Java.net Community Leaders Weekend Notes

Java.net Infrastructure Discussion - Fabiane

• CVS to Subversion conversion cost issue.
  • Action item: Set up an alias for requests - Jim
  • Action item: Document externallly what needs to be done - Jim
• Backups
  • history of project downloads. cannot be done on java.net, but can be on sourceforge.
  • What can be done about this?
  • Discussion Note: Ryan's apache log analysis works for docs & files, but only available for Sun right now
  • Discussion Note: Raw logs are available for downloads.java.net, access by password
  • Discussion Note Omniture gives a picture of both
  • Action Item: Part of bigger question of what stats to expose and how, and to whom - Marla
• Statistics
  • getting it to project owners. Right now it's available to Sun employees only, how can we propagate it to project owners.
  • Question is basically what can we make available and how to do it.
  • Discussion Note: Ideas for this problem
    • wiki with lists of tools, tricks, and source of stats data
    • set up a server running those tools for everone to use
  • Action Item: Same big issue - Marla
• Uptime and outages of java.net
  • (announcement@java-net.dev.java.net – email that community leaders can join to find out about outages, etc) – Eric is adding all community leaders to this email list.
  • Published escalation procedure for community leaders?
    • Place that provides direction in event of a problem. Who do you contact, how long do you wait, etc. Where do you put this? If java.net is down, then you can't get to it.
  • Action Item: Add a support page to communityleaders project - Jim
• Mailing lists
  • not working very well.
  • Mailing lists are slow to send out messages and very slow to archive messages
  • Information is not getting to community members, members are not reading the mailing lists, etc.
  • Action Item: Jim to send a "Helen" mail, detailing the data needed as evidence that this is still a problem
• Hosting demos
  • right now there is no way to run a demo off of java.net
  • Action Item: Check on myjavaserver.com and see what it is like - Chris
• Searching for projects
  • doesn't really work if searching for projects. If searching on O'Reilly side, only get O'Reilly side of information, same goes for Collab side.
  • Infrastructure doesn't always talk back and forth between the two. This needs to be fixed in order for java.net to succeed.
  • Possible ideas on how to make this work:
    • Touch base with Sun labs group that is working on search capabilities in other sun areas. - Jeff
    • There is a search application that is on javatools but it's only hosted and works for javatools, if we had somewhere else to put it, then we could get it to work for the whole site
    • Can we change were we start off at (java.net since o'reilly), to obtain a higher degree of finding a project?
    • Scope search across domains (Jim was approached with this by another group to do this, for free?)
  • Discussion Note: Search from the CollabNet side to O'Reilly is out of scope, sorry
  • Action Item: Investigate with Sun search team why dev.java.net appears left out - Sarah
  • Action Item: Investigate the cost of using google search. Ask Jen Umstattd - Gary
• Hosting applications
  • no way to host applications.
  • There is a group (my java server) that may be used to host applications, but still connect back to java.net. Possible idea for hosting applications that are developed on java.net
  • Discussion Note: See Notes above from Hosting demos
• Download server
  • capability is limited, we can only have a limited number of accounts to the download server.
  • Money issue, not a technological issue?
  • Address login issue to put downloads out there.
  • Better access by project leaders – right now, if project leaders want to put a download onto the download server, they have to send it to community leaders who then have to upload it, etc.
  • Discussion Note: Must solve this problem for the new djn hosted by Sun
• Multi-user blogs for projects – mentioned by Josh
  • There is no tools that allow multiple users to blog for specific projects.
  • Idea is the capability for anyone to comment, but only project members have the ability to blog.
• Issue tracker – mentioned by Josh
  • look at google to get ideas
  • Action Item: Investigate further - Tracie
• Blog system for java.net bloggers – mentioned by Josh
  • no wysiwyg interface, have to do your own markup.
  • Discussion Note: Blogging meetings towards roller are planned, including some bloggers in the discussion. Some of this is supported by MT, but we don't want to spend money on MT if we are about to spend money migrating to Roller
• My page
  • personal homepage that contains information about what you're interested in, projects you're involved in, etc.
  • Discussion Note: Out of scope for now. Maybe make the most of the author pages that exist on the O'Reilly side now. Could CollabNet provide an rss feed of user activity?
  • Action Item: Could mystartpage be public? RSS feed the content? - Jim
• JDK specific issues
  • wants to offer other services that Collab can't offer, but want to maintain a way to connect it in even though hosted somewhere else.
  • Basically blur the way to host external services. (example, mercurial for jdk)
  • Discussion Note: Working on it!

