[Proposal] James News List & Feed

[Danny Angus <da...@apache.org>]

Hi,

I'd like to propose that we add a new mailinglist, an announce type
one called news@james.apache.org.

Why? Two reasons:

1/ You can get an atom feed via mod_mbox
Here's the mailet-api list:
http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/james-mailet-api/?format=atom

2/ You can use feedburner to republish the feed as html.
Here's an example of the james homepage with the news headlines
replaced by the five latest item subjects from the mailet-api list
feed:
http://www.killerbees.co.uk/mailfeedtest.html

How much easier could it be to keep our news up to date than by
sending mail to the list??

d.

Re: [Proposal] James News List & Feed

[Danny Angus <da...@apache.org>]

On 8/16/07, Stefano Bagnara <ap...@bago.org> wrote:
> I don't see my post headline at
> http://www.killerbees.co.uk/mailfeedtest.html but maybe this is only
> because the update happens only once in a while or there is some caching.

There's a bit of latency, I think feedburner refreshes every hour or
1/2 hour, but I've used it for the feed from my blog to planetapache
for a month or so and I have no complaints.

d.

Re: [Proposal] James News List & Feed

[Stefano Bagnara <ap...@bago.org>]

Danny Angus ha scritto:
> Stefano, I made you admin :-)

It works, now I can see/do everything :-)

I also posted the 2.3.1 release news to see how it worked and it seems
plain easy.

Unfortunately email notifications comes in with different return path
for each post so we can't add it to the allow-list and we'll have to
moderate each post to site-dev, but this is not a big issue.

I don't see my post headline at
http://www.killerbees.co.uk/mailfeedtest.html but maybe this is only
because the update happens only once in a while or there is some caching.

Stefano

> On 8/16/07, Danny Angus <da...@apache.org> wrote:
>> On 8/16/07, Stefano Bagnara <ap...@bago.org> wrote:
>>> Can anyone change a post written by someone else or I can only change my
>>> own posts? I see you're changing your previous post, but I don't find an
>>> "Edit" link... (I only found a "new post" link).
>> Ah, I don't know that answer to that, publish a post of your own and
>> I'll see what happens.
>> BTW I've changed the feed on my website to show headlines from the blog.
>>
>>> Stefano
>>>
>>>
> 

Re: [Proposal] James News List & Feed

[Danny Angus <da...@apache.org>]

Stefano, I made you admin :-)

On 8/16/07, Danny Angus <da...@apache.org> wrote:
> On 8/16/07, Stefano Bagnara <ap...@bago.org> wrote:
> > Can anyone change a post written by someone else or I can only change my
> > own posts? I see you're changing your previous post, but I don't find an
> > "Edit" link... (I only found a "new post" link).
>
> Ah, I don't know that answer to that, publish a post of your own and
> I'll see what happens.
> BTW I've changed the feed on my website to show headlines from the blog.
>
> >
> > Stefano
> >
> >
>

Re: [Proposal] James News List & Feed

[Danny Angus <da...@apache.org>]

On 8/16/07, Stefano Bagnara <ap...@bago.org> wrote:
> Can anyone change a post written by someone else or I can only change my
> own posts? I see you're changing your previous post, but I don't find an
> "Edit" link... (I only found a "new post" link).

Ah, I don't know that answer to that, publish a post of your own and
I'll see what happens.
BTW I've changed the feed on my website to show headlines from the blog.

>
> Stefano
>
>

Re: [Proposal] James News List & Feed

[Stefano Bagnara <ap...@bago.org>]

Stefano Bagnara ha scritto:
> Danny Angus ha scritto:
>> On 8/16/07, Stefano Bagnara <ap...@bago.org> wrote:
>>> I never used blogger.com: will we use each one his own account or will
>>> we need to share an account?
>> We should each use our own accounts (they're google accounts), and
>> then the posts will be attributed which means we can apply reasonable
>> oversight.
>>
>> d.
> 
> Can I have a look at it? my google account is stefano.bagnara at the
> gmail domain.

