Re: updates on the Scala Community Petition requests

A few post-Scalathon updates on the community petition:
1. "Documentation of the core libs needs to be treated at least as seriously as the code."Huge progress is being made here. Heather MIller has been appointed the documentation czar. We had 35 new contributors working on docs during the docspree. There was an extensive discussion of this issue in the community  lunch. In the weekly EPFL meeting I heard that Colladoc work continues and should be ready for a soft release in a couple months. Heather is working on a site to centralize good documentation from the Internet (blogs, hidden stuff on scala-lang, SO, etc), and has already found volunteers to help with part of this. You'll be hearing lots more about documentation moving forward.
2. "The GitHub move should be completed."
Josh Suereth is joining Typesafe (yay!) and this is a top priority for him.

3. "The SBT move should be completed."
I have no information on this. Stupid me for not spending more time with Mark Harrah at Scalathon.
4. "There needs to be an open, transparent and low-effort (for the contributor) process for people to contribute minor patches to code and/or documentation with the expectation that these patches will be incorporated or rejected in a timely manner." GitHub is that low-effort process. Paul is working on tools to make it much easier for him to review these pull requests and increase is merging throughput.
5. "Revitalize the process around incubator/greenhouse/trunk. Provide a place where library writers can meet and exchange experiences and people interested in offering help can find them." I have no information on this.
6. "Please appoint a point-of-contact for improvements to the website. Web suggestions/discussions are tough on a bug tracker."I don't think we have such a person yet. However, Heather Miller in her doc czar capacity is working on scala-lang quite a bit. So if the website improvements are related to documentation/searchability/etc I would go to her first.
7. "EPFL should resume sending notes on their meetings."This is going to happen. Martin assured me today.
8. "Package Object Based Module System Allow for the definition of the public interface(s) to an entire package." I have no information on this.
9. "There should be a systematic way for the community to be involved in decisions that involve the trade-off between improving the standard libraries and breaking backwards compatibility. Scala needs be able to continue to evolve." Binary compatibility was one of the biggest complaints of the commercial users at the commercial users lunch at Scalathon. I don't know of any systematic way for the community to be involved in breakage decisions. What kind of system is desired?
10. "A community liason should be appointed. Someone who has the time and interest to help newcomers contribute to the standard distribution, including one-time contributions." I've been appointed a Scala community liaison by Paul & Martin. Which explains why I'm writing this email. Feel free to contact me about how to get involved, find people to work with, how to communicate your concerns to the right people, etc. Please understand that I am a Scala, and not Typesafe liaison. I do not get paid, and my part-time work with Typesafe is unrelated to my community efforts :) That said, I do communicate things I hear back to Donald and others from Typesafe. It's just not my Typesafe job.
11. "The private committers-only list should be used sparingly and more of the planning should be done in the open."It has been confirmed by several committers that that list is boring and the community does not need access. The real planning is being done (apparently) at EPFL. I now sit in on their weekly meetings via Google Hangout, and the meeting notes are being sent out again, so this should address a lot of this problem. Any more than that and you'll just have to beg Martin to serialize more of his thoughts :)
A big thank you to Martin, Adriaan, Heather, Paul, and others for taking this petition seriously and putting so much into motion so quickly.
Yuvi

Martin says the meeting notes will go to scala-internals, check out that Google group if you're interested.

Yuvi



On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 2:35 PM, Josh Suereth <joshua.suereth@gmail.com> wrote:

Note, I think #2 and #3 will be on my short list...

On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 2:34 PM, Yuvi Masory <ymasory@gmail.com> wrote:

A few post-Scalathon updates on the community petition:
1. "Documentation of the core libs needs to be treated at least as seriously as the code." Huge progress is being made here. Heather MIller has been appointed the documentation czar. We had 35 new contributors working on docs during the docspree. There was an extensive discussion of this issue in the community  lunch. In the weekly EPFL meeting I heard that Colladoc work continues and should be ready for a soft release in a couple months. Heather is working on a site to centralize good documentation from the Internet (blogs, hidden stuff on scala-lang, SO, etc), and has already found volunteers to help with part of this. You'll be hearing lots more about documentation moving forward.
2. "The GitHub move should be completed."
Josh Suereth is joining Typesafe (yay!) and this is a top priority for him.

3. "The SBT move should be completed."
I have no information on this. Stupid me for not spending more time with Mark Harrah at Scalathon.
4. "There needs to be an open, transparent and low-effort (for the contributor) process for people to contribute minor patches to code and/or documentation with the expectation that these patches will be incorporated or rejected in a timely manner." GitHub is that low-effort process. Paul is working on tools to make it much easier for him to review these pull requests and increase is merging throughput.
5. "Revitalize the process around incubator/greenhouse/trunk. Provide a place where library writers can meet and exchange experiences and people interested in offering help can find them." I have no information on this.
6. "Please appoint a point-of-contact for improvements to the website. Web suggestions/discussions are tough on a bug tracker."I don't think we have such a person yet. However, Heather Miller in her doc czar capacity is working on scala-lang quite a bit. So if the website improvements are related to documentation/searchability/etc I would go to her first.
7. "EPFL should resume sending notes on their meetings."This is going to happen. Martin assured me today.
8. "Package Object Based Module System Allow for the definition of the public interface(s) to an entire package." I have no information on this.
9. "There should be a systematic way for the community to be involved in decisions that involve the trade-off between improving the standard libraries and breaking backwards compatibility. Scala needs be able to continue to evolve." Binary compatibility was one of the biggest complaints of the commercial users at the commercial users lunch at Scalathon. I don't know of any systematic way for the community to be involved in breakage decisions. What kind of system is desired?
10. "A community liason should be appointed. Someone who has the time and interest to help newcomers contribute to the standard distribution, including one-time contributions." I've been appointed a Scala community liaison by Paul & Martin. Which explains why I'm writing this email. Feel free to contact me about how to get involved, find people to work with, how to communicate your concerns to the right people, etc. Please understand that I am a Scala, and not Typesafe liaison. I do not get paid, and my part-time work with Typesafe is unrelated to my community efforts :) That said, I do communicate things I hear back to Donald and others from Typesafe. It's just not my Typesafe job.
11. "The private committers-only list should be used sparingly and more of the planning should be done in the open."It has been confirmed by several committers that that list is boring and the community does not need access. The real planning is being done (apparently) at EPFL. I now sit in on their weekly meetings via Google Hangout, and the meeting notes are being sent out again, so this should address a lot of this problem. Any more than that and you'll just have to beg Martin to serialize more of his thoughts :)
A big thank you to Martin, Adriaan, Heather, Paul, and others for taking this petition seriously and putting so much into motion so quickly.
Yuvi

Le 19/07/2011 20:35, Josh Suereth a écrit :
> Note, I think #2 and #3 will be on my short list...
>
> On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 2:34 PM, Yuvi Masory > wrote:
>
> A few post-Scalathon updates on the community petition:
>
>[...]
> *2. "The GitHub move should be completed."*
> Josh Suereth is joining Typesafe (yay!) and this is a top priority
> for him.

Congrats Josh !

6. "Please appoint a point-of-contact for improvements to the website. Web suggestions/discussions are tough on a bug tracker." I don't think we have such a person yet. However, Heather Miller in her doc czar capacity is working on scala-lang quite a bit. So if the website improvements are related to documentation/searchability/etc I would go to her first.

Ok apparently the person behind the website is too busy to be a regular point of contact. Please pass suggestions/fixes about scala-lang.org to me, and I'll forward them along in digest format. They won't get lost.
Yuvi