Обсуждение: Irresponsible actions

Hi,

This:

http://www.postgresql.org/

Looks very much like this:

http://wwwmaster.postgresql.org

Despite this:

Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 16:03:46 +1100
From: Omar Kilani <omar@tinysofa.org>
To: pgsql-www@postgresql.org
Cc: Dave Page <dpage@vale-housing.co.uk>
Subject: Site is not ready for launch [Was: Re: Launch now???]

> *** With that in mind, unless there are any screams of objection I
> will make the site live tomorrow AM (GMT). ***

Consider this a scream of objection. A half-finished site is *not* a
site that's ready for launch. The site in its current state would
reflect very poorly on PostgreSQL.

--

All the problems we mentioned in the above email, sans one fixed link,
are still present.

Putting the site live as you did was not a wise move, as broken links
are prevalent and in some cases entire sections were broken because you
cut corners and did not allow time for testing. Making changes to CVS
*just before you go live* is hardly a well thought out methodology. As a
result of this, the documentation section was entirely broken.

I suggest that you heed objections in the future, if you write to the
community seeking them.

Your actions are reckless, thoughtless and without consensus. Perhaps
roles in the PostgreSQL web team need to be rethought, so that positions
of responsibility are given only to those who are team players.

In the future, please, think before you do.

Omar Kilani
Emily Boyd

On Wed, 22 Dec 2004, Omar Kilani wrote:

> Your actions are reckless, thoughtless and without consensus. Perhaps
> roles in the PostgreSQL web team need to be rethought, so that positions
> of responsibility are given only to those who are team players.

Odd, are you missing email's or something?  Or am I?  I saw Dave's note
about putting it live, and I saw your changes without discussion (negating
you as a 'team player') to the text Dave put in place ...

----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: scrappy@hub.org           Yahoo!: yscrappy              ICQ: 7615664

Marc G. Fournier wrote:
<snip>
> Odd, are you missing email's or something?  Or am I?  I saw Dave's note
> about putting it live, and I saw your changes without discussion
> (negating you as a 'team player') to the text Dave put in place ...

Guys, relax.

The site's up and it really generates a much better first impression
than the old one, even thought it's not perfect.

Good job Omar, Emily, Dave, Alexey, and the many others who put time and
effort into it.

We all know that given another week or so the rest of the outstanding
bits should be fixed, and we'll have further feedback about
totally-unknown problems coming in too.

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

--
"One who sees the invisible can do the impossible."
  + Frank Gaines

> We all know that given another week or so the rest of the outstanding
> bits should be fixed, and we'll have further feedback about
> totally-unknown problems coming in too.

The site looks great! Good job everyone.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake




>
> Regards and best wishes,
>
> Justin Clift
>


--
Command Prompt, Inc., home of PostgreSQL Replication, and plPHP.
Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting.
+1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com
Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL

On Wed, 22 Dec 2004, Joshua D. Drake wrote:

>
>> We all know that given another week or so the rest of the outstanding bits
>> should be fixed, and we'll have further feedback about totally-unknown
>> problems coming in too.
>
> The site looks great! Good job everyone.

I noticed, that:

1. The site has no favicon and "SHORTCUT ICON". What's a reason to remove them ?
2. There are no margings or paddings when width of browser's  (firefox 1.0)
    window is < 765. This is very inconvenient.


>
> Sincerely,
>
> Joshua D. Drake
>
>
>
>
>>
>> Regards and best wishes,
>>
>> Justin Clift
>>
>
>
>

     Regards,
         Oleg
_____________________________________________________________
Oleg Bartunov, sci.researcher, hostmaster of AstroNet,
Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow University (Russia)
Internet: oleg@sai.msu.su, http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/
phone: +007(095)939-16-83, +007(095)939-23-83

On Wednesday 22 December 2004 14:53, Oleg Bartunov wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Dec 2004, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> >> We all know that given another week or so the rest of the outstanding
> >> bits should be fixed, and we'll have further feedback about
> >> totally-unknown problems coming in too.
> >
> > The site looks great! Good job everyone.
>
> I noticed, that:
>
> 1. The site has no favicon and "SHORTCUT ICON". What's a reason to remove
> them ?

