Re: Comments for announcement

[Micah Yoder <LYoder@cyberis.net>]

> Haven't decided yet.  I think perhaps the best way is to send it to some
> site maintainers (slashdot.org, freshmeat.net, lwn.net, as well as the
> leaders at Red Hat, Debian, Caldera, and SUSE).  They may not be able to
> help, but they should know people who have the skills and willingness.
> 
> I'd rather avoid an annoucement to the world or we'll get 100's of "I'll
> help!" but we won't have any good way of judging who we should say yes and
> no to.  I think to be a part of this project, you have to have a
> reference- someone has to say "Yeah, he/she would be a good person to let
> on your team."

Yeah...announcing it to all those would probably be overkill at this
point.  Why not just send a low-profile looking note to lwn and they'll
run it near the back page.  That should be enough to get a few people
interested, but not a flood.  I don't think I want the masses to know
until we have most of the infrastructure in place.

> 1) The build out.  This is where we do the page design, graphics, and
> build the back end.  Add content from man pages, LDP, etc.

> 2) Maintainence.  This is when we start taking entries and requests for
> entries from the public.  The site continues to build out, but at a much
> reduced pace.
> 
> During #1, I think 4-6 people total can do it in a reasonable amount of
> time.  More people and it becomes hard to control the process and you

Right.  Maybe another one or two just for the graphics.  That can be a
separate person, preferrably someone familiar with the GIMP.  I have a
friend that might be interested, but I think he's kind of busy.

> start having fights.  Less, and it's going to take more than 2 months to
> get where we want.  (I'd love to go live Jan 1st.)

Hmm.  Let's not set any dates here.  :-)  *All* successful OSS projects,
probably without exception, don't do that kind of thing!

> During #2, the scene changes a lot.  As the site becomes more popular,
> and start recieving more entries, we need more proof-readers, and people
> to just write entries.  Because of the diversity of topics, I'd like to
> see about 20 people after 6 months.

At least.  Hopefully more like 50-100, given the broad number of topics
we want covered.  I think at least 2 or 3 people should proofread
articles BEFORE they go online.  Quality of information should be our
top priority.  That is one area where some other publishers really
lack.  (Read the "Letters" section of Linux Journal sometime....)

> Right now I see myself as systems management & site management.  Working
> out the deals to get things done, and deciding where the site should
> go/do.  Below that:
> 
> Someone will need to maintain/lead the databases (ht://dig and SQL??).
> Someone to lead forms/CGI's.
> Someone to lead the indexes and content.

Yes, I think this is a very good plan!

> What do people think?  Am I way off base?  Micah, you've show a lot of
> interest in the DB's- is that something you'd be interested in leading?

Yeah, I think I'll take the SQL side of things.  How about finding
someone else for the ht://dig - I have no experience with Web search
engines (not that I couldn't learn if necessary...)