Open Stack

Thanks for bringing this up Stef. I have found while introducing OpenStack fundamentals in the user groups, what seems logical to us, the fully OpenStack immersed, is confusing to newcomers. 


A specific example comes from the How To Contribute wikipage. Explaining the corporate CLA and CCLA link was moved to the infra manual. It is cleaner presentation of the information for sure. It also left the google searchable wiki links hanging. This is the primary way most newcomers will look for information.  It wasn't easy to find the information once it was brought to my attention it was missing. I fixed it up pretty easily after that. 

The point being, we need present a certain level of organizational maturity to the public. The wiki is important for us to innovate and make changes on the fly. Some bits of information are super critical and need to be handled with the utmost care. I was able to help the person that was stuck looking for the CCLA. Without that direct contact, we would have lost a new contributor for at least the short term. 

~sean

> On Jan 8, 2015, at 10:31 AM, Stefano Maffulli <stefano at openstack.org> wrote:
> 
> hello folks,
> 
> TL;DR Many wiki pages and categories are maintained elsewhere and to
> avoid confusion to newcomers we need to agree on a new scope for the
> wiki. A suggestion below is to limit its scope to content that doesn't
> need/want peer-review and is not hosted elsewhere (no duplication).
> 
> The wiki served for many years the purpose of 'poor man CMS' when we
> didn't have an easy way to collaboratively create content. So the wiki
> ended up hosting pages like 'Getting started with OpenStack', demo
> videos, How to contribute, mission, to document our culture / shared
> understandings (4 opens, release cycle, use of blueprints, stable branch
> policy...), to maintain the list of Programs, meetings/teams, blueprints
> and specs, lots of random documentation and more.
> 
> Lots of the content originally placed on the wiki was there because
> there was no better place. Now that we have more mature content and
> processes, these are finding their way out of the wiki like: 
> 
>      * http://governance.openstack.org
>      * http://specs.openstack.org
>      * http://docs.openstack.org/infra/manual/
> 
> Also, the Introduction to OpenStack is maintained on
> www.openstack.org/software/ together with introductory videos and other
> basic material. A redesign of openstack.org/community and the new portal
> groups.openstack.org are making even more wiki pages obsolete.
> 
> This makes the wiki very confusing to newcomers and more likely to host
> conflicting information.
> 
> I would propose to restrict the scope of the wiki to things that
> anything that don't need or want to be peer-reviewed. Things like:
> 
>  * agendas for meetings, sprints, etc
>  * list of etherpads for summits
>  * quick prototypes of new programs (mentors, upstream training) before
> they find a stable home (which can still be the wiki)
> 
> Also, documentation for contributors and users should not be on the
> wiki, but on docs.openstack.org (where it can be found more easily).
> 
> If nobody objects, I'll start by proposing a new home page design and
> start tagging content that may be moved elsewhere. 
> 
> /stef
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> OpenStack-dev mailing list
> OpenStack-dev at lists.openstack.org
> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev