maintainers/coordinators ?

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

Hi lads,

Just an idea to throw out from an overbooked admin's point of view:

Keeping the whole Bots United site running is eating up all my time. There's a forum, a wiki, a filebase, an IRC server, and a website for each of the hosted bots. Meanwhile I'm still supposed to code my own bot, work for a firm and have a life!

The association is still very young, and I think none of us thought it would grow that fast (thanks to YOU people! ). But the drawback is that we're not yet really organized.

So why not take on the next move and do what United Admins are doing and appoint persons in charge of maintaining parts of the server ?
We would need maintainers and coordinators for:
- the wiki
- the filebase
- the forum software itself
- the BU source trees
- the IRC channels (nickserv/chanserv/bots/etc)
- the hosted websites
etc, etc,
this would leave us administrators with only the pain to do technical maintenance on the server, with the operating system (this Linux is behaving strangely btw) and all the services and daemons. It's already a big task, anyway.

Just throwing ideas around. Discussion ?

[stefanhendriks]

i think its a good point and its wise to start thinking about it now already. As in my case its not that hard to make the choice, study comes first, then all other stuff. Although i do try to make time for BU (visiting mostly) and moderating.

I thought the filebase now has team members, i wonder what should be done about it at this point? Its ready for usage i believe, so lets use it.

The wiki can be maintained by members, i am able to change things now too ( you could see i updated a lot of pages since i found out). So i think thats also a matter of 'knowing you can maintain it'. Members would be able to manage this by themselves (perhaps this should be made clear).

Websites should be done by their webmasters only. I don't think its wise to let anyone else manage my website since i know wha ti want and i update when i want and when i can. For new websites i think the agora is a good point for discussion and the council should eventually decide if its allowed or not. Setting it up is i think not hard to do (i dont know though as i am not a linux guru) and could be done by Onno if he does not mind?

[@$3.1415rin]

yes stefan, but each one for himself can think about letting some other person admin their respective site ...

maybe we should give some more ppl mod status in here. e.g. thinking about cruft, I think he's still a normal user here, but on the other side he's involved in joebot and realbot coding, etc.

[Onno Kreuzinger]

Well i see some problems on the security side, but else i would like to see more people in charge for the stuff they are allready doing (i propose cruft as an (super)mod, he is allready contributing a lot in terms of linux source code and i would realy like him "on the team").
for the technical stuff:
- the websites are allready dedicated to the one operating the site (allthough some issues with access rights do remain, Cheeseh can delete anr write, but not overwrite ???).
- the wiki should only need major cleanups each quarter or half year
- the filebase mostly shows, that sourcefore is needed to lower the traffic (see JoeBOT in the stats, it 95% of all downloads), else it's fine and working, since no extra userbase or admin management is needed
- the forum is a bit of pain for me, i do not have enough insides, and probably even don't want to get into it too deep
- the BU source tree is a mess, a big mess, but here i can only suggest, that each user makes up the sources he uses and i will try to merge them into one tree, which in turn will be made avail. via cvs (pls comments on this)
- for the strange linux, well have not seen a single system used so intesivly not showing occasional hickups. all trouble since the hoster had restored their kernel was caused by the (perl sic!) Spamfilter, the rest is running smoothly as far i'm concerned
- IRC is not used (hi Frapenoodle, lonesome ranger) widely, i would even consider switching it off and replace it by some simple php/perl "meeting room" that would allow for quick conferences/private sessions.

in general i suggest that we make a fixed way of how to roll out services, and how to put council decissions into place, with timeframe and whom to decide any remaining open or arising issues.

also i would vote for a forum deticated to the server (i tried with the wiki, but a wiki is too usefull to use it only for that kind of stuff, also it has no ACL), preferably a forum only for mods+council+server-admins (security paranoia).

that are my thoughts for now, but i'm in a hurry ATM, i will probaly have more to say the coming days (friday afternoon my stress is over).

cheers

[SoUlFaThEr]

id love to helpyou guys out but im not really familiar with:
- the wiki
- the filebase
- the forum software itself
- the BU source trees
- the IRC channels (nickserv/chanserv/bots/etc)
- the hosted websites

and how those things are adjusted and coded or whatever

im still a total n00b on that kind of thing.

maybe with a bit of direction i can handle something of it.

just offerring my presence

[TruB]

same for me..

[@$3.1415rin]

the wiki is mainly running, so the maintenance would be not much of coding anymore I guess. mainly maintenance, creating content ...
same for filebase, forum software. and the sourcetrees and stuff , that's something for those interested in it ...

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

I see you didn't get my point...

Do you know how often a week I have to spend one hour or two on this or that PHP file or forum template to fix a bug that this or that user notified me about ? I've just been spending 1 whole day (delaying my real life work - but np) to recode the filebase PHP stuff and fix bugs related to the uploading and deletion of files. And who will reskin the wiki to put it in a more Bots United style ? Also who with a good mastering of orthograph and syntax wants, on a daily basis, to browse through the wiki, organize the stuff better, fix the dead links and the typos ? And we also have two projects: the United Bot and the "game". Who will push things forward and ensures the ball keeps rolling when the interest is dropping ? Who wants to find ways to put more animation in the offtopic forum so as to attract regulars in the optic of building a larger community ? The job of a maintainer/coordinator is just this, to always maintain something into the best shape it can be. We want to provide quality.

If you let things happen by themselves, or if you don't believe a constant effort is needed to keep all this into shape, all that we've done is going to vanish away. Warranted.

Is it just me or... ???

[Onno Kreuzinger]

yes, pmb is right, allthough the wiki should be self organizing, i know about the php stuff and the server is in use, so it needs tuning eand tweaking...

the skinning of the wiki could be but must not be or is it political to have it in the CI design ?

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

It's a matter of integration.
We want to be taken seriously. Hence we want to look "pro".
We're not forced to do so but it would be ideal and much appreciable if we did.