Hi,
Well, the latest design proposal and resulting flame showed that many people on
this lists are not aware about the state of PostgreSQL website development.
What's worse, even the developers are not aware of all the intricacies: Omar
Kilani told me that some PostgreSQL developer told him to come up with new
design. Which means that this person
a) was not aware that a new design was already being applied
b) did not consider it important enough to let the people working on the website
know about the work being started
The root of all problems is that the people who are in website team have a lot
of other responsibilities in the project: Dave Page has PgAdmin, Devrim Gunduz
has RPMs, Robert Treat has PhpPgAdmin. Let's face it: *all* the work done on new
website was done by outside contributors. Coding was started by Andreas
Grabmüller and continued by yours truly, design was done by Łukasz Skowroń.
Now, one thinks: the project should welcome such contributors. But that's not
exactly the case. I personally spent a lot of time flaming in the lists before I
got enough info on *how* to contribute and *what* exactly was needed.
Some of the hoops to jump through: pgsql-www list is not open for subscriptions.
I didn't understand this back then and don't understand it now: if pgsql-hackers
can be open, why pgsql-www can't? There is no summary page for potential
contributors: where is the code, what's on the current todo list, this kind of
stuff. It is not easy to find pgweb project on gborg, but even if one does, he
still has to find missing pieces to the puzzle: DB schema and data. There is no
docs and thus people think it easier to start from scratch: see advocacy website
as a fine example.
The moral of the story is obvious: we need an easily accessible page with info
on how to contribute and info on current website development.