With my shiny new PMC hat (thanks!) I've started thinking about some
useful organization and presentation for the community.a.o pages. Shout
if you have suggested changes, or if I should not do any of these things
someday:
- Update the top of the page to make the intro paras more engaging, and
better explain that this is a group of Apache folk trying to better
explain the whys of the Apache Way, and providing guidance to newcomers;
punch up the welcoming and "please ask us!" aspects.
- Think about a second way to provide a table of contents to the site.
I like the idea of newcomers/contributors/committers, but I think it
would be really powerful to have a second TOC that talked about
Organization, Technology, Community or similar. Short descriptive lists
that point to mostly the same info, but with a different bent. Think of
permuted indexes in old skool unix help.
- Add a section on Apache Governance, as a narrative description of the
"why" of how we do things. The details and normative descriptions of
"how" will continue to live under /dev/ or similar places as they do now.
Apache Governance will have the two existing essays (board, PMCs), plus
the existing "PMCs are independent", and then I want to write a Members,
Committers, and possibly Sponsors and Contributors pages as well. (The
sponsors page will primarily be about how we certainly need funding, but
that funding is never tied to influence or specific projects - a
critical lesson about ways that Apache is not governed that I think many
folks misunderstand).
- I'd like to add a Who We Are page to the community.a.o site. While I
one hand I appreciate the idea that we promote our communities, don't
have @author tags, and the like, on the other hand for newcomers I often
find that they sometimes are more willing to reach out or even just feel
they could reach out to individuals instead of mailing lists. Even if
we don't list email addresses, I think listing who's a volunteer/PMC on
the ComDev project would be a helpful way to put a face on this PMC.
Heck, I think it'd actually be great to have a listing with photos and a
short bio blurb, if we have consensus to add something like that.
Other ideas depend on how Ross & Nick want to propose organizing
ourselves going forward, in terms of the events/speakers/slides sections.
- Shane
- Website improvement ideas Shane Curcuru
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