spf-discuss
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RE: Official website: Requirements

2005-02-27 17:01:31
Radu Hociung [radu(_at_)ohmi(_dot_)org] wrote:
2. Multiple editors.
   For maintainability reasons, multiple editors must be supported
   in a convenient way.  At least the council members plus one or
   more delegated web master(s) should have edit access.

2a. I would like to suggest that various sections would be edited
     by different groups. Thus the implementations table would be
     updated by a developer lead/coordinator, not by the council.

2b. Perhaps the news section would be updated by the developers
     themselves, so they can announce when a new beta or release
     is done, even though it may not be added to the table of
     'stable implementations' right away.

2d. Also, I would like to see the editors and webmaster elected
     every N months (say 12 or 18 months).

No, there is no need to formally elect website editors or webmasters.
These positions can and certainly _should_ be delegated by the council.
If you can't trust the council to make good delegations, what's the point
of electing it in the first place?

2c. Perhaps we should create a site map as the requirement.

This detail is too specific for this discussion.

2e. Webmaster mandate. The webmaster would do no content editing
     himself/herself, but would manage the access rights,
     regularly check for broken links, keep backups and monitor
     the mirrors, perhaps do spelling fixes, and relay
     complaints/suggestions about content to the appropriate
     editors. The webmaster could be seen as the electoral
     officer. He should be unpolitical, and hopefully uninvolved
     or just marginally interested in SPF. I'd have no problem
     with the webmaster owning the domain name. The webmaster
     would also report bandwidth usage to the SPF community, and
     recommend how much money should be raised to keep the site
     operational for the future. The webmaster should have some
     experience with webmastering, so he/she can plan and
     implement the caching/compression and other such features in
     order to reduce bandwidth costs.

No, the webmaster should be delegated by the council, and his position
should (for many reasons) _not_ overlap with that of an electoral officer
or committee.

On the rest of what you are saying, I really don't have an opinion at this
time.  But please let's try to keep things as simple and unbureaucratic as
possible.  We (the project) don't want the council to be involved too much
in bureaucratic management issues.

I would make Reliable 1st, Unexpensive 2nd, and remove "cheap"

Ok, s/cheap/inexpensive/.  But I said "in no specific order":

| Above all, I think the website must fulfill at least the following
| requirements (in no specific order):

6. Independent.

See my 2e. Also I think from an independence point of view, the
subdomain approach is more sensible, so the administrator of the
domain cannot hijack the domain. Assuming of course, that
multiple people have admin access to the subdomain, and the
important decisions about the domain/subdomain require more than
1 permission.

Somebody always has full control (i.e. owns) the domain, be it a
second-level domain or a sub-domain.  So the only relevant question is,
who owns it, not whether it is a sub-domain.  Besides, projects can't work
without some minimum amount of trust.

NO - I disagree entirely.  Meng has nailed his colours to the MS mast
and should be specifically excluded from being in sole control of
*anything* to do with SPF.  I have offered many domains, and I have
offered to move them as needed.  We only need Meng to point
spf.pobox.com at the new website.

Meng has done good work, but I think no one person can be
expected to remain unbiased forever. We're all corruptible.

Well, I guess the council will have to decide who shall own the domain(s).

7.  Mirrors - the site should be mirrored across the world.

This is not a value per se, but having some mirrors (with round-robin DNS)
could be a solution for the "reliable" requirement.  Good idea.