Rethink our product presentation as a multi-backend tool (closed)

As the remoteStorage release cycle is stressing me a little, and because I it’s impossible for me to know all the details (i.e. from PRs), I’d like to ask a thing here:

  • Could we provide a Trello Board providing a little structuration of current and planned work packages. No need for timelines or Roadmaps in continuous-delivery-world. But I’d like to have a simple representation about what’s up next that is not linear text and rather a 2D visualization of any kind.

In regards to core library development, it’s all about the sync-per-node PR and releasing 0.10 with the caching/sync rewrite. After that we can do multiple things at once, which, as you suggested, we should probably collect and list somewhere.

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Well, for instance: Do you like the three headers? Do you agree they are in the right order? And for each header, do you agree all the relevant subpoints are there?

For instance, I think the first one, ‘App developers’, needs a catchier phrase, that speaks to app devs, and puts the reader in the right direction of what this website will tell them. What about “remoteStorage: Add per-user data to your web app”, maybe?

I think there must be a misunderstanding here. I am proposing that we rethink our product presentation, and this is an important topic, right? Yet you don’t have anything to add, or to edit, in any of the content points I proposed? It feels like we are not talking about the same thing, maybe.

Yes! I am talking about actually changing the content of the website, http://remotestorage.io/. I propose to remove all the current texts “Webfinger+OAuth+CORS+REST”, “wheels included”, “compatibility is king”, etcetera), and put this new “app devs / redecentralize / set up storage” structure with all its subpoints etcetera in their place. Maybe that wasn’t clear, sorry.

I am not just proposing this in theory, I want this content to actually go onto our website. Your use of the word ‘input’ suggests you do have things you want to add or edit before this goes onto the website, right? Maybe you want to throw all of it away and do something completely different? Maybe you want to keep the current content? Please, speak your mind!

OK, great! In that case let’s pause this discussion for now and then let’s all (whoever wants to join) work on it together in maybe a few weeks from now.

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What I meant is that you can’t just put an outline of text 1:1 on a website, so it can only serve as input.

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Let’s get together the weekend of 3/4 May as we said at the meeting, at the Rebel Base to try to:

  • get this outline transformed into html
  • launch the responsive redesign @raucao has been working on
  • if there is time left, update the Discourse software to a newer version

We still haven’t talked about this properly with all the contributors and stakeholders of the project, let’s put this back on the agenda.

I implemented some changes to this extent in the website’s main page, but those were then reverted again by @raucao.

Everybody, please compare the current list of benefits on http://remotestorage.io/ and my improved ones on https://rerelaunch.5apps.com/ (ignore the layout changes for now, let’s only focus on the text changes).

I think the new ones are better because:

  • They talk to the web developer instead of to the end user
  • They mention how remotestorage.js is a tool for multiple backends (not only remoteStorage but also Google Drive and Dropbox).

@raucao please explain why you reverted my changes, and what we can do to make you happier in your role as a contributor to the project, and as a stakeholder in the technology we’re building.

See also this PR on the remotestorage.io github repo: https://github.com/remotestorage/remotestorage.io/pull/70

I reverted your changes, because not only did you not seek consensus first, you didn’t even seek technical review, and indeed they broke the layout of another page. We can discuss content details on GitHub in your PR.

lolwut?!

I’ll organize a team meeting to discuss these issues.

@galfert @Ragnis @silverbucket @raucao when would be a good time for you?

Wednesday 8 september 16:00 Berlin time, for instance?

Even though I’ll do my multi-backend tool marketing in another way (see https://github.com/remotestorage/remotestorage.io/pull/70 and https://github.com/unhosted/u36/issues/5) it might still make sense to do a team meeting at some point. When do people have time?

I guess you meant 8th of October not September, right? :slight_smile:

That whole week I’m quite flexible, so I leave it for the rest to say what fits best for them.

I’m in PST until end of October, so anything before 19:00 CET doesn’t work for me at the moment.

Right, yes I meant October :slight_smile:
OK, so how about 8 October 8pm?

Great. I’m in.

