Meeting Logs

[Jordan Mantha]

On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 2:44 PM, Ace Suares<ace at suares.an> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Here is some more information on why I (maybe wrongly) moved the
> MeetingLogs. I would appreciate a non-emotional and rational discussion
> which would lead to a clear task as how I need approach this issue.

Thanks for all the detail here. As I said on IRC, I think having this
particular discussion before the move would have been beneficial
considering the number of wiki pages affected.

> 1. /MeetingLogs is an effort to centralize meeting logs, transcripts and
> records. It is maintained by the ScribesTeam.
>
> - https://wiki.edubuntu.org/MeetingLogs - the meeting logs page.
> - https://wiki.edubuntu.org/ScribesTeam - the Scribe Team page
>
> 2. the Scribes team last meeting was 2007 10 29, about two years ago.
>
> - on the page is a link to the irc logs,
> http://people.ubuntu.com/~fabbione/irclogs/, which also is sprinkled
> throughout our wiki, which is since long not functional. This leads me
> to believe that the ScribesTeam is not very active.

Indeed, I think perhaps the Scribes Team is dead. The IRC logs are now
at irclogs.ubuntu.com and it seems as if most teams are just putting
their meeting logs/info under <team>/Meeting/ namespace.

> - I was going to contact the scribes team though, to see if they can
> summarize our future meetings. I would have also discussed the location
> of our meetinglogs. I realize now, that I might have better done that
> before the moves.
>
> 3. The Edubuntu MeetingLogs page is
> https://wiki.edubuntu.org/MeetingLogs/Edubuntu
>
> - I changed it's contents to point to our Meeting page, which in turn
> directs people to the new meeting logs & records.
>
> - The meetinglogs where structured like this:
> - MeetinLogs/Edubuntu
> - MeetingLogs/Edubuntu_2007-04-05
>
> So instead of the more logical MeetingLogs/Edubuntu/2007-04-05 they
> where each formatted as Edubuntu_2007-04-05
>
> - some of them where formatted like Edubuntu-2007-04-05 so they where
> sorting  in the wrong order (hyphen instead of underscore!)
> One was formatted like Edubuntu_2007-04-4 which also sorted wrong.. I.E.
> the meeting logs where not in chronological order.

Right, certainly fixing those kinds of inconsistencies is very
valuable, and I prefer the /Edubuntu/<date> scheme much better.

> 4. Contents of the meeting logs.
>
> - some of them where raw IRC logs, like
> https://wiki.edubuntu.org/Edubuntu/WikiSite/Meeting/Logs/2005-11-23
>
> - some others where summarized logs, like
> https://wiki.edubuntu.org/Edubuntu/WikiSite/Meeting/Logs/2007-06-06

Generally, after we started having a regular place to put the raw logs
it became less important to keep the raw IRC logs ourselves. What
mattered more was the summary of what was decided, the items covered,
and the actions to be taken.

> 5. Completelessness.
>
> - From 2007-09-05 till 2009-07-17 there is *nothing*.
> - After 2009-07-17 there is only one log written by me (in the new
> location).

Frankly, I don't know that there were that many meetings in that time.

> 6. Relationship with MeetingRecords on the Edubuntu Wiki.
>
> - the Edubuntu wiki had a page called MeetingRecords. This was a long
> page of summarized meeting logs (not raw logs).
>
> - some of these logs also had a counterpart in
> /MeetingLogs/Edubuntu_yyyy-mm-dd as raw logs. Some had not.
>
> - the purpose to have all meeting logs in one place was obviously not
> reached, since some logs where to be found in
> MeetingLogs/Edubuntu_yyy-mm-dd and others in Edubuntu/MeetingRecords
> (which I had already moved to Edubuntu/WikiSite/Meeting/Records)

Right, it would really be good to get all the meeting information in a
single place, regardless of where the logs end up residing. It's not
so bad to have the actual logs in a couple different places if there
is a single index/information page.

> 7. What I did....
>
> - I moved all logs from /MeetingLogs/Edubuntu_yyyy-mm-dd to
> /Edubuntu/WikiSite/Meeting/Logs/yyyy-mm-dd, and fixed the out of order
> logs by giving them their proper date.

Fixing is good, moving not so much. I will wait until the discussion
of WikiSite to talk more about that.

> - I also included in each log:
> -- a #title (which helps google)
> -- an include:
> https://wiki.edubuntu.org/Edubuntu/WikiSite/Includes/MeetingLogs
> -- a heading (f.e.  = Meeting November 23, 2005 = )

Nifty, good work.

