orig http://terri.zone12.com/mm-website/?css=mailman-alt

More suggestions welcome!

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On 23-Jul-08, at 1:22 PM, Brad Knowles wrote:

...

The latest version is here: http://terri.zone12.com/mm-website/ So, that's using some red/pink from the logo as link colours as
someone suggested to me. I really don't want anyone over-riding my own choices for link colors.

The original version I had used the standard link colours (ie - it
didn't set them), and comments ranged from just general malaise about
the colour scheme of the links to several people who asserted it was
nearly unreadable on their setups. So I'll take the comment under
advisement, but I suspect you're going to be in the minority.

Since I've since changed the original css, here's the current stuff
with no link colours specified (so they default to your browser
settings):

http://terri.zone12.com/mm-website/?css=mailman-nolink

Did you want to mention the official Mailman group on LinkedIn? Of
course, I can't figure out how to give you a link that will take
you to their page for the group as opposed to the "home page" that
I defined for the group (namely www.list.org), but that may be
something we can resolve.

Seems like a good fit for the "Participate" page! I've put it just
under the wiki entry.

Also, if I can convince launchpad and my laptop to get along, I'll
share the code for this. It's currently generating the pages using a
little python script. Although honestly, given that there's only 7
pages here, I think we might as well generate them once and just
serve up the straight HTML.

Terri

Brad Knowles writes:

That implies their client is misconfigured and that should be their problem and not ours. Right?

Actually, all existing clients are pretty much broken, since they don't allow you to enforce your own CSS. But I guess they figure that nearly all existing users are broken, 'cause they can't write their own CSS .... :-( Grrr.