I already received the invitation, thank you :-)

Can anyone change a post written by someone else or I can only change my
own posts? I see you're changing your previous post, but I don't find an
"Edit" link... (I only found a "new post" link).

Stefano

Re: [Proposal] James News List & Feed

[Stefano Bagnara <ap...@bago.org>]

Danny Angus ha scritto:
> On 8/16/07, Stefano Bagnara <ap...@bago.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>> Using the blog instead of the mail is there a way to have also the date
>> in the headlines? This would be cool.
> 
> You can get the date from the mailfeed too, but all I could manage was
> to get the date under the headline, which looked weird without any
> body text. I could try to figure it out with css, or we could just put
> the date in the headline like we currently do.. "Aug/2007 - James gets
> news Blog"

A CSS solution would be the best, but we can go also with the headline
"hack", for sure.

>> I never used blogger.com: will we use each one his own account or will
>> we need to share an account?
> 
> We should each use our own accounts (they're google accounts), and
> then the posts will be attributed which means we can apply reasonable
> oversight.
> 
> d.

Can I have a look at it? my google account is stefano.bagnara at the
gmail domain.

Hint: the headline should probably not say that "James is a mail server"
but better something along the lines of our homepage: "The Apache JAMES
Project delivers a rich set of open source solutions, written in Java,
related to internet mail and news." and maybe adding something like
"JAMES Server, a flexible email server, is our main product".

Stefano

Re: [Proposal] James News List & Feed

[Danny Angus <da...@apache.org>]

On 8/16/07, Stefano Bagnara <ap...@bago.org> wrote:


> Using the blog instead of the mail is there a way to have also the date
> in the headlines? This would be cool.

You can get the date from the mailfeed too, but all I could manage was
to get the date under the headline, which looked weird without any
body text. I could try to figure it out with css, or we could just put
the date in the headline like we currently do.. "Aug/2007 - James gets
news Blog"

> Yes. I remember I suggested this also in past, but I don't remember what
> was the conclusion. Maybe we should simply make this simple change now,
> and maybe another thread sooner or later will revamp the confluence
> stuff.

Fine, +1.

> I never used blogger.com: will we use each one his own account or will
> we need to share an account?

We should each use our own accounts (they're google accounts), and
then the posts will be attributed which means we can apply reasonable
oversight.

d.

Re: [Proposal] James News List & Feed

[Stefano Bagnara <ap...@bago.org>]

Danny Angus ha scritto:
> On 8/16/07, Stefano Bagnara <ap...@bago.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>> I'm not yet sure how/if we can integrate the feed in our main website
>> somehow (is there some script allowed by ASF like the download.cgi that
>> will simply integrate news in the home?).
> 
> Take a look at the page I keep mentioning it uses *javascript* :)

Well, I looked at it, but I didn't realize that it was using javascript,
that's why I kept asking, sorry ;-)
This way it make much more sense.

Using the blog instead of the mail is there a way to have also the date
in the headlines? This would be cool.

>> I also try an alternative suggestion: why don't we get a confluence
>> space? A confluence space would give us a single tool for wiki and for
>> the blog/s and we could export pages automatically to our website using
>> our skin: I see many ASF projects used this approach in the last year
>> (cayenne, felix, mina, directory, geronimo, tapestry, openjpa).
> 
> Well OK, but its alot more effort.

Yes. I remember I suggested this also in past, but I don't remember what
was the conclusion. Maybe we should simply make this simple change now,
and maybe another thread sooner or later will revamp the confluence
stuff. I don't know what is INFRA costs for such a setup, I just thought
that using in-house tools was preferred to using externally hosted services.

>> That said I'm fine with the blog, even if I would publicize it (use it
>> in our home) once we see we use it and it is updated.
> 
> cool.
> 
> d.

I never used blogger.com: will we use each one his own account or will
we need to share an account?

Stefano

Re: [Proposal] James News List & Feed

[Danny Angus <da...@apache.org>]

On 8/16/07, Stefano Bagnara <ap...@bago.org> wrote:


> I'm not yet sure how/if we can integrate the feed in our main website
> somehow (is there some script allowed by ASF like the download.cgi that
> will simply integrate news in the home?).

Take a look at the page I keep mentioning it uses *javascript* :)




> I also try an alternative suggestion: why don't we get a confluence
> space? A confluence space would give us a single tool for wiki and for
> the blog/s and we could export pages automatically to our website using
> our skin: I see many ASF projects used this approach in the last year
> (cayenne, felix, mina, directory, geronimo, tapestry, openjpa).

Well OK, but its alot more effort.


>
> That said I'm fine with the blog, even if I would publicize it (use it
> in our home) once we see we use it and it is updated.

cool.

d.

Re: [Proposal] James News List & Feed

[Stefano Bagnara <ap...@bago.org>]

Danny Angus ha scritto:
> I'll take that as a yes then, if Stefano approves I'll put it to a vote.
> There should also be a mail to the site-dev list for every post, but
> it may be in the moderate queue, I'm not a moderator for that one,
> that should take care of CTR oversight if we only let commiters post.
> 
> d.

The Blog is IMHO much better than the "news@j.a.o" mail address.
I'm not yet sure how/if we can integrate the feed in our main website
somehow (is there some script allowed by ASF like the download.cgi that
will simply integrate news in the home?).

I also try an alternative suggestion: why don't we get a confluence
space? A confluence space would give us a single tool for wiki and for
the blog/s and we could export pages automatically to our website using
our skin: I see many ASF projects used this approach in the last year
(cayenne, felix, mina, directory, geronimo, tapestry, openjpa).

I think that confluence would bring us also much more updated website
(having half stuff in the wiki and half in the website is confusing) and
the news system would be automatically managed in the same identical way.

That said I'm fine with the blog, even if I would publicize it (use it
in our home) once we see we use it and it is updated.

I also am +1 in adding links somewhere to your and Robert blogs (maybe
to the james/apache tags only) and any other blog I'm not aware of.

Stefano

> On 8/15/07, Robert Burrell Donkin <ro...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 8/15/07, Danny Angus <da...@apache.org> wrote:
>>> The other low-effort alternative to a feed from the mail archive would
>>> be this...
>>> http://apache-james.blogspot.com/
>>>
>>> WDYT? Better?
>> saves moderation ;-)
>>
>> - robert
>>
> 

Re: [Proposal] James News List & Feed

[Danny Angus <da...@apache.org>]

I'll take that as a yes then, if Stefano approves I'll put it to a vote.
There should also be a mail to the site-dev list for every post, but
it may be in the moderate queue, I'm not a moderator for that one,
that should take care of CTR oversight if we only let commiters post.

d.

On 8/15/07, Robert Burrell Donkin <ro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/15/07, Danny Angus <da...@apache.org> wrote:
> > The other low-effort alternative to a feed from the mail archive would
> > be this...
> > http://apache-james.blogspot.com/
> >
> > WDYT? Better?
>
> saves moderation ;-)
>
> - robert
>

Re: [Proposal] James News List & Feed

[Robert Burrell Donkin <ro...@gmail.com>]

On 8/15/07, Danny Angus <da...@apache.org> wrote:
> The other low-effort alternative to a feed from the mail archive would
> be this...
> http://apache-james.blogspot.com/
>
> WDYT? Better?

saves moderation ;-)

- robert

Re: [Proposal] James News List & Feed

[Danny Angus <da...@apache.org>]

The other low-effort alternative to a feed from the mail archive would
be this...
http://apache-james.blogspot.com/

WDYT? Better?

d.

Re: [Proposal] James News List & Feed

[Danny Angus <da...@apache.org>]

On 8/15/07, Stefano Bagnara <ap...@bago.org> wrote:
> > How much easier could it be to keep our news up to date than by
> > sending mail to the list??
> >
> > d.
>
> I agree that this is much more easy, but I would like to know how/if
> this integrates with our website/homepage.

See my sample, its a live feed from the mail archive.

>
> IMHO it is important to have an up to date website showing some sort of
> life/aliveness. I fear that having another "news" tool will decrease the
> updates on our homepage.

No tools required, no website release, just mail the news list and
you're finished.
Try it, send a mail to the mailet list and check my page, it will appear there.

>
> About the feed, I think that personal blogs like your are already a good
> tool to provide unofficial JAMES related informations to the world.
>

Thank you :) I also like the idea of syndicating "unofficial" james
blogs, like robert suggested, but that's a different story.

> That said I wouldn't use the news@james.apache.org email as I'm not an
> native english speaker and I would avoid to use a tool that give me a
> one time option to write and don't let me fix my errors after that.

That is a good point, which I should have thought of.

>This
> also prevent us from oversight this "news channel".

Not if we moderate the posts.

>
> But, if there are JAMES developers not having a blog and wishing to
> publish news about JAMES maybe this could be simpler for them to write
> news. I leave to them the decision.

I would be just as happy to set up a blogger blog for people to post
news on, we could set up the headlines on the james homepage via the
feed in the same way.


> In the mean time I think that adding links to the blogs relating to
> JAMES (your, Robert's) would be a better thing.

Perhaps.

d.

Re: [Proposal] James News List & Feed

[Stefano Bagnara <ap...@bago.org>]

Danny Angus ha scritto:
> Hi,
> 
> I'd like to propose that we add a new mailinglist, an announce type
> one called news@james.apache.org.
> 
> Why? Two reasons:
> 
> 1/ You can get an atom feed via mod_mbox
> Here's the mailet-api list:
> http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/james-mailet-api/?format=atom
> 
> 2/ You can use feedburner to republish the feed as html.
> Here's an example of the james homepage with the news headlines
> replaced by the five latest item subjects from the mailet-api list
> feed:
> http://www.killerbees.co.uk/mailfeedtest.html
> 
> How much easier could it be to keep our news up to date than by
> sending mail to the list??
> 
> d.

I agree that this is much more easy, but I would like to know how/if
this integrates with our website/homepage.

IMHO it is important to have an up to date website showing some sort of
life/aliveness. I fear that having another "news" tool will decrease the
updates on our homepage.

About the feed, I think that personal blogs like your are already a good
tool to provide unofficial JAMES related informations to the world.

That said I wouldn't use the news@james.apache.org email as I'm not an
native english speaker and I would avoid to use a tool that give me a
one time option to write and don't let me fix my errors after that. This
also prevent us from oversight this "news channel".

But, if there are JAMES developers not having a blog and wishing to
publish news about JAMES maybe this could be simpler for them to write
news. I leave to them the decision.

In the mean time I think that adding links to the blogs relating to
JAMES (your, Robert's) would be a better thing.

Stefano

Re: [Proposal] James News List & Feed

[Robert Burrell Donkin <ro...@gmail.com>]

On 8/15/07, Danny Angus <da...@apache.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'd like to propose that we add a new mailinglist, an announce type
> one called news@james.apache.org.
>
> Why? Two reasons:
>
> 1/ You can get an atom feed via mod_mbox
> Here's the mailet-api list:
> http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/james-mailet-api/?format=atom
>
> 2/ You can use feedburner to republish the feed as html.
> Here's an example of the james homepage with the news headlines
> replaced by the five latest item subjects from the mailet-api list
> feed:
> http://www.killerbees.co.uk/mailfeedtest.html
>
> How much easier could it be to keep our news up to date than by
> sending mail to the list??

sounds good :-)

perhaps we might also be able to aggregate JAMES related blogs into an
unofficial feed

