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Grex > Coop > #284: Grex Town Hall -- How do we move forward? - Fall, 2010 |  |
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| 25 new of 334 responses total. |
cross
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response 245 of 334:
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Dec 10 17:36 UTC 2010 |
A lot of changes were made to the content of the FAQ in the last few days;
most of those conflict with these. The CSS looks pretty good. If you update
what you have with respect what's in the FAQ content-wise now, that would be
good.
I'm only pushing changes to web pages if they come packaged as svn diff's
against whatever the HEAD commit in grex/web.
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kentn
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response 246 of 334:
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Dec 11 00:47 UTC 2010 |
And I'd like to thank Dan for keeping up with all those changes to the
web site. It has seen quite a few corrections in the past week or so.
There's more to do, and we'd like to make it look better (it's based
on CSS so maybe that won't be too difficult).
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kentn
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response 247 of 334:
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Dec 11 04:54 UTC 2010 |
PostgreSQL as an internal DB is fine with me. It is a pretty darn nice
database, I think, and has gotten faster in the last couple releases.
For a long time, it's been a database that has a lot of features and has
only improved lately.
Let's try MySQL first and see how it goes. If we go with a single DB
and let people have accounts on it by request, that should satisfy
current demand pretty well. We can always revisit how we have it set up
later if the current setup becomes an issue.
The thing, though, about there not being much demand is that for almost
20 years now we've been saying no to things like MySQL and that pretty
much drives away the people that want it, especially if they can get
it somewhere else. At the very least, it teaches people to stay quiet
about what they want. So, I wouldn't use current demand as a solid
indicator. You may find that once you start offering a service, that
more people request it, especially if we do a good job of publicizing
that we have such services (which is something we not done very well
about lately). Some people don't even know they need a service yet, but
they might if it becomes available.
Again, I'd consider it a rousing success if we had more users than the
staff or our computer can handle. And it will probably take multiple
services and people from multiple areas of interest to build such a
user base. We know that conferencing is getting to be a lost art, for
example, so we need to consider other options for communication and
learning.
I agree with Dan about the knee-jerk kind of reaction that often
accompanies any suggestion of something new. Almost everyone wants
things to improve on Grex, but few want to see anything change. It
seems a contradiction to me. Yes, we can work on doing the things we
already do to make them better, but even that is change. There are so
many things that need to be improved that we can't afford to focus on
just one thing, especially with a time limit staring us in the face.
But we do need to be careful how we expend our resources. As I see it,
these are reasons why we need more involvement from our users and more
enthusiasm from our volunteers. In the meantime, we can focus on
getting our house in order, but very soon, we need to do more. This
will be easier if we have help.
I'd like to think that if others see an enthusiastic group of volunteers
getting things fixed, they'll be more likely to want to help rather than
be a free rider and let others pay the cost (time, effort) of getting
things to work better. We can achieve a lot in a short period of time
if we stop saying 'no' and start asking 'why not try?' and 'what can
I do to help?'.
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mary
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response 248 of 334:
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Dec 11 12:21 UTC 2010 |
Nicely stated.
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jgelinas
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response 249 of 334:
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Dec 11 17:06 UTC 2010 |
(Side bar: Picospan was based on Confer II, which was based on MTS line
files. MTS Line Files were indexed databases; the line numbers were
indexes into the database. This arrangement allowed for some
interesting things. Would it be possible/advisable/useful to re-write
the current conferencing software to use the sql database?)
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veek
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response 250 of 334:
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Dec 11 17:43 UTC 2010 |
The main page has grexergallery link which is broken. Would it be okay
to point this to the Grex Facebook page?
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veek
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response 251 of 334:
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Dec 11 17:45 UTC 2010 |
and i have 2 diffs and a pages.css in my homedir and i've sent mail to
staff.. could someone patch :p
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kentn
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response 252 of 334:
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Dec 11 18:53 UTC 2010 |
Not all the links in the grexer gallery are broken. But the vast
majority are. I don't know about pointing to Facebook. It's
generally not a good idea to direct people to another site since
it hurts your own in terms of viewership/readership.
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cross
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response 253 of 334:
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Dec 11 21:19 UTC 2010 |
resp:249 Possible yes, advisable would be dubious, and useful I don't
really think so. Bear in mind that most indexed files are somewhat
different than relational databases: indexed files just give you some
datum given a key. The relational model is a conceptually different way
to organize data.
resp:250 Sure.
resp:251 I'll look at it shortly.
resp:252 I think that Veek's talking about the old "grexergallery.net"
that munkey ran; it contained pictures of grexers, but the site is long
gone. I believe you're referring to the Grex users' pages page, which
lists personal web sites of Grex users. The latter should be cleaned up
with the dead links removed and new web sites added. The former I
think we have two options for: either move it to Grex, or point to
somewhere else, like facebook.
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cross
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response 254 of 334:
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Dec 11 21:45 UTC 2010 |
resp:251 Veek, I don't see any mail from you to staff; where are these
patch files?
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jgelinas
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response 255 of 334:
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Dec 11 21:52 UTC 2010 |
~/veek/FreeGrexServices.diff and pages.css (put in style/)
Came from 'squeak'
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kentn
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response 256 of 334:
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Dec 11 21:58 UTC 2010 |
Ah, that picture site's been out of service for quite a while, I think.
