So what will we do? (was [Zope] What causes the community to stall so often

[Heimo Laukkanen]

 >This has been a very interesting thread, with many good points.
 >Thanks to all who have posted.
 >
 >	There were a couple of points I thought were complete rubbish.
 >Like the idea that Zope is "more complex" than PHP, and thus can't be
 >as well-documented.  I'm sorry, but "functions" are no more easy to
 >document than "object hierarchies".  (OOP theory would state quite the
 >opposite, in fact.)

True. I have grown to think, that Zope actually makes lots of sense -- 
after one gets over the first steps and un-learn the way of doing 
applications the way one has previously done with asp or php. Problem is 
that on the path to the first stage of awareness is a whole lot of big 
problems and stones to bash your head into. And it takes a great effort 
to keep on going.

 >Could it be Zope Corp's lack of prioritization?  Maybe Zope Corp. 
 >management believes that "if you're busy writing docs, you're not busy
 >developing", and so has set a mandate.  Or more likely, Zope Corp just 
 >has a developer-centric company culture, and we all know how much 
 >developers like to write docs (right, Andreas?  [:)] .
 >
 >My personal opinion is that Zope Corp needs to realize that the
 >community is faltering due to lack of docs, and re-prioritize.  No,
 >writing docs won't bring in cash directly.  No, developers are not 
 >happy retrofitting docs for production-level code.  But as somebody 
who >stuck my neck out for Zope, and is now realizing how hard it is to 
find >up-to-date info, I think this is a fair thing to ask of Zope Corp.

What if Zope corporation would hire an editor to keep up the community 
and documentation. I don't believe that just the documentation solves 
problems, there should be someone coordinating or helping different 
development efforts to work together. Integrate good tips from the 
mailing lists to the knowledgebases etc. Recruite people to write or 
update articles about different subjects, based on the buzz on the 
community.

I mean there is lots of need for help for high end developers, but there 
is the possibility to dive into the code. There is even mor eto be done 
on the beginning level, to help more and more Zope users on their way 
and support good programming practises and designs. This is exactly what 
I would have liked to see a couple of months ago!

And what if this would happen? Well for starters I would like to 
participate and contribute in areas that I migth be able to help someone 
else.

One important note also:

There should be CLEAR guidelines of where to find and distribute 
information. Zope-mailinglist is a great place, but also a dumping 
ground for all sort of requests from beginners to advanced users. It is 
also damn hard to try to find the information, even though I would know 
that I saw the guide somewhere - was it on the mailinglist, with which 
keywords, was it a howto, or on different sites outside Zope Corps. reach.

And this - as far as I can tell - would require someone to coordinate 
and manage the information.

-huima