[steering] Migration plan (was: Gonna start calling votes)

[Marlene Bruce]

>I think what we've done here (in steering) is
>to decide in principle that we would like to change the hosting,
>change the backend, and change the design.  Shouldn't it be opened up
>to comments or a vote now by the membership?

We can. I thought it might be helpful to set some deadlines so we
know what we're aiming for. The deadlines can be moveable depending
on the reality of the circumstances, but having some kind of defined
goals (move the site/lists/create evolters) WITH a suggested time
line (or even a deadline) will help us. If we say we want to be done
in 3 months (or whatever seems appropriate) then we're shooting for
*something*. We all know how it is around here with regards to
timeliness, and if we don't have a goal we won't reach it.

Could we get all this done by May Day?

>And by way of defining the big picture, I'm trying to show that there
>are technical problems/difficulties to do this.

Sure, that's understandable. I'm not asking that we work out all the
details here; we shouldn't be doing that.

>The migration isn't
>as simple as setting up mailman on another box and putting the lists
>on there.  That's why I am interested in tackling this, relatively,
>small piece of the puzzle and having a migration plan explicitly laid
>out.  Without the plan, I find it hard to believe that we can come up
>with an accurate big picture that will address impact, difficulty
>level, scheduling, resources, etc.

Okay, I see where you're coming from. So let's:

1. Take the big picture to theforum for ratification (but can we have
some kind of suggested deadline?).
2. Once approved, move detailed discussion to the different
committees involved, in order to determine impact, difficulty level,
scheduling realities, resources, etc.
3. Report back here to try to strategize our plan of progress.

So what do we want to tell theforum?

>If we are going to make progress with this, I'd suggest that we break
>it down into smaller pieces.

Absolutely. Here's the pieces that Martin outlined:

1) Host published articles as at present
2) Support a general purpose wiki
3) Enable a subset of members to add private content (eg photos,
non-published pages, private wikis, discussion fora, events, news,
links) via a web front end - no ftp.
4) Do all the above with a single signon
5) Publish list info about lists beyond that which is on their Mailman
listinfo page

Is there anything else we need to add?

(Easier submission & tracking of bugs/feature requests. Integrated
search. Improved IA/design.)

Or did you mean different kinds of pieces?

Thanks,
Marlene

P.S. This coming December evolt.org will be celebrating its 5th birthday!