I still see questions about OOo for 10.3 at least once a month on the OOo Community Forums, so I think leaving this in might be a good idea. While I don't "push" Neo on those forums, I always mention Neo in response to those questions, since the only OOo versions that work on 10.3 require X11.
Since the current version does not support 10.3 and I would really hate to see people donate and download only to find that they cannot install the current version, I would recommend then that the 10.3 support be separately noted as in something like "Current versions of NeoOffice require Mac OS X 10.4.x or higher. For Mac OS X 10.3.x users, an older version of NeoOffice is available here."
Joined: Jun 20, 2006 Posts: 2051 Location: Midwest, USA
Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 3:30 pm Post subject:
Sounds good.
In my OOo forums posts, I'm always careful to link to the 2.2.x download page and to be very clear that NeoOffice 3.x doesn't support 10.3, for that reason.
Joined: Jun 11, 2006 Posts: 481 Location: Great Britain
Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 3:30 pm Post subject:
sardisson wrote:
while citing formal reviews in actual publications is fine, I think we should be careful about picking out user quotes from update sites and fora without permission.
Understood. I've hidden the user reviews and added another new formal review quote.
Patrick, can you provide an update mirror count/*bytes downloaded per month for that?
Also, should we mention "regular" donors there (there haven't been any major anonymous donors in a while), or are they covered well enough by the entry in the bullet list just above Special Thanks?
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Patrick, can you provide an update mirror count/*bytes downloaded per month for that?
Also, should we mention "regular" donors there (there haven't been any major anonymous donors in a while), or are they covered well enough by the entry in the bullet list just above Special Thanks?
I think that whole section should be deleted. If you want to put something there, please use the wording in the latest press release.
And what is with the FAQ? Why does it have "FIXME" and "Mac OS X is not a tier 1 platform for OpenOffice.org or Sun"? As I noted in my previous post, there is clear, translated text on our main website's FAQ yet the text from several years ago won't get deleted.
I am not trying to be picky, but I am not going to rewrite things that I have already written for each of the last 10 or so press releases linked in that article. I understand that you are trying to edit an abandoned article (which is why I took over the press releases in the first place), but please use what is current instead of trying to force us to conform to the abandoned article.
FYI. Since so much of the Press Kit was out of synch with the main website, I went ahead and replaced the most out of date sections with text and/or links to the main website.
I am not trying to be picky, but I am not going to rewrite things that I have already written for each of the last 10 or so press releases linked in that article. I understand that you are trying to edit an abandoned article (which is why I took over the press releases in the first place), but please use what is current instead of trying to force us to conform to the abandoned article.
No need to be harsh with volunteers, especially one who puts in such much time as Smokey .
Best wishes,
Oscar _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
No need to be harsh with volunteers, especially one who puts in such much time as Smokey .
I am not being harsh. I am just not willing to redo the work that I already did when this process fell in my lap several years ago when that article was abandoned.
By resurrecting this article after all these years, this really is duplicating the FAQ page, feature page, and press releases that we put out with every release. My question is who is going to maintain this article? The last one didn't get updated for several years so am I now responsible for updating this? In other words, why are we duplicating everything on the main website on the NeoWiki?
By resurrecting this article after all these years, this really is duplicating the FAQ page, feature page, and press releases that we put out with every release. My question is who is going to maintain this article? The last one didn't get updated for several years so am I now responsible for updating this? In other words, why are we duplicating everything on the main website on the NeoWiki?
I should clarify that I have no issue with having a NeoWiki article for items that are fairly static like how-to documentation, contributor lists, contact lists, etc.
My issue with this particular article is that it duplicates content that changes with each release. In these cases, I really believe that these articles should only provide a link to the primary source of the information so that the content does not fall out of date. For example, in that article's FAQ section, I changed the content to be a link to the localized FAQ pages on the main website.
Now that I think about it, the various release notes pages duplicate the release announcements that we post on this site's RSS feeds, news page, and announcements forums. I would think that instead of duplicating every announcement in the NeoWiki, the NeoWiki page would just link to the applicable posts and link to the support page for instructions on how to subscribe to the RSS feed.
I am not saying I have time to restructure those pages, but I do know that Smokey is having to duplicate our announcements with every patch or version release. I would not be surprised if there are users who expect that page to remain immediately in sync with our announcements.
If you prefer duplicating the content that Fran, Ed, or I generate on the main website or this site, feel free to do so. However, please don't assume that someone else will do the future updating if you copy content that is likely to changes as we already have too many articles in the NeoWiki that are out of sync with our current operations or product features.
Joined: Jun 11, 2006 Posts: 481 Location: Great Britain
Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 4:08 pm Post subject:
pluby wrote:
My question is who is going to maintain this article?
I am happy to do so. Because it's acknowledged by all that a behemoth-like press kit cannot be maintained, my thoughts were that this new version should be as simple as possible: NO's history, milestones, developer profiles, and some useful promotional images - in other words, just the key facts that a reviewer/journalist/advocate might want to find, gathered in one place.
I thought it looked bad to have only two hugely outdated press kits on the wiki and mentioned in the forums (places where people might go hunting for information.) I think having a simple yet up-to-date press kit on the wiki is a show of commitment and professionalism (I do not mean to question the NO team's undoubted professionalism, of course - just speaking in terms of general impressions.)
With that in mind, I agree that the press kit should duplicate as little as possible, when a simple hyper link would do. Simplicity will also make updating the press kit an easy task that even I might be able to handle!
