Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 01:41:15 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: www@freebsd.org Subject: Follow-up to FreeBSD documentation team status report. Message-ID: <6023.850470075@time.cdrom.com>
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OK, I'm back.. John's intervening reply makes some of what I was going to cover redundant, so I'll skip it, but we've still got a bunch of brute-force logistical issues to deal with here, so why don't we get started on that? First off, the doc team's mailing addresses. These are what I have for you, and anyone desiring a change here should let me know ASAP before the information becomes enshrined in the handbook and mailing lists. We can always change it, of course, but why make the job harder at the start? Also, if you're wanting to manage this through freefall and were hoping for a FreeBSD.ORG mailing address instead, please indicate as such and I'll change your entry pending account creation (also, those members who already *do* have accounts on freefall were omitted from this list as it's already assumed they'll be contact-able there): Ade Barkah <mbarkah@hemi.com> Charles A. Wimmer <cawimm0@service1.uky.edu> Chris Watson <opsys@orion.webspan.net> Dave Cornejo <dave@dogwood.com> John Cavanaugh <john@bang.rain.com> Mark Mayo <mark@quickweb.com> Martin Cracauer <cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de> Nate Johnson <nate@ncsu.edu> Ricardo AG <ricardag@ag.com.br> Ulf Zimmermann <ulf@Lamb.net> Again, these addresses will be listed in the handbook once I finish the documentation project's contributor section, so contact me soon if you want yours changed (the whole "who does what" section needs a bit of a rewrite, with more explanation of what some of the other positions actually *mean* probably being warranted, and so my changes to contrib.sgml have become bigger than I thought). Second, accounts on freefall. If your position requires an account on freefall for maintaining the web page data on www.freebsd.org, or if you're comfortable enough with CVS usage that you think you'd like to angle for commit privs at some point (for which we request that you *practice* a bit with cvs on your own machine before you start :), please contact root@freebsd.org about account creation. If you have an existing FreeBSD master.passwd entry you can send us, this is even better since we can reuse the encrypted password info (either DES or MD5 is fine) and never send a cleartext password through email. If you don't, then just send us your other particulars (desired username, full name, shell) and we'll send back your *temporary* password along with the account confirmation. You'll be expected to log in and change it ASAP. Freefall rules of the road: o Your account is for you and you alone. If you encounter someone else who wants to become a contributor and would also eventually like to work on freefall, have him (or her) contact us, don't "double up" under any circumstances. o Use ssh to log in if at all possible, especially if you're coming in to initially change your password. ssh is very easy to set up and a wonderfully charming tool in general - check it out in /usr/ports/security/ssh o If you receive email on freefall (AKA freebsd.org), if at all possible you should periodically POP it off or have it forwarded elsewhere for reading. freefall is not for email and news reading unless you've literally got no other choice, due to obvious load considerations. -- Finally, just running down the list of volunteers, there are some initial tasks I'd like to cover for each group which should hopefully give us some direction to go in over the next few days. Webmasters Ade & Paul: I think your biggest task for this upcoming week is going to simply be review. John has posted details on the build process, one perhaps a little complicated in parts by the early state of the tools, and you 2 guys (at least) are going to need to know everything about how it all fits together. Perhaps bringing up a mirror site from sources (as opposed to another W3 site), if you haven't already done so, would be a good exercise? Ade also needs an account on freefall, and should email me as described above. Build Engineers Paul & Dave: Basically the same as for the webmasters - figure this arcane system out and assure yourselves that you can bring up a complete FreeBSD web site using nothing more than a src tree and a handful of fiebertools (all of which should eventually become part of that src tree, naturally :). Dave, you probably need a freefall account. See above. Mirror Managers Ulf & John C. Your very first order of business is probably: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-current/www Which looks like it's not getting built and updated anymore though people are still FTP mirroring it, which is bad. I'm not even sure where it comes from. :-) Starting to visit all the listed mirror sites periodically, like a traveling ambassador, would probably also be a good idea. :) It would also be nice to make sure that everyone's www@www[n][.dom].freebsd.org email addresses are working, in case we need to report problems. Some testing there will probably return less-than-confidence-inspiring results. :-) News Editors John C & Nate J: Just reading through http://www.freebsd.org once will probably generate enough work to keep you busy for a week. Neither of you are probably quite ready for CVS yet, however, so you'll need just 2 things for now: 1. A copy of the current web pages. You can either use cvsup or the FTP mirror, once the mirror team gets that working again. 2. Someone on the committers list who will take the diffs you generate and bring them into the current handbook for now. For now, I think that can be either John Fieber, Paul Richards or myself. Gallery/Commercial Editors Charles & Ricardo: You two have a job similar to the news editors: You need to get ahold of a current copy of gallery.sgml on a regular basis (commercial.sgml doesn't change that much) and merge your changes in. Initially, you'll have John Fieber's backlog of submissions to deal with, and later you'll simply receive emails whenever someone submits an entry. In the short term, as John says, the existing backlog must be checked for duplicates and eventually turned into properly formatted entries for gallery.sgml, which can then be sent to John, Paul or myself. People are already complaining that they haven't seen their entries yet, so you guys don't arrive a moment too soon. :) Style Police/Art Directors Dave & Chris: Just wander around the site for awhile, I guess, and start trying to see just how much it sucks. Then write that down. You'll also need access to freefall and a committer for fronting your changes until you're ready to go direct (Dave may be ready already, actually). See my comments to the News Editors in any case. Handbook/FAQ/Tutorial Editor Peter da Silva: Heh heh. Your job is cut out for you, and much of it involves the liberal use of a machete on the existing FAQ. In fact, the FAQ should probably just become a Handbook section. Either way, much of the current information is stale and greatly in need of trimming. We should also talk about commit privileges fairly quickly since anyone trying to front this many diffs for you will go insane. Database Engineers Mark & Martin: I really hope that you guys will quickly find an alternative to (or a big bandaid for) the WAIS searching stuff. There's got to be better technology for this out there, I just know it. :-) You probably both needs freefall accounts and write access to the web pages. CGI Engineer Martin: Searching stuff, hyperlinked man pages, ports collection browser, src tree browser, need I say more? :-) And finally, to the General Support Guy Nate J: Just keep your ears open - I'm sure there will be a lot of stuff falling through the cracks on an almost constant basis. :) Jordan
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