Date: 23 Aug 2002 16:31:53 +0200 From: Wouter Van Hemel <wouter@pair.com> To: Michael Lucas <mwlucas@blackhelicopters.org> Cc: Eric Anderson <anderson@centtech.com>, freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Improved searching for FreeBSD.org web site Message-ID: <1030113113.208.40.camel@cocaine> In-Reply-To: <20020823092009.A39787@blackhelicopters.org> References: <4.3.2.7.2.20020822220010.00ab2540@pop.atomz.com> <20020823073410.B39333@blackhelicopters.org> <3D663073.40604@centtech.com> <20020823092009.A39787@blackhelicopters.org>
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On Fri, 2002-08-23 at 15:20, Michael Lucas wrote: > Eric, > > [...] > Guys, we can all speak. We can all answer these offers, even with > just an echo reply. You might not be able to accept them on behalf of > the community, but you can at least send back some sort of reply and > give your opinion to get the discussion ball rolling. Or, do as I did > and try to start an internal discussion. > > Trust me; if you give a bogus answer, someone will correct you. > People who make these offers to free software groups are used to a > touch of flappage. > > Not answering these sorts of offers makes people not want to give > them. That's bad. > Point taken; you are right. There often is a lack of direction and a clear voice of authority in source projects. I loathe authority, but it's good to know who to talk to when you need something done, instead of not knowing who's responsable - if anybody at all. This 'somebody else, not me' attitude can be a bit hard and discourage people, but the freedom and loose rules are exactly one of the things that make people want to do cooperate, next to their (probably) more strict day-time job. I hope that you (Eric) don't take this too hard - this is by no means a refusal or denial of the work you did, it's just that somebody has to step up now and take responsability to finish the job, and everybody seems to think somebody else is (will be) doing it. Even a democracy needs leaders (representatives) with executive powers. > [...] > > 2) A big fancy system supported by an outside vendor who specializes > in supporting and building search engines would be nice, but we > *cannot* be dependent upon it. We cannot guarantee that any vendor, > no matter how kindly disposed towards FreeBSD, will even exist in six > months. (This is nothing against atomz, just a general comment; who > ever thought that Walnut Creek would go through those convulsions?) > > Personally, I would like to see us do both. Our current system needs > help or, preferably, replacing. There's a space for commercial > support, however. > Eric Anderson has been putting alot of work into this - and things seem to come together quite nicely, as I already said a few weeks ago. I prefer the 'in-house' solution much more, because of the independence. On the other hand, this new offer is very generous -and- useful, no matter what reasons 'atomz' might have (and it's not fair to judge them while they give us such a great and much needed gift). We have two solutions for our crappy search engine problem. This is a good thing. I suggest we combine them: let Eric import his engine in the website - might I suggest giving him access so he can take care of it himself, otherwise nothing's going to happen and that's _very_ frustrating; and put a 'smart link' with the current query at the bottom of that engine that says something like 'alternative search engine, generously provided by atomz'. When that link is clicked, the search results of the commercial engine pop up. People can decide for themselves what they use; we take advantage of both obviously much better implementations; and we don't depend on a commercial solution - we only have to remove the extra link on the bottom of the search engine. > [...] > Just my take on things. wouter To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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