With that in mind, I agree that the press kit should duplicate as little as possible, when a simple hyper link would do. Simplicity will also make updating the press kit an easy task that even I might be able to handle!
I think this is a good approach. Also, since the MediaWiki software that we use keeps change history for each page, if you delete or replace any content anyone can easily restore the deleted or replaced content at any point in the future without much hassle.
A couple of (mostly historical background) comments here:
First, the initial Neo/J 1.1 Press Kit (and, in fact, first press release) grew out of the community desire to have something available to coincide with this first major release of NeoOffice, and at the time Patrick did not have the time to handle anything like that (remember, at this time Patrick would still disappear for a couple of weeks each month to do consulting work, and, frankly, the NeoOffice community was a lot bigger in terms of active members).
Secondly, the Press Kit was designed to bring together information that was located in disparate places (planamesa.com, elsewhere in the wiki) in one place for anyone looking for background on NeoOffice, as well as supplement information that was not available elsewhere (e.g., in the just-removed FAQ, there was an answer to the common "what language is NeoOffice written in" technical question that's not available in the NeoOffice.org FAQ).
I think the only reason we're having this discussion at all right now is because Daniel stepped forward and offered to maintain a new Press Kit. Otherwise, there wouldn't be any Press Kit at all to debate (just the two old ones, which very specifically state they are for specific versions of NeoOffice and which are basically linked to only from pages about those specific releases; in other words, you'd have to be looking for old/historical information to find them). Further, at the moment, the only links to the current, under-construction page, are in this thread.
I do agree that we need to try to keep information that needs to change with every release to a minimum; at the same time, the page needs to contain enough introductory material to be useful (I'm not saying that it doesn't, just that these are two things we have to balance). If we can accomplish that by judicious linking, that's a plus (though it's a negative, historically speaking, because the content of the linked pages will change over time, so you can't checkpoint the page and say "here was what the world was like when 3.2 was released").
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Now that I think about it, the various release notes pages duplicate the release announcements that we post on this site's RSS feeds, news page, and announcements forums. I would think that instead of duplicating every announcement in the NeoWiki, the NeoWiki page would just link to the applicable posts and link to the support page for instructions on how to subscribe to the RSS feed.
I am not saying I have time to restructure those pages, but I do know that Smokey is having to duplicate our announcements with every patch or version release. I would not be surprised if there are users who expect that page to remain immediately in sync with our announcements.
I've been maintaining those pages for so long it's like second nature, and it's actually gotten easier over time
The major reason why I continue to do so is that doing so provides an easy, organized way to track the history of the project (and when we added what features; I refer back to the notes for this all the time, and used to use them to guess what patches caused regressions), all the way back to 1.1 Beta. By contrast, the Patch/Release Announcement threads at Trinity are one long, running list; it's hard to search and find specific points (they're superb for getting announcements one-at-a-time, but not so hot for a larger view or a historical view--remember, historian here ).
However, when we reach a point where I'm no longer able to maintain these pages, it's easy enough to simply make https://neowiki.neooffice.org/index.php?title=NeoOffice_Release_Notes&redirect=no point to the announcement thread on trinity rather than redirecting to the page for the current version (the pages are all versioned, which makes it easy to tell that something's for version X and not the latest).
pluby wrote:
we already have too many articles in the NeoWiki that are out of sync with our [...] product features.
This is definitely the major issue with the wiki, given that some of these articles date back to the dawn of NeoOffice, though I think that in the English wiki we're in a lot better shape now than we were a year ago (the Spellcheck article got a major rewrite; the merry-go-round that has been printing has hurt the Brochures article, but Andy and James had, for the most part, been staying on top of it).
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
we already have too many articles in the NeoWiki that are out of sync with our [...] product features.
This is definitely the major issue with the wiki, given that some of these articles date back to the dawn of NeoOffice, though I think that in the English wiki we're in a lot better shape now than we were a year ago
Which is quite an accomplishment. Writing proper documentation is very hard work.
Take it from someone who spent as much time explaining his C++ model of fuel adoption as he did programming it .
Kudos to the wiki elves !
Best wishes,
Oscar _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
The major reason why I continue to do so is that doing so provides an easy, organized way to track the history of the project (and when we added what features; I refer back to the notes for this all the time, and used to use them to guess what patches caused regressions), all the way back to 1.1 Beta. By contrast, the Patch/Release Announcement threads at Trinity are one long, running list; it's hard to search and find specific points (they're superb for getting announcements one-at-a-time, but not so hot for a larger view or a historical view--remember, historian here ).
One of things that I sense Google search and MediaWiki's search is doing is that it puts older content higher in the search results. I am not sure if this is what happening, but its the only theory that I currently have for why I still people post about "NeoOffice/J" and quote out-of-date content from our site.
My experience is that most people do not read and just read the first bit of content that seems to fit what they are looking for. The trick is how do we organize pages so that the current data is the data that users are most likely to find?
I assume that consolidating release-based page like we are doing with the Press Kit is a logical approach. The question is whether or not there is a way to mark name or group outdated pages so that it is obviously linked to the current page or must we delete outdated pages for Google and MediaWiki to stop listing them at the top of search results?
The answer to this question is one that I am very interested in because I run into this problem frequently. For example, I can never find my current release tasks article as both Google and MediaWiki always list the newest release at the bottom of their search.
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