scottplan writes, "[Head, meet keyboard…] rebygv67um" in response to my idea of starting a new bug tracker. The argument of "invest in existing structures" vs. "experiment with new structures" is one we've had several times, and will continue to have as long as Wikidot lets people start new sites with one click.
The main reason is that I'd like a dedicated site, easy to find and remember, and which is built using the latest techniques we have for wikified forums. Perhaps it is possible to upgrade the existing bug section on the community site to work like this. I don't know, I'm not an admin of that site and don't think it would be wise to become one.
A bug tracker which feeds into the Wikidot development process needs to be a semi-official site, in the "hot zone" where Wikidot staff and community work together on deciding what's important and how to make it. The current bug section is not ever going to become a semi-official site. It will only rarely be updated by Wikidot staff, so won't feed neatly into our processes.
I'd like to experiment, then, with new discussion models, like the subtopic model we're using in the projects forum. Not everyone likes or understands that model but for many of us, it seems to be working nicely.
And lastly, I'd like to make a good new Iron Giant template site for a simple bug tracker (that is, one with only two states (open, closed), topic tree discussions, and a Hammer-style navigation), and the only way IMO to do that is to eat our own dog food, and make something we actually use.
There are probably more reasons that will come up, but these will do for now.
Let the flames begin :-)
if we take the opportunity to over-look the old bugs/wishes
(remember, remember,
there was at November,
when the "pro"-site was made…)
(Is there anywhere else a running tracker ?)
to clean out on a stable state..
Edit: I detect now - the wishes are not on the ne bug tracker?
Or are they?
Edit2: I forgot the "weneed" !
Service is my success. My webtips:www.blender.org (Open source), Wikidot-Handbook.
Sie können fragen und mitwirken in der deutschsprachigen » User-Gemeinschaft für WikidotNutzer oder
im deutschen » Wikidot Handbuch ?
I've been internet-uplugged for the last several days, otherwise I would have jumped right on this.
The ideas Pieter raises make sense. I just wish we didn't keep moving the spaces where we're supposed to be paying attention.
This same conversation could happen around bugs, feature ideas, themes, projects, patterns — what have you. But for now, let's focus on bugs.
The Community used to be the central space where Wikidot users could identify bugs. It seemed like the Wikidot dev team would monitor those, and often they'd manage to prioritize a fix.
I'm not sure why bugs then moved to the pro site. Maybe we were trying to create better defined, better prioritized lists.
I haven't focused too much on the Pieter's Tuesday invitations to rant. I'm sure we see lots of bug reports there.
In any case, there are about five different places where these bug reports linger. I agree with Helmut that the creation of a new space should involve some review of the other bug-report-infested places. Ideally, we should transfer the relevant material, and link from the old spaces to the new ones.
But fundamentally, Pieter's logic makes me think there should be two principal places to focus Wikidot and Community activity — www.wikidot.com and community.wikidot.com. If this thing Pieter describes were located in wikidot.com/bugs, then it would be clear this is the dev team's bug-squashing place.
I agree 100% with this. For official sites, whether they have community involvement or not, they should be not a subdomain of wikidot.com but should be accessed as any other page would be. Not sure what the proper terminology is here…
To elaborate:
For example, it'd be great to see a list of these core sites on the Wikidot.com homepage, and accessible by a www.wikidot.com/something address:
Which reminds me, I really want to get stuck into helping to design the new homepage, but have forgotten the link to the site that I'm meant to do that on =\
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
I see value in having a strong duality between the dev team and the Community. So two distinct sites makes sense to me.
But this constant reinventing through new sites is getting silly. Maybe I should submit a WeNeed, so that we hide the "get my free Wikidot site" button from Pieter and some other trigger-happy gurus on the Community end.
Before you knock it, look at an example of constant reinvention:
Yes, each of these could have been done in the community site. But you'd have seen much less happening, because it's impossible to make radical work in a heavily used space.
I don't have even a twinge of remorse about starting new sites because it's not random, not thoughtless, and microsites are the right tool IMO for organizing very large amounts of knowledge.
What we then need are ways to bring these together again, but we will make those. Again, with lots of experimentation because it's not clear what the best approach is (and there are at least ten attempts in progress, and it is evident to me that these must also be microsites).
I'm aware that if there is an ideological divide in Wikidot it's about this question: make fewer, bigger sites, or many more smaller sites. You will see this thread coming back every 4-6 months as some expert user returns to Wikidot and asks "WTF?!"
Portfolio
Congratulations to the dev team for folding bugs.wikidot.com into the main site. Great idea.
That's not all. We're planning to do really big changes in UI and UX in bugs/wishes tracker. Please be patient, it won't take more that two days :)