[Pydotorg-redesign] The Zope question

[A.M. Kuchling]

On Friday, August 8, 2003, at 06:26 PM, Dylan Reinhardt wrote:
> At present, the number of people who contribute to c.l.python are
> probably a good estimate of the upper bound.  The number who already
> contribute content to python.org are a fair lower bound estimate.

In fact the existing FAQ is already open to be edited by anyone through 
the FAQwizard script.  The result has been a FAQ with uneven quality, 
uneven relevance, and many, *many* outdated questions.  The nature of 
the web interface means it's much harder to revise the FAQ; there's no 
way to break up the sections, no way to rearrange questions, no way to 
do a search-and-replace over the entire FAQ ...

Despite the FAQ being open to anyone for editing, no one edits it.

I don't believe switching to Zope will magically result in a flood of 
command-line fearful people suddenly appearing and offering to maintain 
extensive documentation collections.
The Wiki seems to be used mostly for pages of links, not extensive 
text; we could implement a little link-tree-editing application and get 
much of the same effect as the Wiki.

Stray thought: are there a few people who do a majority of the Wiki 
maintenance?  If yes, we should invite them to get commit access for 
pydotorg.  Is there a way to get a full list of people who've edited 
pages?

> I wonder.  Hanging out on c.l.python, I sense a real reluctance to
> support Zope.  I don't know what the history is there, but something
> seems to be muddying the waters besides technical considerations.

Every complaint I've seen has been technical; even developers of 
competing systems are still friends with the Zope people.  I wrote up 
http://www.amk.ca/python/writing/why-not-zope.html as an explanation of 
why one project I worked on no longer uses Zope.

--amk