> The include enables us to add some text or a link to ALL meeting logs at
> once, for instance, in this case, "This is a log or summary of an
> Edubuntu Meeting. Please go to the Meeting Page for more information
> about our meetings." This helps people who land on a meeting log trough
> a google search and don't really know where to go to. We could add
> anything in that include, it will instantly be available to all the
> meeting logs.

This seems handy, a common meeting log header that gives the main
meeting page and the next meeting time/place would be useful I think.

> - Then I took the summarized logs from MeetingRecords. I each gave them
> their own page so they are now available as
> /Edubuntu/WikiSite/Meeting/Logs/yyyy-mm-dd.
>
> As noted earlier, some of these summarized meetings had no equivalent in
> the meeting logs. Sometimes they had; I merged the summarized meeting
> with the raw log if that was available. You can see an example on
> https://wiki.edubuntu.org/Edubuntu/WikiSite/Meeting/Logs/2006-12-20

Looks reasonable, thanks for doing that.

> - I 'included' all the separate meeting logs into the page
> /Edubuntu/WikiSite/Meeting/Logs and this has the effect that it's one
> long (2.5 MB) page that includes all the separate pages.
>
> Adding a new meeting log in /Edubuntu/WikiSite/Meeting/Logs/yyyy-mm-dd
> will automatically update the long page, without having to edit that
> page. It's an autmated include:
> <<Navigation(children)>>

This is a nice and easy way to index the logs, awesome.

> <<Include(^Edubuntu/WikiSite/Meeting/Logs/.*)>>

I'm not to crazy about this. It makes the page quite large (and long
to load) and I don't really see people getting much benefit out of it.
I think a brief description of what kind of logs, what a person might
find, some useful meeting links (header?), and the children navigation
would suffice for this page.

> Conclusion.
>
> For me the new meeting log structure is more concise then the old one.
> All meeting logs that where spread out, wrongly named etc, are now in
> one place and easy to find.

While it's conceptually cleaner to have all the logs in the same
space, I think it's more important to have a clean navigation to
wherever they are. I can see that we get "free" navigation if we use
the same namespace. If the Ubuntu Scribes team is indeed defunct and
other teams are no longer using MeetingLogs then perhaps a move makes
sense. If, on the other hand, MeetingLogs is still being used, I think
it might make more sense to use /MeetingLogs/Edubuntu/ for place to
put the logs and navigation.

> There is still the issue of
> https://wiki.edubuntu.org/Edubuntu/WikiSite/Meeting/Records/Archive.
> These are logs from 2006 backwards, but in a totally different format
> then the other logs. It still lists the next meeting as "2006-02-01
> 12:00 UTC, but it is still TO BE CONFIRMED."

Can those be folded into the logs as with the other records? I don't
see a particular reason to carry the "Archive" as it's more trouble to
constantly update what constitutes an "archived" log than to just sort
by date and ignore the old stuff.

> It also mentions the wrong link to the irc logs (fabbione).
>
> I propose to clean it up, and move it to
> /Edubuntu/WikiSite/Archive/MeetingRecords and make links from the main
> Meeting page to it.

See above

> Remains to be discussed the problem of me moving the pages from
> /MeetingLogs.
>
> Personally, I think it is no great loss if they are moved away from
> there. There is still the page
> https://wiki.edubuntu.org/MeetingLogs/Edubuntu that leads people to the
> new structure. I strongly doubt that there are any external links
> referring to a specific meeting.

I actually wouldn't be surprised if there were a number of external
links. I'm not sure how vital those links are, but we're probably
breaking them in any case.

> In any case, it's possible for me, and I am willing to, make redirects
> for each individual page I moved. I would propose to make redirects to
> the main meeting page, instead of to the individual logs though, as to
> direct people to the more general topic of 'Meetings' instead of the
> specific meeting log of let's say 2005-01-08. Form there it's easy to
> search for the correct meeting log from the menu at the top of the page
> (it lists all dates chronologically), and in any case that also links
> MORE meetinglogs then the original pages did. I still think it doesn't
> make a lot of sense to create those redirects.

Redirects are a nuisance because they show up as regular pages in
normal searches, so they end up doubling the apparent pages. I think a
better course of attack might be to just use the location (my guess is
MeetingLogs/Edubuntu/) that has the most logs and move the other ones
to there.

> I also want to see if it's possible to contact the scribes team to hear
> what they think about it an how they can assist us in summarizing future
> meetings..

That would be interesting to know.

> Please note that the discussion about the use of 'WikiSite' is
> independent from this discussion, I'd like to talk about that too, soon.

Yes that would be good, it is more of the issue for me.

-Jordan