If there was a reason, it is because it was overlooked. However I am still
getting the favicon... can someone else duplicate the problem?

> 2. There are no margings or paddings when width of browser's
> (firefox 1.0) window is < 765. This is very inconvenient.
>

I'll just say grrr a few times and mumble about fluid designs to myself...
eventually this is going to have to be changed.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

On Wed, 22 Dec 2004, Robert Treat wrote:

> On Wednesday 22 December 2004 14:53, Oleg Bartunov wrote:
>> On Wed, 22 Dec 2004, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>>>> We all know that given another week or so the rest of the outstanding
>>>> bits should be fixed, and we'll have further feedback about
>>>> totally-unknown problems coming in too.
>>>
>>> The site looks great! Good job everyone.
>>
>> I noticed, that:
>>
>> 1. The site has no favicon and "SHORTCUT ICON". What's a reason to remove
>> them ?
>
> If there was a reason, it is because it was overlooked. However I am still
> getting the favicon... can someone else duplicate the problem?

megera@mira:~ $>curl -I http://www.postgresql.org/favicon.ico
HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 00:39:54 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.31 (Unix) PHP/4.3.9 mod_ssl/2.8.20 OpenSSL/0.9.7d
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

See, for example, http://techdocs.postgresql.org/.
Oh, guys, I see very funny page ! See screenshots:
http://mira.sai.msu.su/~megera/pgsql/www.postgresql.org.jpg
http://mira.sai.msu.su/~megera/pgsql/techdocs.jpg

>
>> 2. There are no margings or paddings when width of browser's
>> (firefox 1.0) window is < 765. This is very inconvenient.
>>
>
> I'll just say grrr a few times and mumble about fluid designs to myself...
> eventually this is going to have to be changed.
>

it could be improved rather easy and I already pointed to this problem,
but designers are very busy and not very responsive. I don't see any replies.
I'm not a big designer, but I don't believe current implementation is optimal and
maintainable:
7 (seven) .css files
megera@mira:~/WWW/pgsql/css $>ls -l
total 32
-rw-rw-r--  1 megera netadm  592 Dec 23 03:51 fixed.css
-rw-rw-r--  1 megera netadm 1023 Dec 23 03:51 global.css
-rw-rw-r--  1 megera netadm 2511 Dec 23 03:51 iefixes.css
-rw-rw-r--  1 megera netadm 7558 Dec 23 03:51 layout.css
-rw-rw-r--  1 megera netadm 3189 Dec 23 03:51 navigation.css
-rw-rw-r--  1 megera netadm 1901 Dec 23 03:51 table.css
-rw-rw-r--  1 megera netadm 2359 Dec 23 03:51 text.css
megera@mira:~/WWW/pgsql/css $>cat  *|wc
    1145    2445   19133
megera@mira:~/WWW/pgsql/css $>du -s .
36      .

I think it's too much.  Also, it's not optimized for people with
slow link - 37 http requests, it's not optimized for server -
29 images are served by rather slow http server which is
apache+php+mod_ssl. All binary objects should be served by small and light
server, this is a classic.


>

     Regards,
         Oleg
_____________________________________________________________
Oleg Bartunov, sci.researcher, hostmaster of AstroNet,
Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow University (Russia)
Internet: oleg@sai.msu.su, http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/
phone: +007(095)939-16-83, +007(095)939-23-83

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Omar Kilani [mailto:omar@tinysofa.org]
> Sent: 22 December 2004 17:15
> To: PostgreSQL WWW Mailing List
> Cc: Dave Page
> Subject: Irresponsible actions
>
> Hi,
>
> This:
>
> http://www.postgresql.org/
>
> Looks very much like this:
>
> http://wwwmaster.postgresql.org
>
> Despite this:

<snip>

Yes, it does.

>
> Putting the site live as you did was not a wise move, as broken links
> are prevalent and in some cases entire sections were broken
> because you
> cut corners and did not allow time for testing.
> Making changes to CVS
> *just before you go live* is hardly a well thought out
> methodology. As a
> result of this, the documentation section was entirely broken.

