Hi Markus

markus.soell@... wrote:

> Jeff has put up this design comparison page and I have set the domain
> FirebirdSQL.com to point to it, just to fascilitate the access.

Thanks, I think that is an excellent way to make them accessable.

>
> However, this makes the whole thing look like a competition. I don't
> really want to compete against anyone.

I agree I don't think it's a competition particulalry but more a story
board for people to show their ideas. I would expect those ideas to
bounce back and forth and evolve and mutate a little, much as the logo
has been doing recently.

At some point (perhaps fairly close now for the logo) we should put up a
poll, probably on firebird and get some feedback about it. If there is
still some debate or no clear winner I would expect it to go to a
firebird members only poll (I wonder if that'll increase our membership
suddenly :-).

I think the web pages still have a bit of evolving to do before we are
at any sort of decision stage yet.

[snip]

> but still contains many obvious flaws and, generally, does
> not follow what in my opinion is advised for Firebird in its current
> situation: Being simple!

Actually Marcus one thing I have been thinking about is that first
impressions are one thing,

But after people have seen our website once, to keep people returning a
static site hold no new interest for them. I suspect some sort of
active changing informative content like "news" or "announcements" would
seem to work best for encouraging repeat traffic. What do you think?

>
> Another important question is, who shall be the webmaster. Since this
> is going to be the official site,

The webmaster is currently Pavel, although others (including self) have
done some bits and pieces. He is backed by a small bunch of people in
an admin group for firebird. Who knows after discussion here we may have
more people (preferably members :-) doing the webmastering thing.

> I agree with Reed that it's
> important to give redactional competence to Firebird core members. I
> would however prefer if this wasn't just one member, but rather a
> little team. There are other tasks which actually could well be
> handled by such an "administrative" unit. One is, that the official
> site should give some contact information, at least an email address.
> So there's the question who shall receive this email.

Previously this used to be 'alice' but this is no longer the case, we
do have an email address to contact the admin group within Firebird, but
alice was too open. After speaking with Pavel, he's been working on a
moderated method for getting general email traffic into the admin group,
or firebirdall group. I think it's comming in with the modified webring
page.

> For this as
> well, I would prefer a little team of "trusted members", rather than
> one single person. This team would not "own" Firebird, but only have
> some (rather limited) administrative tasks.

I think this basically describes the current admin team we have for
firebird. It includes a number of the most active members, and Ann is
the only representative there from ibphoenix.

> It would be an interim
> solution, to be replaced by something more formal (a Firebird
> Association) in the future.

As we grow these things need to be decided upon, but currently we're
focussed on just having a future at all ;-).

>
> What do you think?

What you say is sensible, fortunately we have most of what you say here
in place already, but don't let me stop you making suggestions :-).


Cheers

Mark

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