Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Seth Alan Woolley <seth AT positivism.org>]

On Tue, Apr 05, 2005 at 12:37:32PM -0500, Jeremy Blosser (emrys) wrote:
> On Apr 05, Andrew ruskie Levstik [ruskie AT mages.ath.cx] wrote:
> > > It might be better to do both the new sections which were suggested a
> > > week or two ago, and add the keywords.
> > > 
> > > If you want the keywords indexed for quick searching, the 'scribe
> > > reindex' will take more time.
> > 
> > OK let's say yes to this in a limited way... what emrys is prosposing
> > are to many tiny sections... it wouldn't be a problem if we had 
> > subsections
> > but we don't so let's try to keep it as clean as possible.
> 
> To clarify, what I "proposed" was sort of a sample of a way to do it, taken
> to its extreme to make it clear what I was talking about.  I'm very
> prepared to suggest something more limited; we were actually talking about
> that on IRC when Arwed and Seth suggested their alternative proposal.

So far the main arguments against our proposal are:

1) difficulty searching by category in filesystem

2) unmaintained spells would not be maintained

To resolve point 2, we would have categories still, but only for 
"unmaintained" spells:

general-devel
general-libs
general-disk
etc.

Gurus would still be assigned to the general sections so we still have a 
responsible party on bug reports.  As spells are taken over out of the 
general sections we need fewer and fewer people to handle the general 
sections and everybody's happy.

For point 1, I'm philosophically opposed to the very "idea" that a 
heirarchical classification system can be made close to any general 
ideal.  They can only be made to specific ideals, and there's no way 
we'll be able to all agree on our ideals.  So I think it's better to 
break us from the restriction of attemtpting to make a coherent 
directory classification system intended for general audiences and 
instead focus on one that allows gurus to be assigned to one or more 
directories, which is the specific use with which we actually use the 
directories for.

If you have any arguments I've missed, let me know so I can demolish 
them. ;)

Seth

-- 
Seth Alan Woolley [seth at positivism.org], SPAM/UCE is unauthorized
Key id 00BA3AF3 = 8BE0 A72E A47E A92A 0737  F2FF 7A3F 6D3C 00BA 3AF3
http://smgl.positivism.org:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x00BA3AF3
Security Team Leader Source Mage GNU/Linux http://www.sourcemage.org

Attachment: pgpEbbBWas6zD.pgp
Description: PGP signature