[ubuntu-art] Dealing with issues and seeking advice

[Vishnoo]

Since some of the recent active members are new, A few notes:

Kenneth Wimer is still the team leader, but since his new job, he has
gotten very busy with work and less active here.

Thorsten Wilms had been the wiki admin for the Artwork/* section for
more than 3-4 yrs. And he had been the longest active member here until
recently. He subscribed to the Artwork/* section namespace and kept it
organized.
You wouldnt believe the amount of cleanup he had to do, to keep things
in order. People would often submit their theme proposals/design ideas
in the wrong place or edit the wrong page with the wrong info. The
content would not even be related to artwork, might just be random
ideas.
So I've been helping him recently with the wiki.

Both Kenneth, Thorsten and several of the older Ubuntu members hang out
in #ubuntu-artwork IRC channel, and also the Canonical design team
members hang out there.
Changes to the wiki are *not* done by just one person's wishes, atleast
one other member is always consulted before editing or moving content.

So even if Thorsten(being the wiki admin) wanted to move content, he
would first notify/ask Kenneth, over irc, and then move content. This is
quicker since the senior members always hang out there and the channel
is logged.
So If I've had to move the content I'd ask Thorsten or Kenneth first, on
the irc channel, and only after getting a go-ahead from them would then
move it appropriately.

=

On Tue, 2011-02-22 at 17:11 +0300, Сергей wrote:
2011/2/22 Vishnoo <vish at ubuntu.com>
> On Tue, 2011-02-22 at 15:27 +0300, Сергей wrote:
>         >  people messing up the official wiki without discussing the changes
>         > first as a consequence.
>         
>         
>         Let me ask this first, When should content/tasks be added to the
>         official wiki?
>         
> Everything shall be kept in personal namespaces or some staging section of the wiki, and applied to the main wiki when it's finished and accepted in the decision-making process.
> 
> 

Exactly why I moved that task to John's namespace with the comment:
" Personal interest page, not yet accepted as a task for the artwork
team. So moving it to John's page "



On Tue, 2011-02-22 at 15:27 +0300, Сергей wrote:
> 
> I think we need to generalize the facts and go from particular cases
> to more general issues. Let's recall the annoying cases first: Natty
> wallpaper specification war-of-edits intertwined with Flick group
> duplication (links: 1, 2, 3, 4 and probably more),


As I mentioned above, The task was added to the Artwork team's namespace
before bringing up any discussion nor was it approved, hence it was
moved to the user's namespace pending the discussion here.


>  conflict about the way to list tasks (everybody got pissed off and
> the page got abandoned). 

That page was recently completely redone by John and Thorsten[as the
wiki admin] found it difficult to maintain the wiki and thought it was
an appropriate change to be made. He also asked the question here and
waited for one week(?) before making the changes. And no one else
replied. Not sure who "everybody" refers to here.

Contrary to your belief (since you were not aware), Thorsten or my edits
are not done just by one person's initiative. There is *always* a second
consult.

> It's obviously not a problem of one person 

Nope, its the same person who has repeatedly used(abused?) the Artwork/*
namespace as he wished *without consulting* anyone else and the
subsequent edits to the  pages were *reverts*. Note nothing was
wrong/misleading was added there.


IMO, If we had reacted quicker about John's illustration wiki page too,
there would have been less of a debacle with the second group.
Once task is in the Artwork wiki namespace people think it is official
and approved task. 

This adding of ones own self interest tasks *must* be avoided.


> QUESTIONABLE BLOCK:
> Actually, I think we need more than that. We need a clear process for
> writing specifications, with Canonical Design Team involved.

I dont think Canonical design team are they required to do more work
here nor will help with this.

They work only on Ubuntu and not on the sister distros.
If they have announced a task for Ubuntu, it already has a
specification.
They have always announced with what they require. That is all they are
looking for. There is no additional work required from anyone in this
team to write new (improved?) specs for the Ubuntu tasks announced by
the design team. All that is required is to submit work. 

If the task is for a sister distro, then there needs to be work done by
the team member who takes the initiative. This we cant expect help from
Canonical design team. Whoever takes on the task, acts as the design
team for the sister distro.


Let's get atleast one thing very very clear:

 For *Ubuntu* tasks announced by design team, *no secondary action* from
anyone in the community here is required(myself included). No one needs
to improve anything to announced tasks.
All that is required for community is to *just participate* in the task
and nothing else.


-- 
Cheers,
Vish