Samuli Seppänen wrote: > Hi all, > > We're soon going start setting up our new community site. However, we > need your help in gathering the requirements for the site, e.g. what > services to provide. There are a few general requirements on our > (=company's) part. > > 1) Consistent look and feel > 2) Integratibility with external sites/services (e.g. other > OpenVPN-related sites) > 3) Convenient to use (e.g. same passwords for each service) > 4) Provides easy to use communication channels (e.g. forums) > 5) Provides ways to contribute for non-coders (e.g. forums, wiki, bug > tracker) > 6) Provides the means to work on OpenVPN-related projects (subproject > hosting) > 7) Supports other languages besides English (see below) > 8) Extendability (to avoid dead-ends in the future) > 9) Supports our new development model (I'm currently discussing this > with James) > 10) Supports team building (e.g. separate communication channels for > testers, packagers, translators etc.) > > These requirements are still work in progress, as is the scope of the > site. In any case we'd like to avoid unnecessary overlap with existing > community projects (e.g. OpenVPN e.V.) while still providing a > comprehensive set of services for the community. One possibility is that > we provide English-language services only and work with existing > projects to provide support for other languages. I'd also like to be > able to integrate our services with external community sites, e.g. by > using same authentication services. > > I doubt I've managed to get all requirements right, so I'd like to hear > what you think... Are we on a right track? Have I missed something > essential here? > > One more clarification... I think it's best if we try to gather a set of requirements all (or most) of us can agree upon first. Then we can start looking into actual technical solutions (applications) that meet those requirements. In a way try to identify the real issues (e.g. "getting support is difficult") rather than concentrate on technical solutions (e.g. "create forums"). I think this makes it easier to reach consensus on the services we should provide.
-- Samuli Seppänen Community Manager OpenVPN Technologies, Inc
