Thomas Hertweck wrote:
for instance how the suse-linux-faq started off. So I absolutely agree with you that it needs some kind of "leadership", volunteers doing the actual work. Leaders (in this case) are not elected, they just grow into this position.
not completely true. First, I don't really like the "Leadership" word. I don't see me as a leader (for the fr wiki I'm sysop of), that is my opinion is only important if it's the only one :-) - else I try to follow the majority will. second, sysop needs at least some admin rights (to be able to edit the front page, for example), and this can only be done by Novel. third, the forum stuff is a totally other beast, it needs admin rights at the server level (and the relevant knowledge), this is not to be done by volunteers. fourth, the sysop must be widely accepted by the other folks. This is natural on new wikis, of course it's him who open the wiki, most of the time, and the people that don't like it don't come :-(), but for the "historical" wiki it's an other story
Usually, these people don't show up all the time, they just do their work in the background - however they speak up when it's the correct time and place and when it's important, and others know then it's now time to listen.
well. the problem here is than there are several - not many, but 3/4. And this may lead to stagnation, because each one wait the others, fear to upset the others... and finally the important pages are not changed. this is visible with the documentation page; There is no large agreement on his layout. some people likes one that others dislike. On a wiki such thing is annoing, because the layout can go back and forth or stay still. Having an identified sysop (Novells or volunteer) I would let him decide in the end
[...] Being part of the community is not just using SUSE Linux, but also feeling committed to it, in a sense of wanting to participate into the joined effort such an open source project represents.
ACK.
+1
To draw a conclusion here: I am not sure whether it would help but I could imagine that having a list of things to do (not just the big things that take half a year to finish, but also the things that are less important and cleared within half an hour) and mailing this "TODO" list to the opensuse mailing list (or other mailing lists as well?) could help to find people taking on some work. Most often people just don't know where to start or they are afraid of starting some work that might take years to finish. Having small tasks might help in this respect. However, we would of course also need somebody being in charge of this TODO list ;-)
absolutely right...
See my notes above concerning the leadership issue. Leadership is closely related to "management" - delegating work, organizing things, communicating with others, involving new people in projects, etc., it's not about doing all the work by oneself.
good
I can see every day how difficult it is *within our own company* to communicate between the development centers and offices. It's even more difficult to communicate when 3rd parties are involved (I guess the "community" was a bit like a 3rd party for Novell when the openSUSE project started) - there are also some legal issues involved, sometimes you simply don't know what to expect, and some 3rd party people have really unrealistic expectations, etc., so it's difficult to find the right track. Hopefully, things will improve but this might take some time and needs also building up some trust between all the parties...
and don't forget the jump to Linux is probably a very important leap for _Novell_ (Novell was for ages synonym to net, as Linux is) and the company is also re-organising itself. don't mention Oracle annouces. The success of the 10.1/opensuse will probably be a very important thing for the future of many of us :-) jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos