[wp-hackers] Proposed Dev Planning Process (was Re: WordPress Openness)

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi folks,

The WP openness thread last week lead me to think about the question
"what can non-developers do to influence the dev process?"  It seems to
me the answer is "don't just write emails, write specs".   It's a way
that productive activity can happen without up-front involvement from
the core developers.  Of course, the core devs eventually have to get
involved, but hopefully, only if they want to and/or if the
specification has been properly vetted.

So, I tried documenting both how to create a good spec, and how to
publish it on codex (with much help from Lorelle).  Here's the doc:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Development_Planning

Please take a look at it, and feel free to add links to other specs.
The initial list is by no means complete or even an attempt at
completeness, but rather a starting point.

Thanks
Rob


On Thu, 2005-06-23 at 10:34 -0700, Matthew Mullenweg wrote:
> Joey B wrote:
> > My first issue: if this is all open to discussion, then why have I
> > barely seen any outside of this mailing list? I certainly haven't seen
> > any official discussion on #wordpress, and I'm usually there. You also
> > told us to keep our mouths shut at the June 15th meetup about 1.6 on
> > the forums, so we can't discuss it there. The only place I've seen any
> > reference to it is the wordpress meetups and the Codex request page
> > and here-- three places where more than half of the "smart idea
> > contributing" community have no idea where is. If it's meant to be
> > open, than have something more open than half-closed.
> 
> There are appropiate forums for different things, to summarize:
> 
> * Forums - for support of released final versions
> * IRC - for chatting at socializing
> * wp-hackers - for discussing development and future versions
> * wp-testers - for testers of SVN versions to discuss bugs and such
> * wp-docs - documentation
> * trac - for bugs
> * Codex - for information edited and written for posterity
> 
> > Secondly, how do you read IRC discussions when you are rarely in
> > #wordpress yourself, Matt? Several good ideas pass through there on a
> > weekly, even daily, basis, yet I rarely see an "official
> > representative" of WordPress there to see these discussions. From our
> > previous private discussions, I think you see #wordpress as nothing
> > but a place to shrug off support questions to those technically-savvy
> > enough to run an IRC client, but it's much more than that, and I think
> > someone involved with Wordpress' codebase should be there from
> > time-to-time to actually see these discussions.
> 
> I read the logs, like I'm sure several others do. I can't stay in IRC 
> all the time because it kills my productivity and is very distracting. I 
> don't encourage people needing support to go to IRC, I prefer all 
> support and people doing support in the forums. I see other developer 
> nicks idling there all the time, maybe you don't recognize them?
> 
> Chat can be a great enabler for getting things done, but you can't 
> expect people to be on it 24 hours a day. That's why we have a set time 
> every week set aside for people to get together and collaborate. (The 
> IRC meetups.)
>