No, the doc section was not broken. The URLs had changed so users of
phpPgAdmin (which links directly to them) could no longer find the
pages, but the site itself was fine.

> I suggest that you heed objections in the future, if you write to the
> community seeking them.
>
> Your actions are reckless, thoughtless and without consensus.

Because of the overwhelming desire from the community to go live prior
to the release of 8.0 I put the suggestion of doing so yesterday to the
group. I count 4 people saying, yes, go for it, and one saying not yet.
Unless you want to wait another few months, we would be unlikely to meet
a concencus as has been proven time and time again. So, in the interests
of getting the site live, I went with a majority vote. I'm pretty sure
we all thought about whether the few remaining issues outweighed the
need to go live now or not - I'm damn sure you have no idea how much we
thought about it.

> Perhaps
> roles in the PostgreSQL web team need to be rethought, so
> that positions
> of responsibility are given only to those who are team players.
>
> In the future, please, think before you do.

Team players are those that consult and work together with their peers.
You clearly do not seem to be doing this:

- You change commits by others without discussion.
- You ignore direct questions/emails (for example, my question about
'clipping x-overflow').
- You ignore any suggestions for changes which seem not to meet your
'vision' (for example, the need to make the surveys more visible as
agreed by a number of people).

Frankly, I'm glad I am not a customer of tinysofa if you treat them in
the same way.

Please remember, although we try to work as group, there are people such
as myself and Robert who act as the project webmasters and control CVS
access, and -core who ultimately have the final say on /anything/ that
happens under the postgresql.org domain. It would be wise to try to work
with us all and accept that sometimes, the majority opinion will not
match your own.

Regards, Dave.

Dave Page wrote:

> No, the doc section was not broken. The URLs had changed so users of
> phpPgAdmin (which links directly to them) could no longer find the
> pages, but the site itself was fine.

Sorry. Incorrect. Anyone who visited the docs section and clicked on
entries in the manual table of contents pages got a 404. For a couple of
hours after the site was launched. But of course, *testing* things seems
to be an afterthought.

> I count 4 people saying, yes, go for it, and one saying not yet.

Those 4 people had no idea of what the remaining issues with the site
were. Incidentally, you called for *any* objection, you did not call for
a vote. There's a difference. Even then, it's two people, and those two
people are responsible for hundreds of hours of work that made the
launch possible.

> Frankly, I'm glad I am not a customer of tinysofa if you treat them in
> the same way.

Incorrect again. tinysofa is not a commercial entity--we don't have
customers. You had already been told this previously.

tinysofa is just a name. It is also a free (libre, gratis) open source
Linux distribution that we created, which puts an emphasis on shipping
PostgreSQL related packages such as Slony1 within the core distribution.

We saw it fitting to give back to the community (please, note this,
*community* -- users, developers and vendors, not the "web team", not
you) under that name since we love PostgreSQL and use it extensively in
everything that we do.

I'm a (former, as of the end of this week) developer for a logistics
company that uses PostgreSQL, and Emily is a student (who was a
professional web developer for a web development firm, and then for a
company that publishes children's books) who uses PostgreSQL for one of
the most popular children's websites on the Internet.

You may not appreciate it, but we put hundreds of hours into the site
that you put up against our wishes (we knew you would, anyway.) The fact
that the *community* thinks the new site is as important to PostgreSQL
as the release of 8.0 is a testament that those hundreds of hours and
the battles that we fought every step of the way paid off.

Omar Kilani
  * and *
Emily Boyd

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pgsql-www-owner@postgresql.org
> [mailto:pgsql-www-owner@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of Omar Kilani
> Sent: 23 December 2004 11:52
> To: PostgreSQL WWW Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [pgsql-www] Irresponsible actions
>
> Dave Page wrote:
>
> > No, the doc section was not broken. The URLs had changed so users of
> > phpPgAdmin (which links directly to them) could no longer find the
> > pages, but the site itself was fine.
>
> Sorry. Incorrect. Anyone who visited the docs section and clicked on
> entries in the manual table of contents pages got a 404.
> For a couple of hours after the site was launched.

Possibly for a brief period whilst the docs with the new extensions were
rsync'ed, but as I was working on the site constantly whilst that
happened, I'm confident that it was not 'hours'.