Activity Metrics Discussion - Sonya

• What we're collecting (link, project, mailing list/forum, type/name, username, date, branch if cvs).
• What we want:
  • downloads (data to put into our system) – the downloads themselves will be moving to sun download center
  • What about projects that don't look like they have high activity but are mature projects. From the statistics we currently have, it looks like these projects are inactive, but this may not actually be the case. Maybe development is not currently active, but downloads are.
• What is the main goal of our statistics and how do we get it out to you?
  • Statistics are gathered in 3 parts (downloads, rss feeds, and omniture)
• Public view of statistics
  • cannot view omniture data and have no access to download statistics.
• Sensitivity of data
  • omniture java.net data is rolled in with all Sun omniture data. In other words, if access is given to the java.net omniture data, you can access all the omniture data for all Sun sites.
  • Rss data is only the public data so that might not be as sensitive. This is because all the rss data that is currently being used is already public data. Private projects are not included in this data.
• Goal in terms of progression in time
  • inform management of java.net. Then determine what we can release and on what terms. Then share it with community leaders, to project leaders, to general public.
• How do we connect in non-java.net activity for java.net projects?
  • There really isn't a way to do this
• What statistics are important?
  • This varies from project to project.
  • Question is, how can we use these statistics to improve our project and our communities.
• Given an opensource community, we have a different types of users (those who come in and never come back, those who develop, those who download the code only, etc), what kind of statistics do we want?
  • activity based on role, contributors vs takers, crosslinks between projects
  • community leaders, what they think the different roles are, what kind of information do they want based on their roles
• We have the data, how do we interpret the data?
  • Make a sample of what we have and what we can get by using one project
  • Start a discussion from what we have and find out what people want
• A lot of communities may look dead on java.net because their stuff is all over the place. Projects can be fully hosted, partially hosted, and just linked in.
• Want to see if data that we have matches up with data from other sources. For example, most popular projects compared to most alive projects.
• We want to know not just activities based on the push, but want activity from the pull model as well.
  • Pull comes from three sources – cvs repository, download repository, and omniture data
• Two types of statistics (what sun wants and what communities want, and what project owners want)
• Project owner statistics – these seem to be omniture data
  • how many people are downloading the binary and using it
  • cause and effect (ex. When someone blogs, are more people wanting to develop in the project, etc).
  • What people download
• Create an editorial site (wiki perhaps) that people can access to develop a list of tools people can use, where to go get them, and where it can run
• statsvn tool used by javatools – needs repository history turned on.

Project Visibility – breakout, led by Toni

• Feedback and statistics are important to project leaders
  • Helps project owners determine how to increase hits on projects, etc.
• What other possibilities are available inside java.net for publicizing projects?
  • Project homepage
    • put information onto community page. This includes when new downloads are available, releases, etc.
    • Everything on community page is accessible to put onto front page
• Improving usability by improving search
• Weblogs
  • if you have bloggers who are saying here's what we have, here's what we're doing, good chance it'll get onto java.net front page. Front page would rather use blogs from within java.net than from outside sources
• Forum messages are used for front page content as well
• Redirect can be used to set project home page to wiki
• Create a wiki entitled how do I improve the visibility of my project?
• Issues that project owners have noticed:
  • Difference between Observer and Developer. Users want to just be a new user, but they don't know what pick because they don't want to just “watch” which is what observer seems to entail.
  • Although roles can be “created” based upon permissions, if it's not specifically created in child projects when created in parent projects, roles break.
• Blogging about projects
  • what about external blogs? Normally we don't use offsite blogs because we have so many java.net bloggers already.
  • Is there a way to aggregate rss feeds from other blogs onto the project front page?
  • TODO: aggregated content on project pages? Can this be done? Investigate whether this is feasible or not. This is to see whether or not we can add aggregated content like rss feeds from blogs to project pages.
• Anything to add to meta-tags for html pages that search engines like google can find to improve visibility, accuracy, and ranking.
  • Possible use of templates with these meta-tags to help with visibility
• Are there any parts of projects that aren't available to searches?
• Are what community leaders doing actually reaching their project owners?
  • Community leaders aren't getting feedback from the project owners
• tools that send out information to a bunch of people at a time?
  • When a project gets updated, email gets sent out that delivers information automatically to community leaders or project leaders. This may be one way to diseminate information.
  • Can this be done without having to sign up? The way around this is if community leaders make it a rule for their communities and projects for acceptance that they have to give permission to receive emails like this
• What do project owners want out of their community leaders? How can community leaders improve? What can they do better?
  • Announcements don't seem to be doing much, aren't getting any response
  • logger project can be used to capture web server logs

New Collab Components Walkthrough - breakout led by Jim

• WYSIWYG project page editing
• need to choose subversion to recreate the project look and feel
• default links for editing throughout home page choose left nav, or top of page nav, or both
• to edit an individual page, use the link at the top, which gives a page of components
• there is now an edit text box to edit content or title bar
• there is an add new page that allows you to name and characterize the page - you can use the role manager permissions to restrict access to certain pages. can also add components to new pages - activity tables, metrics, docs, html content, etc. different widgets to plug into pages are available from a dropdown box
• discussion - does it make sense to make templates available to new projects?

Front Page Changes - Chris

• Want the editorial side to both drive participation in projects and celebrate successes in projects.
• Front page today
  • center column
    • contains new content every weekday
    • icons indicate a community affiliation
    • preference given to projects on java.net over material from offsite blogs , forums, selected posts from an rss feed
  • right column
    • featured columns new every t/th
    • polls
    • spotlight - refreshed on mondays
  • near-future changes
    • content goal is to drive participation in projects and communities
    • can the current front page do more toward that goal ?
    • how has the community changed?
      • Sun's big platform projects are now housed on java.net
    • things that are changing now
      • more emphasis on java.net, no longer accepting feature articles not affiliated with the site
      • running jn-related "Java Today" when possible, tend to do ME and JDK
    • ideas
      • what do icons say about the communities or projects?
      • looking for a JDK beat writer to cover fixes/features and tutorials of major new features
    • front page reinvention?
      • arrange content by topic instead of type
      • add merge or eliminate content types
      • Whatever changes to front page need to serve RSS readers as well
      • community page - no fresh content, what can we change?
      • could new communities page highlight smaller communities?
      • idea for social networking model myspace overlaid on java.net

Additional Discussion

• Use of blog city over jRoller?
  • People have requested the use of Roller over moveable type
  • these requests have come to Gary, not to Sarah
  • Want Roller for the special features, and/or interface that they prefer
• Meta-community Discussion
  • Postponed until next Community Leaders Concall so Marla can be available

NOTE: Further discussion will continue on the communityleaders mailing list, and as action items are assigned, they will be updated on this wiki blame Tracie Hong and Sonya Barry for any inaccuracies :)