Re: New Debian Site

[HXC <hxc@planet.nl>]

Steve Kemp wrote:
>   The big problem is that many people offer to help without fully
>  understanding the size and scope of the problem.
>
>   Right now we have a system which allows us to publish pages in
>  multiple languages and store those pages under revision control.
>
>   The pages are static, do not require the installation of PHP, or
>  complex database to work and contain coordinated translations.
>
>   If seriously believe you can replace that with a fancy CMS then
>  please take the existing web pages in each of these languages:
>
> * arabic
> * armenian
> * bulgarian
> * catalan
> * chinese
> * croatian
> * czech
> * danish
> * dutch
> * english
> * esperanto
> * farsi
> * finnish
> * french
> * german
> * greek
> * hungarian
> * indonesian
> * italian
> * japanese
> * korean
> * lithuanian
> * norwegian
> * polish
> * portuguese
> * romanian
> * russian
> * slovak
> * slovene
> * spanish
> * swedish
> * turkish
> * ukrainian
>
>    Now keep it up to date for a month, sort out any issues and point
>  us to it.  A rough estimate suggests that there are about 3500 pages
>  in the English directory alone.
>
>   It is a *huge* job, none of the people who have appeared upon the
>  list and suggested this approach have ever demonstrated any real
>  understanding of the size of the job, and have never returned to do it.
>  It gets repetitive explaining this so that is probably part of the
>  reason why they get ignored.
>
>   If you think you're different and can, then great!  But otherwise each
>  of these mails is just like the rest.  "Hey your website sucks, I know
>  PHP and can design - let me help you for free?!!!!11"
>
>   Simple changes are possible, updating the CSS is a gradual process that
>  has been contributed by several users.  Those kind of changes are simple
>  to propose and would be appreciated.
>
>   Offering to migrate the site into a completely new form, one that our
>  existing translators, editors, and maintainers couldn't work with unless
>  they used some CMS and had a database locally just isn't practical
>  or useful.
>
> Steve
>   
Fait enough. In my opinion only more reason to start exploring the
possibilities. One can wonder why it is not possible for Debian to the
same as other Linux distributions (e.g. Gentoo)  with their websites.
The way I was thaught in university is to start with the problem and to
finish with looking for causes and possible solutions. At the moment I
am under the impression that noone is investigating the possibilities of
the Debian website and if that is the case it is too bad.