The other day I went through all the links in the list of grexer's web
pages and that page is mostly not working. I agree, cleaning out the
broken links would work there even though it might result in not many
links remaining. We can start over...
I'd rather see the pictures moved to grex if they are still available
and the people who posted them still want them displayed.
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cross
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response 257 of 334:
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Dec 11 22:04 UTC 2010 |
Me too.
resp:255 Pushed. Note that most of the diffs had a chunk that failed to
apply properly; all were at the end of the file, in the footer. See
~cross/*.rej for the details.
I'm not really feeling the font, and a lot of the content still needs to be
updated. Specifically, we need to be recommending SSH, not telnet. And when
we talk about membership for accessing external services, we need to talk
about verification; the two really are distinct.
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cross
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response 258 of 334:
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Dec 11 22:05 UTC 2010 |
resp:256 By the way, one of the difficulties with just pulling the data
onto Grex is that it was backed by some custom PHP and database code. We'll
have to get that, too; as I recall, users could upload their own files and
things. Does anyone have any ability to get in touch with munkey? I sent her
an email about this a few years ago, but never got a response.
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kentn
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response 259 of 334:
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Dec 12 01:59 UTC 2010 |
resp:42 about having the phantasia game available. It is.
> which phantasia
/suid/games/phantasia
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veek
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response 260 of 334:
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Dec 12 02:50 UTC 2010 |
resp:258 ah nm, i'll do it in perl.
resp:257 the font's the same one used by the main page.. Trebuchet. You
mean font-size? Also, I'm still working on layout (css, color, size,
look).. the content's easy to fix but things like browser-compatibility
are troublesome because it's relative sizes(em %) so Konq has a
different idea of "normal" than FF. chunks, no newline at eof - will
fix.
resp:255 'squeak' oops had to change that for IRC.. i was picking up
flak
resp:252 it's utility that should matter.. i dislike FB but.. everyone
else seems to like it.. broken links.. yeah, it would be best to script
that to homedir creation/deletion..
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veek
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response 261 of 334:
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Dec 12 13:49 UTC 2010 |
patch plz. ~veek/latest.diff (mail sent)
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cross
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response 262 of 334:
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Dec 12 14:14 UTC 2010 |
resp:261 It doesn't quite pass my code review. Please:
Rename "pgfooter" to "pagefooter" and change the CSS document accordingly.
In general, please spell out words instead of using abbreviations unless it
really is too long.
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veek
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response 263 of 334:
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Dec 12 14:59 UTC 2010 |
fixed. new mail sent. can i update to svn directly and save on the
mail/notify overhead? there is rollback afterall.
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cross
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response 264 of 334:
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Dec 12 16:27 UTC 2010 |
Not yet. In things like, "users.xhtml", why do we have constructions
like this:
<h2><a id="T">T</a></h2>
The "<h2>" tag can have an "id" attribute; this is better written as:
<h2 id="T">T</h2>
There's a lot of that that needs to be cleaned up.
Also, I see a lot of tags like <u> in there; I'd rather we replaced
those with either <em> or <strong> or CSS; <u> tags are on their way
out.
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veek
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response 265 of 334:
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Dec 12 17:01 UTC 2010 |
1. 'cause I didn't add that :p
2. i did clean it up elsewhere (i think).
3. that page is filled with broken links and is best autogenerated by
script.. so, if i clean up the whole thing, i'll just have to junk it
later.
4. will fix the u - it's been depreciated in 4 and will be obsolete in
5 but it's okay for now. none of the lists on that page render in FF so
could we patch and i'll fix it in the next pass (day or two). tomorrow
is monday and i'm not a CS grad. if you update something in that time,
i don't want to spend time looking for changes.
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cross
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response 266 of 334:
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Dec 12 17:02 UTC 2010 |
Fix the <u>'s and let me know and I'll patch in what you've got.
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veek
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response 267 of 334:
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Dec 12 17:03 UTC 2010 |
cool! i am for less horrible not perfect <g>
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veek
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response 268 of 334:
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Dec 12 17:03 UTC 2010 |
s/am/aim
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cross
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response 269 of 334:
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Dec 12 17:15 UTC 2010 |
While it's true that steady incremental progress is better than perfection
that never comes, I also think that attention to detail is extremely
important. What we're doing right now, for lack of a better term, is
refactoring the web site. A lot of what's wrong with it is that it tried to
do too much, and in that, lots of little details are wrong. The web site is
basically dead right now, and we're trying to bring it back to life. But it
died the death of a thousand paper cuts through neglect and lack of updates.
We have an opportunity now to start fixing those little things, and making
the details right.
So pay attention to stuff like what's deprecated, and what's not, and also
to the little things: proper spacing, making sure that lines don't get too
long (try to keep them around 72 characters or less, so they'll look good in
a diff in a standard terminal window). Keep things professional: no extra
blank spaces at the ends of lines and things like that. Spell words out.
Use proper grammar. Don't overuse punctuation!!! Keep things short, succinct
and correct.
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