Welcome and discussion starter
Bill Nottingham
notting at redhat.com
Wed Feb 13 20:57:42 UTC 2013
Pete Travis (me at petetravis.com) said:
> I've been thinking of implementation, in general terms. A lot of the details
> would fall out if a few preliminary goals are established, and the replies so
> far have come from a necessarily technical perspective. Allow me to offer
> another, on presentation:
>
> Who is the target audience for formulas? We can roughly group the user base
> into two areas: end users and experienced users. I would group the average
> desktop linux enthusiast in the former, and include the majority of Fedora
> contributors, system administrators, and wizened enthusiasts in the latter.
>
> Targeting the end user would require a lot more effort in presentation, but
> would provide a bigger payoff in terms of marketing value and user draw.
> Targeting the latter would allow a much easier implementation - really, we
> would just have to agree on a common style and guidelines for shipping
> playbooks and put them in a git repo to be cloned.
>
> Without solid presentation, we will expending effort to the exclusion of less
> experienced users. I propose that from the beginning, Formulas should be
> implemented with the intent of making their use as easy as clicking the link
> to download a spin. I think that we can agree that drawing more users to
> Fedora is generally a Good Thing, and that Formulas could help keep the
> contributor funnel full.
>
> So, a Formula should contain:
> - an ansible playbook
> - any required ansible templates
> - descriptive content in html using a defined template, or in a format
> translatable to html
> - a fun banner image
> - indexable metadata
>
> The presentation layer should provide:
> - a browseable, searchable interface built from Formula metadata
> - a rating system, to promote involvement
> - a moderated comment system, to promote involvement
> (although comments can detract from perceived professionalism)
> - a script to crawl through the git source and create and index the
> content
> - individual Formula pages displaying the above mentioned descriptive
> content, with direct links to the playbook file itself
> - a GUI URI handler to guide the user through the interactive portions of
> the formula, and to promote a sense of accomplishment
A lot here does depend on the target market you're looking at. For example,
are we trying to get to the use case of users who want:
http://spins.fedoraproject.org/
or the use case of users who want:
http://jujucharms.com/charms/precise
?
These are vastly different target markets, and I'd honestly try and shoot
for the second, not the first. Others may disagree.
Bill
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