Let me try to show that this is not true:

  • I seeked consensus on 25 March 2014, when I started this very thread. Please read the top post:
  • I got a meta-comment from @raucao, echoed by @almereyda, about grammar and capitalization.
  • I got one piece of feedback:
  • which I took into account:
  • On 28 March I asked for input a second time:
  • There was no reaction to this from anybody. @raucao asked: [quote=“raucao, post:6, topic:173”]
    If you’re talking about the new website
    [/quote]
  • So I assumed maybe the lack of input was due to people not having understood my questions, so I gave some examples to try to tinder the discussion:
  • To make sure everybody understood that this discussion is really really about the real website, I added:
  • And in case that still wasn’t clear, I added:
  • I tried to organize a day where we could all work on this while meeting in person:
  • We discussed it in the team meeting, and I posted here again (this was end of April):
  • This meeting happened, but at the start @raucao said we could not all work together on it right away, because he had some pending changes which he wanted to work on alone, so in the end, iirc @galfert and I worked on rs.js while @raucao worked on the website.
  • At the end of this meeting, @raucao said he hadn’t managed to finish the part which he wanted to do alone, and this stayed true for the 5 months that followed. For this reason, no new doc sprint day was organized, and those core team members who had time to contribute just focused on bug sprint days instead.
  • I asked @raucao several times how we could move the process further, but he responded each time with “it’s on the top of my list, but giving pressure isn’t helping”. During JSFest week I tried to work on the website again, reminding @raucao that we’re still in a blocker situation, and have been since at least "open the chat in your browser" link broken · Issue #62 · remotestorage/remotestorage.io · GitHub and this is hurting the project. Again, we were not able to talk about the situation.
  • A couple of weeks ago I staged the proposed changes on https://rerelaunch.5apps.com/ seeking technical review
  • I also sought technical review in a PR on the remotestorage.io github repo (the rerelaunch branch).
  • I got feedback about some details from @mrshu and @shybyte, and incorporated this.
  • Up to here, I think the process is “OK”. There is maybe a bit of lack of interest from other core team members, and it’s going slower than I would like, but everybody should be free to contribute as much or as little as they want, and that’s all still a functional process within our project.
  • I got asked by @raucao to remove his layout contributions, because he did not want his work to be used in its current form. We don’t have a contributor agreement, and I think that’s good. I think everbody should be able to retract their contributions until they are live / have been merged into a release. Once it’s live, we can’t of course unmerge people’s contributions, but this was still during the review phase. So I removed the layout changes and only kept the text changes.
  • I took care with the way of not mentioning the GoogleDrive and Dropbox backends at the same level as remoteStorage backend, but in an after sentence (‘or even with…’). In the changelog and the release announcement of rs.js 0.10.0 they are also clearly labelled as experimental.
  • Since no further input or feedback came, I put the changes live.
  • Then something happened which is to me unacceptable: @raucao reverted my work without discussing with the rest of the team.
  • I feel that at the next team meeting, we need to agree on a collaboration/contribution process to make sure something like that never happens again within our project.

So I think our next step should be try to get to a productive process for updating the website, maybe a bit like the review & release process we put in to place for rs.js.

Obviously for small corrections and updates this is not necessary, but for a change like this, I feel like we’re just too unorganized currently. Let’s discuss it at the team meeting! :slight_smile:

This is slightly ridiculous. I will not participate in kindergarten style blame-seeking and I will not debunk this history, because it is missing most of what I said and explained on the way. Apparently you have enough time to spare to write up a one-sided 5-page forums post, but I don’t.

If this is what you want to discuss during the phone call, count me out.

Sure, np. It doesn’t matter now, anyway. It happened, we all learned from it, let’s not look back.

What I want to establish is a process for making substantial changes to the website from now on.

Fair enough.

This discussion is now closed. As discussed, we decided to keep the presentation of what “remoteStorage” is on remotestorage.io as mainly about the actual remoteStorage protocol and how to use it.

To fill the gap a little bit, as of version 0.7, meute can be used as a multi-backend tool and I’ll market it as such from now on.

Rs.js will (at least for now) continue to be marketed the way it is marketed now, as a tool that’s focused mainly on remoteStorage, but that has additional experimental support for alternative backends.

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