cvs commit: www/share/sgml includes.navdevelopers.sgml

[Murray Stokely]

On Thu, Feb 23, 2006 at 06:53:09PM +0100, Joel Dahl wrote:
> > Please answer my question above.  What content do you want made more
> > prominent?  Half of the content in internal/ is already available more
> > directly through other second level pages.  "Internal Pages" doesn't
> > mean anything and is a very confusing link for anyone visiting the web
> > site.  It tells you nothing about what will actually be contained on
> > that page.
> 
> How about everything?  There are several documents that are both

If you want to make everything available, that is fine.  We can talk
about implementation now.  You are talking of just adding links to
www.FreeBSD.org/internal and being done with it but I am saying that
is not a good solution without additional changes because that will
leads to lots of different ways to get to the same material and will
clutter the navigation of the website.  My proposals below describe
ways to make this material accessible in fewer clicks than yours and
with less clutter.

> interesting and important for outsiders.  For example, I consider our
> policy-documents very important, and they should be more visible to the
> rest of the world, since this will contribute to a deeper public
> understanding about how this project is being run.  We should encourage
> people to familiarize themselfs with our traditions, standards, and
> conventions, even if they haven't got a commit bit.
>
> Please answer this question:  Why should we hide this information?

I am no longer advocating hiding the information.  You have made your
point, few others have spoken up about it, so it sounds good to me.
Lets do it.

I want to add more direct links to the few useful items of information
there that are not already available, instead of making people click
through yet another layer to get to the policies documents and such
that you speak of.

> > Then perhaps there is a misuinderstanding about the word "Internal".
> > It is not absurd that a page marked "internal" should be impossible to
> > reach "externally".  That is exactly what I would expect.  Seeing a
> > link that says "internal" almost looks like the site has been owned.
> > It is a weird link to see prominently on the menus.
> > 
> > I agree the content is in practice more open that I was aware of over
> > the past 7 years.
> 
> You keep repeating that this link is "confusing" and "weird".  I do not
> share your opinion.  You can probably find a lot of websites on the
> Internet that have internal pages open for anyone to look at.  Renaming
> our internal pages to something else would only cause a lot of
> confusion, especially for our developers.

Those people have always only accessed it by pointing their browser
at http://www.FreeBSD.org/internal, so I agree that link should still
work (possibly becoming just a refresh url to /developers at some
point in the future).  Since there have never been links to this
material from the main or other second level pages, we can choose any
anchor text we want for the links that is descriptive.  However, I
don't think we need yet another second level page for this material.
We can take these links and put them ont he developers page.  So the
user would click:

Front page -> Developers -> FreeBSD Policies for Committers

instead of your proposal :

Front page -> Developers -> Internal -> FreeBSD Policies for Committers

I propose linking to the content you want, such as "Policies for
FreeBSD Committers" prominently on the existing developer page.

> > > 4.  ...but hey, our internal pages doesn't contain the secret master
> > > plan for world domination.  This projects needs to open up and show what
> > > a great team of talented people we are.  I consider adding a link to our
> > > internal pages a step in the right direction.
> > 
> > It doesn't belong on the side menu on every page.  It is way too
> > obscure of a topic to pollute the menus in that way.  A single link on
> > the developers page would be much better.
> 
> Adding a link to the developers page is equal to not having a link at
> all, and you know that.  One link quickly disappears in that mess.
> Perhaps this is the only solution, but I certainly don't like it.

The solution to "that mess" is not to turn the navigation sidebars
into a different "that mess" -- it is to refactor the material to a
higher level.  When you click on "developers" from the front page you
should get all information relevant for developers.  Right now, it
takes you immediately to the in progress development projects, which
is too narrow.  Some higher level information should be added to the
top of that page with information about policies for committers (as
you propose), and other information.  The FreeBSD Development projects
can be pushed down further or made a third level page instead of the
second page prime link real estate of 'Developers' that it currently
occupies.

> This is irrelevant.  We're talking about adding one single link, not
> polluting the entire website with links.  I'm well aware of the problems
> we had with the old website.

You didn't add a single link.  A single link is what I proposed.  You
added a link to the navigation bar on several pages, and when you
clicked on that link most of the material was already available
through other items on the navigation bar, so it was wasted clutter on
the navigation bar.  (Click directly on release engineering in the nav
bar, or click on internal then click on release engineering, etc..)

> I'm afraid this will turn into a typical FreeBSD bikeshed, but this is
> certainly not something I want.  I can present a solution to a problem,
> and I received positive and encouraging feedback from developers when I
> made the internal/ area easier to access.  I would like to re-add a link
> to internal/ again, in some form.  Our internal pages are already
> visible, so this cannot possibly hurt anyone.

That was my initial objection, because I was shocked to see links to
something called 'Internal' with information about machine resources
and bogus web statistics without any discussion.  However, I can get
on board with your goal to make all or most of this material visible
but not in the convoluted way that the old website presented that
information and definitely not by providing mostly redundant links on
any of our navigation bars.

	- Murray