[theforum] Can't get on steering, finance or sysadmin

Martin Burns martin at easyweb.co.uk
Sat May 22 16:59:52 CDT 2004


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On 22 May 2004, at 20:50, Paul Waring wrote:

> Elfur Logadóttir wrote:
>> However, there is a difference of opinion in which direction to take 
>> certain
>> aspects of evolt.org (namely weo) but the move of (what I think is) 
>> the
>> majority would piss of an important person of our past and the 
>> discussion
>> stops there everytime.
>
> What difference of opinion are you referring to here? If the will of 
> the majority annoys someone of evolt's past then that's tough luck in 
> my opinion. I could see it perhaps being a problem if this person was 
> here now (I'm assuming they're not given the reference to the past), 
> in that it could lead to a "I'm taking my ball home now" scenario, but 
> if the majority agree on something then it should be implemented.

Indeed it should, but once you get past that nice theory, you discover 
life ain't that simple.

I think Elfur's wording may have slightly confused you - 'an important 
person of our past' isn't perhaps as accurate as you'd expect. Without 
wanting to put words in her mouth, perhaps "someone who has a history 
of considerable effort on evolt's behalf which we may want to continue, 
and in either case, doesn't deserve to be arbitrarily snubbed"

>> There have been suggestions of redesign, and either it will be done 
>> in a
>> different environment than what we have now (and thus without Jeff) 
>> or it
>> will have to wait until Jeff has the time (and that's what we've been 
>> doing
>> for quite some time now, not bashing you Jeff)
>
> The redesign doesn't bother me that much - I think evolt looks fine as 
> it is. Yes, it could probably do with a backend overhaul to bring it 
> kicking and screaming into the 21st century with tableless layouts and 
> the separation of style and content, but I don't see what's wrong with 
> the actual front-end of the site at the moment

Other than the table-less layouts and improved separation of style and 
content (which are front-end things). I would point out that enough 
people disagree with you - go check back in theforum's archive.

>> As for the number of lists, the suggestion you offered is how we had 
>> it in
>> the beginning, thelist, thechat and admin. [snip]
>> And then the discussion srunk and we're combining some of these lists 
>> again, [snip]
>
> Sounds like a neverending cycle to me...

Yes, it's called "never be too proud to admit the way that it used to 
work best for you may not always be the case". And there are good 
arguments for both more and fewer lists, so I expect it to be a dynamic 
equilibrium for quite some time to come.

>> Let's discuss the CMS choice and decide which one to use for the next
>> redesign.
>
> A custom system in PHP/MySQL would be my preference,

Sorry, but as previously mentioned, the only sane reason you'd 
custom-code a CMS from scratch now is if the CMS is an end in itself. 
For evolt, the CMS is the means - an enabling technology.

We have 2 choices:
1) develop the system we have
2) customise an off-the-shelf CMS.

Nothing we do or propose to do is particularly radical - all the hard 
bits of CMS (workflow, version control, roles-based security) are long 
solved. Reinventing the wheel just means spending time duplicating the 
work that has already gone on both in evolt with our CMS, and 
externally with OSS CMSs like Plone, Drupal, Geeklog and even MT.

> then we can move weo to Linux rather than everything else to Windows. 
> :)

I know you probably have some reasoning behind this other than "Because 
I'm a fanboy," but this kind of argument really isn't very convincing. 
Paul, if you hope to have influence on evolt's direction, you're going 
to have to do better than that.

Cheers
Martin
- --
Now playing on iTunes: "Slow Motion Dub" by King Jammy from 'Dub Chill 
Out'

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