HI All,
After some thought, I have a suggestion for how to order the the listings
on the pay for page which I hope is both fair, accurate, has longevity, and
is useful to the people visiting the page for whom we're providing the info.
In the past we've ordered by region and we've ordered alphabetically. At the
moment the suggestion is to order by date joined and I don't think that's a
good idea (see below for why).
FIRST 3-4 PLACES
I'd like to propose that the first "3" positions (possibly more but no more
than 4), be ordered by current release manager position held in the
community, and that after that, depending on how many listings we have, they
be ordered by region & alphabetically.
I'd like to see the first position on the list be given to the current
release manager's company (Lilime ATM). I think that the job of current
release manager is huge, and that the company who is currently providing the
resources/employment of the release manager deserves all the support and
credit we can give, even if they joined yesterday! I agree with Josh that
there can seem like not much benefit to being the release manager (or being
their boss!), and so this seems to me like a "no brainer". ALSO if I was a
library wanting to get some development done then that's the first thing I
would want to know, and lets face it, we want to encourage those libraries
who DO want development done.
The second position on the list would be given to the current release
maintainer- ie the release manager for the current stable release (Bib Libre
ATM). Again, I think this is a big job, they are still doing a lot of
patching, answering a lot of questions on lists and generally putting in a
goodly amount of time and effort getting the current release more stable,
mostly I'm sure not directly funded. Again I think that supporting the
company that is providing the resources for someone to do this job is the
least we can do. It again would mean that a library was "buying into" the
idea of supporting the current stable release.
The third & fourth positions on the list could be to either the immediate
past release maintainer (in our case v 2.x - assuming they are a different
company), or the next company providing the most tangible support to the
community.
I think however that we stop this system after the top 3-4 positions,
because it is less useful after that. It may be that when there is a KSF (or
similar) there are some other positions which because of the amount of work
they entail, justify giving this same privileged to their supporting company
in which case we can extend it, and have clear rules around it too.
I quite like the idea of the immediate past release managers being listed
(ie if they have stopped being current and aren't funding another release
themselves), because again being release manager is such a big job, I think
they deserve recognition beyond their "active term" - and it kinda means
they get a guaranteed "cash in" time for all that hard work, even if they
need to pass the torch to someone else for the next release and concentrate
or just building their own business.
REST OF THE LIST
THEN thinking about our actual website users, I imagine that what they
mostly want is to see who supports their area, so I'd like to see the list
split into countries or regions, ordered alphabetically, and with the
vendors listed alphabetically within them, including info on contributions,
positions held etc, if they are on/members of a KSF or similar. It may be
that we get big enough it's worth having the company who supports or is
principle sponsor of the local usergroup get first position in that
grouping - but that's a bit down the track.
WHY - well I think it's easier to read and understand, and to re-find a
company that way.
It will also make it easier to split up the list into "sane" chunks if it
gets to big for one "page". Ie it's pretty easy to have a North America
page, a South America page, a European Page, An African page, an
Australasian page etc in the future, and will make more sense to the
libraries trying to use it I think that having a "started in 2005" page.
WHY NOT BY DATE
I don't think that date joined is the best way to actually indicate who is a
good company (or person) to deal with, and date joined is no inherent
indicator of current involvement in a release, or even that the company
would be a good choice for getting the current release installed &
supported.
Katipo is a prime example of why not list by date (Even before selling to
Liblime), we had not funded a release manager for a few years, and hadn't as
a company been able to afford much official involvement in the project, even
though individuals still participated. I don't think that it would be fair
particularly, for us to be top of a page when others were doing so much more
(and indeed we listed alphabetically in part to avoid that temptation).
While at the moment, the longest involved (listed) companies are at the top
of the page, I would would like to see us have a policy that effectively
achieves the same thing because I think those companies should be at the top
of the listings, but is "defensible", and understandable for both libraries
and vendors, and that allows for other worthy companies in years to come to
also get a spot in the sun if they put in the hard yards like these guys
have.
Cheers
Rachel
--
-----------------------------
Rachel Hamilton-Williams
General Manager
Katipo Communications Ltd
Phone: +64-4-934 1285
Mobile: 021 389 128
E-mail: rac...@katipo.co.nz
Web: www.katipo.co.nz
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