[committee] Meeting today

[Davyd Madeley]

On Tue, 2004-12-21 at 16:29 +0800, David Adam wrote:

> >  - Fresher's Guide (currently a work in progress)
> 
> OK, here comes my opinion, which can be taken as the official
> ex-first-year's position (despite the fact that absolutely no consultation
> has been engaged in, as the few peope I tried basically commented "Meh"):
> 
> The Freshers' Guide is a tome.
> 
> The 2004 Guide is huge. It has 12 pages. It has a *contents
> page*. It's a 1 MB download, and it's in quite a small font (I can
> remember having problems reading it, even with glasses on).

So going up to 16 pages is not a good idea in your eyes? At the same
time, I've managed to cut down the download size, and upped the fonts
(and hopefully the readability).

> Now, looking back through past guides, I can see this is something of a
> tradition. I still don't think it's a good thing. In this age of
> hypertext, much of the information contained in this manual would be best
> served by being placed on the website's Infobase. This has lots of
> advantages (it can change, it can be more detailed, and it can be read
> using lynx), although I can understand that it may require some work.

For what it's worth, I loved my fresher's guide, all 12 pages of it.
While already familiar with Linux, I must have read the fresher's guide
about three times on the train home. Perhaps that's just the kind of
person I am. I tried my hardest to recreate that level of affection for
the '04 freshers, but apparently with little success.

Infobase has basically degenerated into a pile of crap. It's hard to
maintain, requires knowledge of obscure DTDs (at least two of them),
requires incredibly strict parsing, and is generally a pain.

The kind of content you're talking about lends itself to content
management via a wiki. I wrote such a content manager for work called
Bounce. It uses the MoinMoin wiki engine, and therefore allows
previewing, revision history and many other useful things.

There is also mysource, Plone and numerous others.

> Instead of a twelve-page document, I think it should be more like four.
> Ideally, we could get it down to just a double-sided sheet.

If we had a good online reference, then sure, 4 pages would be fine.
However at the moment we suffer from a lack of documentation and a good
method to get it online. Meaning the only way you can be softly led into
these things is through a massive fresher's guide. There is an
incredible amount of information to digest, more then we can even fit
into 16 pages.

> * List of committee positions. It's in the constitution and fresher's
> guide, but not the website. Let's move it. I would also like to see photos
> of at least the committee, perhaps some of wheel@, door@ and coke at .
> Particularly those who are in the clubroom during standard undergrad
> hours.

This was suggested a while ago, but nothing ever came of it. I propose
someone with a digital camera lend it to the club for a few days for
some photography, door members, wheel members, committee and machines.

> * Dispense documentation

Dispense2 is going to change all of that of course.

> * Dispense-keypad documentation (which only exists on archives for ucc@)

Written in my fresher's guide draft.

> * SSH instructions (they're pretty much unfindable if they're already
> there, IMO)

I thought this was in the guide. Perhaps it got confused.

> * Machines (yes, I know there's already a list - it's old and it sucks)

Have been thinking about it today, trying to decide on the best method
for representing the data, both on disk and on the web.

> * How to get your files (/home, /away) - including for the Windows
> machines.

The fresher's guide currently contains a much better explanation of this
then the '04 one. I apologise for last year's not being well thought
out.

> * Top 20 UNIX commands (which I think needs altering a bit)

Suggestions?

> I should apologise for not writing this earlier, particularly to Davyd and
> anyone who has already started rewriting the Freshers' Guide.

Digital media has the one most singularly useful ability of being able
to be plagarised with but two keystrokes. If we have a better medium to
present the information, then it won't be hard to port it.

> Comments welcomed on my plan - obviously, it's a committee decision. I
> would be happy to plagiarise/write the paper part of the above plan,
> though someone in www@ will need to look at the Infobase stuff (I don't
> have access privileges nor the time to understand how our website works).

The best way to become a webmaster is to ask ;)

> >  - O'day stall (I think this has been handled)
> 
> Do we need to start collecting volunteers? (I will break Rule 1 and
> volunteer.)

Excellent. This is a great day in the sun, signing up freshers and
taking their money.

> >  - Membership cards and forms (I can update the form from last year,
> >    who is going to do the new card? Can we make it full size this time
> >    around?)

> But they're nice and small...

Except they weren't meant to be ;)

> >  - O'day preparation
> 
> Aside from leading a crusade to get the guild to change that irritating
> abbreviation for orientation day, what else needs to be done? I can't
> really remember this year's stall, the whole day was a bit of a blur
> (mainly thanks to a dodgy sausage from the Med tent).

But it's not orientation day. Orientation day is called Host day, O'day
is the campus-wide party ;)

> Despite my earlier vehemence, I have realised that I still can't draw.
> Crap. And I had a really good idea for a t-shirt, too.

Then mail it in. We have artists dying for inspiration.

Perhaps we should ask tech what they think about content management
systems.

--d

-- 
Davyd Madeley              http://www.davyd.id.au/

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