Ubuntu Webmaster !

[Vincent Trouilliez]

On Thu, 2006-06-15 at 16:31 +0100, Matthew East wrote:
> I don't understand this. Have you had a problem with the website? 

Not really "problems" as such...

> Did you try expressing these "dreams" to anyone? [1]

I have not dared adding yet another bug to our over flooding Malone with
my "dreams", when there are so many "real" bugs to look after... ;-)
I did post a long post on sounder fairly recently, about how I would
love to see the ship-it part of the site improved, though.
Now I think of it, I have more wishes about the ship-it site. Maybe I
should try to enumerate them one by one and present them clearly/simply
in "bug" reports ? Or maybe add a wiki page to dump my thoughts, so as
to have one single page gathering all the ideas while not clogging
Malone with "wishes". However I feel very much overwhelmed by the wiki
editing interface. I can still remember how confused and non-confident I
was when I simply tried to edit an existing page, on two occasions
(adding myself to the world map, and adding an entry to the H/W
compatibility database) so I really don't feel the
courage/skills/patience to CREATE a page.
The problems with wishes, is that I always refrain from expressing them,
as I always fear that the devs will feel insulted, like: "who do you
think you are to tell me what I should be doing ?!", or "if you don't
like it, why do you even use it ?", or "if you don't like it, please
feel free to do the work, but I won't spend a second on it", or "thanks
for pointing out the obvious dude, I am not blind. Doesn't it occur to
you that if I don't fix it, it's because I have more urgent stuff to
work on first ?! I will work on it.. when I have nothing better to do
(read never)".
The rare times where I allow myself to file wishlist bugs, is to
disguise them in actual bug reports, when possible ;-) Like: "oh, I
tried clicking there to do FOO but it didn't work", when what I meant
was : "I know it doesn't work like this, by design, but I would really
have found it more intuitive/useful if it behaved like this
instead...". 


> The website has been moved to completely new software and has a
> significant redesign over the last release cycle, I think it's pretty
> harsh to suggest that things are developing slowly.

Oh I hardly meant to sound harsh or anything negative/insulting, I love
and respect anything Ubuntu way too much to do that ! :-)
I think it's my approximate English/wording that may have caused
misinterpretation of my thoughts: I said "swallow" my dreams... It's the
first time I use this word, I know realise that maybe it has a negative
connotation I didn't intend to use ?? That will teach me for using
words&expressions I don't master 100%. OTOH, if I don't
venture/experiment using new words every now and then, I could still be
using my current 100 word vocabulary in 10 years time....  ;-/

Anyway, if I got the feeling that the site was developed slowly, it's
because for example of the ship-it part which seem underdeveloped to me,
and also a big part, the on-line hardware database project that was
talked about when Oliver created the nice "hwdb" client back in Warty
(Hoary ?). I was very excited about it but then I think Oliver move to
Edubuntu  and to date, the situation hasn't move an inch. There are a
few wiki pages I think but nothing like what I thought it would be when
the project was first talked about.
Then there is also the world map which could be much better/useful/fun
(like google maps, which they have on the French Ubuntu site).  Also, I
found it very messy and difficult and not elegant to edit the wiki page
to add myself to the map.
I hope my wording doesn't have the slightest negative connotation this
time, if so please point me to the faulty sentence and suggest a more
appropriate wording so I can learn how to communicate better in
Shakespears language. I do my best, but that doesn't guarantee much
sadly ! ;-/


--
Vince