> But of course, *testing*
> things seems
> to be an afterthought.

We have been testing the framework and mirroring code since the 5th of
Decemeber, however, no amount of testing would have picked up this
problem with phpPgAdmin *until* we went live.

> > I count 4 people saying, yes, go for it, and one saying not yet.
>
> Those 4 people had no idea of what the remaining issues with the site
> were. Incidentally, you called for *any* objection, you did
> not call for
> a vote. There's a difference. Even then, it's two people, and
> those two
> people are responsible for hundreds of hours of work that made the
> launch possible.

Err, not the only two by a long shot. I've put in a *lot* of hours on
the infrastructure/hosting side, and Andreas and Alexey built the
framework which took a lot of effort as well.

> > Frankly, I'm glad I am not a customer of tinysofa if you
> treat them in
> > the same way.
>
> Incorrect again. tinysofa is not a commercial entity--we don't have
> customers. You had already been told this previously.

No, I haven't.

> We saw it fitting to give back to the community (please, note this,
> *community* -- users, developers and vendors, not the "web team", not
> you) under that name since we love PostgreSQL and use it
> extensively in
> everything that we do.

Which is great - but you have to work *with* the web team.

> You may not appreciate it, but we put hundreds of hours into the site
> that you put up against our wishes (we knew you would,
> anyway.) The fact
> that the *community* thinks the new site is as important to
> PostgreSQL
> as the release of 8.0 is a testament that those hundreds of hours and
> the battles that we fought every step of the way paid off.

I do appreciate it, and I am grateful for it. However, you must also
appreciate that there are other factors driving these things, and the
bottom line is, we got to a stage where any remaining work on the new
site became largely irrelevant because it was already vastly superior to
the old (because of the efforts of you, Emily, Alexey and Andreas).
Because that was the case, and there was a desire to go live prior to
8.0 being released, that is what we did.

I do not regret that decision, and I think you will be hard pushed to
find anyone who has been in this group for more than a few weeks would
either. The emails praising the site that I've forwarded, and comments
on /. imply that the users think it's a vast improvement as well.

Regards, Dave

On Thursday 23 December 2004 07:13, Dave Page wrote:
> > But of course, *testing*
> > things seems
> > to be an afterthought.
>
> We have been testing the framework and mirroring code since the 5th of
> Decemeber, however, no amount of testing would have picked up this
> problem with phpPgAdmin *until* we went live.
>

FWIW I had noticed the url changes (being on the phppgadmin project) but for
some reason never got 404's in testing...  istm that there was some type of
redirect going on from .html file to .htm which was why I never said anything
cause the old links seemed to be working.... I'm still a little confused by
the whole thing... :-?

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Treat [mailto:xzilla@users.sourceforge.net]
> Sent: 23 December 2004 14:44
> To: Dave Page
> Cc: Omar Kilani; PostgreSQL WWW Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [pgsql-www] Irresponsible actions
>
> FWIW I had noticed the url changes (being on the phppgadmin
> project) but for
> some reason never got 404's in testing...  istm that there
> was some type of
> redirect going on from .html file to .htm which was why I
> never said anything
> cause the old links seemed to be working.... I'm still a
> little confused by
> the whole thing... :-?

For a short while whilst I was sorting it out, there were files with
both extensions on the primary server. I suspect you hit it then.

Regards, Dave.

>I do not regret that decision, and I think you will be hard pushed to
>find anyone who has been in this group for more than a few weeks would
>either. The emails praising the site that I've forwarded, and comments
>on /. imply that the users think it's a vast improvement as well.
>
>
Omar,

This entire thread has seemed to be more about your pride in
the design of the site than the actuality that the site we
now have is miles above what we had. What is done, is done
let us move past it to productive tasks.

Are people unhappy with the site? Only you as far as I can tell.

Everybody I see on this list, everybody in the community that
has spoken up, heck we got slashdotted basically because
of the new design...

Why don't we just drop this thread and be grateful for all the
hardwork that has been completed and the results that are now
proven.

Kudos to the web team for all their work.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake






>Regards, Dave
>
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--
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