[squeakland] on having two squeakland websites

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 02.09.2009, at 16:45, Timothy Falconer wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> A few people have been suggesting that Squeakland should have two  
> websites, the "official" site we have now, and a new "community"  
> website with a different look & navigation scheme.

As we discussed before on etoys-dev, we are talking about separating  
the redacted content from the community contributed content. I  
suggested this can run on the same system, it would just be a  
different visual theme.

This would make it obvious to visitors if they are on the "official"  
or the "community" pages.

Maybe I shouldn't have said "community site" before and "community  
section" instead - but the surrounding discussion should have made the  
intent clear.

> As with all suggestions, I'm open to ideas, but in this particular  
> case, I'd like some serious community discussion about this.  I'd  
> like there to be solid, compelling, reasons for such a move.
>
> Here are the reasons I'm against "splitting the baby", as IMO would  
> happen if we make two sites.  I'll distinguish as squeakland.org  
> (official) and etoysville.com (community).

You're setting up a straw man here. "etoysville.com" is your  
invention, I have not seen a request for a different domain name.

> 1. etoysville.com would siphon away a significant number of visitors  
> from squeakland.org

Now you're fighting your own straw man. If the community site is a  
section on squeakland.org this is a non-issue.

> 2. squeakland.org will be able to have callout boxes around the site  
> with random public projects
>
> It's very easy to have projects appear on the home page and perhaps  
> even within a sidebar on all pages on the official website.   This  
> will draw people to the showcase and keep the site looking fresh and  
> alive, which is always a good thing.  The more people see fresh  
> content, the more they will return to the website.

Obviously. Hence the showcase is part of the official site. And it  
would be no problem to link to selected show case projects from the  
community pages.

> 3. "squeakland" as a name is already well suited to connote community

Fighting the straw man again. It was not suggested to replace  
"squeakland".

> 4. having *lots* of fresh, compelling content is good PR for  
> squeakland foundation
>
>   If there's two sites to choose from, there will always be the "who  
> should I give money to" confusion,

More straw. You're painting this as Squeakland vs Community which is  
far from the truth.

> 5. having the showcase allows us to integrate with other  
> squeakland.org functionality

As I wrote to etoys-dev:

"Sure it can be implemented as [one system] behind the scenes, but the  
public sharing site needs to be clearly separated, and hence visually  
different from the edited site."

The only difference to what you proposed would be another skin. There  
is no technical reason not to visually distinguish the community pages  
from the redacted showcase. Heck, just a different color scheme could  
be enough.

> 6. having two sites will make ongoing maintenance more difficult or  
> less likely to happen

Straw men. See 5.

> 7. duplication of content is inevitable with two sites

Again, it's the same site, no duplication of content.

> 8. it's just confusing to have two sites

And more of the same. There is only one site, partitioned into  
redacted and community content.

> 9. the new site will draw google rank away from squeakland.org

Ditto. There is no "new" site.

> 10. having one site helps us enforce a simple & clear navigation  
> structure

This is something we have to look out for, true. But on the official  
pages I'd place a prominent link to the community section, and vice  
versa. So switching between the two should be rather simple.

> Anyway, these are my major points.  There's other ones like  
> scalability, stats gathering, load balancing, ease of updates,  
> single point of monitoring, etc, but these are really extensions of  
> #6.  Also, we already have a wiki, which is community generated, so  
> we're really talking about THREE squeakland websites, not two.  (and  
> yes, I know that #8 applies to having a wiki ... it's a concern of  
> mine)
>
>
> What reasons are there for having two sites?
>
> I can see five possible reasons so far:
>
>
> A) it will make the volunteer community feel more empowered to have  
> their own garden to grow, leading to more effort by these volunteers.
>
> My response to this is that we should make squeakland.org more  
> appealing to volunteers, if it isn't already, primarily for the  
> reasons above, particularly #6.

Precisely. We're in violent agreement on this it seems.

> B) not invented here
>
> Some of us want to design & write the software underlying the  
> community site, or at least customize some other software, because  
> it's fun and fulfilling, and would be good for local installations.
>
> As with SuperSwiki2 and Michael Rueger's system, Squeakland  
> encourages such efforts and will help promote their use in local  
> installations.   For the reasons listed above, I'd still prefer to  
> have the centralized project server be integrated with the primary  
> website.  Also, do the wants of a handful of developers really  
> outweigh the needs of a much larger community?   I need a more  
> compelling reason than "because I just want to".

I don't think any developer volunteered lately for this job. So this  
not an accurate picture of the current situation.

> C) squeakland is built on storymill, which is not "free and open  
> source" or written in Squeak itself

That has not been brought up in a while to my knowledge, so I don't  
know why you are digging it out again.

I prefer open systems, yes, because integrating with the larger Free/ 
Open Source Software community is our only way to sustainability.

But we are not considering switching for the near future. We agreed to  
try SM and JIRA and Confluence for as long as necessary to reach a  
good understanding of what we want.

In any case, if we would consider another system in the future (and we  
are not, at this time) it would not mean at all this would not live  
under the Squeakland home. Err, that were too many "not"s. In other  
words: Any future system would still live on squeakland.org.

> And the last reason, which has not been publicly stated, but I  
> suspect exists . . .
>
> D) some people are frustrated with me personally and want the  
> freedom to change things without me saying "well, what about so and  
> so"

I appreciate how you are trying to get this discussion onto objective  
grounds, and we should continue that way.

> Let us know what you think about the two site plan.  I really am  
> open to the idea, but want my ten points above countered before  
> making such a drastic step.


Consider that done.

Really, you're making a much bigger problem of this than necessary. If  
our education director wants the community pages to be visually  
distinct, who are we to argue that? ;)

- Bert -