Closed Bug 1023165 Opened 10 years ago Closed 9 years ago

Reboot planet.webmaker.org

Categories

(Webmaker Graveyard :: Communications, defect)

x86_64
Other
defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED FIXED

People

(Reporter: doug, Unassigned, NeedInfo)

Details

(Whiteboard: [comms] [aug22])

Attachments

(2 files)

The following people no longer work for Mozilla, so let's remove their feeds from planet.webmaker.org:

* Ben Simon
* Carla Casilli (feed)
* Chris Appleton (feed)
* Chris McAvoy (feed)
* Erin Knight (feed)
* Michelle Levesque (feed)
* Open Badges blog (feed)
* Ross Bruniges (feed)
* Sunny Lee (feed)
Who should be on point for this? Who should I cc?
Flags: needinfo?(matt)
QA Contact: brett
Summary: Remove feeds from planet.webmaker.org → Reboot planet.webmaker.org
Attachment #8442735 - Flags: feedback?(brett)
Flags: needinfo?(matt)
* Not a big priority -- putting on [aug22] train for post campaign rush
Whiteboard: [comms] [aug22]
Comment on attachment 8442735 [details]
https://etherpad.mozilla.org/planet-webmaker-reboot

I'm not 100% certain this is an urgent problem.  We do have staff calls, we have a bi-weekly call where team leads discuss priorties.  For keeping up with individuals current thinking, it may be best that people follow those blogs or social media independently.
Attachment #8442735 - Flags: review-
Attachment #8442735 - Flags: feedback?(brett)
Attachment #8442735 - Flags: feedback-
In that case, I propose we shut it down as it shows up in search results for 'webmaker' and is out-of-date.
> I'm not 100% certain this is an urgent problem. We do have staff calls,
> we have a bi-weekly call where team leads discuss priorties.

While it may not be *urgent*, I would say it's *important*. Planets are about building community, while the calls you mentioned are for paid staff only (even if they're not for paid staff, they also present barriers to entry e.g. by requiring folks to be in a certain time zone).

When I first joined Mozilla, Planet Mozilla was an integral part both of introducing me to the community, and of introducing the community to me. And given our focus on contributor numbers and community growth, I think it's particularly important (possibly even urgent) for Webmaker to have a planet--or something that serves a similar purpose.

Because of the numerous problems that have historically occurred when having a planet maintained by unknown people behind a Bugzilla wall, I wrote a simple nodeJS job that looks up a list of RSS feeds from a Google Spreadsheet, statically generates a planet webpage and aggregated RSS feed, and pushes it all to a S3 bucket. This solution currently powers the following planets:

* Planet Open Badges - http://planet.openbadges.org/
* Planet Open News - http://planet.opennews.org/
* Planet Hive - http://planet.hivelearningnetworks.org/

And here's an example of a Google spreadsheet that's used to keep track of the feeds in the planet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AjLje2rCgZrAdFdCb1psVUJZVXRadUVfSVFIQ2lTMWc&output=html

It's extremely easy for me to set one of these instances up, so I'd be happy to do that for Webmaker if you like. For reference, the source code is at https://github.com/toolness/planet-badges (the solution originally started for Planet Badges specifically, then was reused to power the other planets).
Thanks for the input, Atul. 

Thought I'd add this into the mix: https://blog.mozilla.org/community/2014/07/24/why-do-people-join-and-stay-part-of-a-community-and-how-to-support-them/

There's an interesting 'community commitment curve' in it that specifically talks about reading, commenting on, and writing blog posts!
Let me say a few words from the perspective of a volunteer.

Some time ago I started writing tutorials covering topics such as How to Make a Web App or How to Create Animations with CSS3. I've already heard about Webmaker by that point and decided to use Thimble to write these tutorials (I liked how the learner can use the same website to read the tutorial and try out the code).

Anyway, to make the long(ish) story short, eventually I got (a little) more involved with the Webmaker community and I really like the people and the tools and the content they create.

Every now and then I notice a neat little feature added to the Webmaker platform (new Thimble features, new templates for teaching kits/activities) -- this makes me wonder what I'm missing out on. As someone who really enjoys working with the Webmaker tools, I would love to see what features are being worked on or what has been added.

Side note: What I'm especially excited about -- to quote my private discussion with Doug (sorry!): "Nimble[1]-like functionality (in terms of file storage, etc.) is still being discussed."

Mozilla is a great, open company. I really like that I can go on Bugzilla and suggest a new feature, report a bug, or I can go on IRC or forums and actually speak with people who work there or also volunteer.

To me, being able to follow the development of my favorite tools seems like an extension of all this. I do realize it's an extra work, but in the long run, it can also save work (by preventing people from suggesting features that are already worked on), spark new ideas (if I see a new feature is being added, I can get inspired and come up with improvements or other ideas -- ideas, after all, are built upon each other). It can also bring in more people and, as Atul said, build a stronger community.

I suggest exploring options -- maybe there is a way to automate this? For example, pull in bugs from Bugzilla tagged "new feature" or "update"? I don't think it's necessary to write a 500-word blog post about every tiny (but useful) update.

Either way, just my two cents.


[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Webmaker/Concept-Nimble
Wondering if Brett will reconsider given Atul & Stefan's comments? Or at least do community consultation?
Flags: needinfo?(brett)
Atul has already got this working again. Thanks Atul!
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 9 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
No problem Ricardo!

For future reference, the planet is currently located here:

http://planet.webmakerprototypes.org/

It's regenerated every 10 minutes, pulling its feed list from a google spreadsheet that any mozilla employee can edit here:

https://docs.google.com/a/mozillafoundation.org/spreadsheets/d/1l2CdFNKKcsYEgR58__OaCHQqd_fcuofM55xtDp-9smY/edit#gid=2120895599

It's all based on the github code I mentioned in Comment 6.
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