- robert

RE: [Proposal] James News List & Feed

["Noel J. Bergman" <no...@devtech.com>]

Danny Angus wrote:

> Noel J. Bergman wrote:
> >  I am in the anti[-Javascript] camp due to security issues.
> Please can you provide us with some less FUD and some actual reasons?

  http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=javascript+exploit
  http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=javascript+vulnerability

  "JavaScript has a long and inglorious history of atrocious
   security holes. Its security problems are not limited to
   implementation errors. There are numerous ways in which
   scripts can affect the user’s execution environment without
   violating any security policies."

   ref: JavaScript: The Complete Reference

Etc.

Do I think that it is likely that the script from feedburner would be a
problem?  Of course not.  But as a best practice, avoid JavaScript unless
*necessary*, and we're not Google Maps here.  This is an unnecessary
JavaScript case.

	--- Noel

Re: [Proposal] James News List & Feed

[Danny Angus <da...@apache.org>]

Noel,

On 8/20/07, Noel J. Bergman <no...@devtech.com> wrote:

>  I am in the anti-camp due to security issues.

Please can you provide us with some less FUD and some actual reasons?

d.

Re: [Proposal] James News List & Feed

[Stefano Bagnara <ap...@bago.org>]

Noel J. Bergman ha scritto:
> Stefano Bagnara wrote:
>> We moved from the mailing list to the blog because mailing list are
>> "write-once" and we are not allowed to review the content (moderation
>> is done by a single moderator anyway).
> 
> Simple solution: post the announcement as a draft to the dev@ list for
> review.

This would make the workflow even more complex than now IMHO.
Now I have to
1) commit to an xml in svn
2) build the m2 site
3) commit the generated site to svn
4) svn up on minotaur

After 1 and after 3 we get a notification that allow people to review
and eventually ask to fix it (or fix it).

If we introduce this announcement draft it is 2 more steps to be
included (as I previously said every time I published a news I also
needed to publish some other website update) in the workflow and much
more delay in publishing as it become RTC instead of CTR and we know
that review can also take weeks in JAMES.

That said, this is just my opinion. If this change complicate my life
but simplify the workflow for most of others then let's do it. We can
switch back if it does not work (there are 2 majority-based votes still
open, and they can help understanding what majority wants).

I bet less active committers are confused by our message floods :-/

> I agree that we want a simple way to post news.  For years, we have
> neglected the site, and just posted announcements to the mailing list.  Once
> or twice every other year, someone would update the news area of the site.
> Again, I agree with Danny's goal entirely.  And if you notice, in another
> e-mail I've asked you a specific question about process, and agreed that it
> could be at least an interim approach.

You asked for this process at least 4 times in 3 messages (in 10
minutes) and I was already sleeping :-)
I now replied to one of the messages. Feel free to ask for more details
if needed.

>> Danny showed us a javascript
> 
> Yes:
> 
>   <script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/apache-james?format=sigpro"
>           type="text/javascript" />
> 
> Separate issue, but I like Javascript *almost* as much as I like Maven.  I
> have to deal with it daily, but I am in the anti-camp due to security
> issues.  Sure, *I* can selectively enable/disable Javascript, but I don't
> want to subject the general community to security vulnerabilities (enabling
> Javascript) just for the sake of a news feed on our home page.
> 
> I do like what Danny accomplished.  As I said in another e-mail, I want to
> see the news integrated into our site, and Paul Querna had also suggested
> feedburner.  But he suggested that it be used to generate static HTML, not
> used as above.  There has to be a better way than Javascript.  Let's find
> it.
> 
> I'll be looking for details on your proposed workflow.  Again, not against a
> nice workflow for publishing news.  Against an external URL, and against
> Javascript for security reasons.
> 
> 	--- Noel

The confluence solution does not need external URLs, does not use
javascript (on the published side) and does not brake cwiki's first rule
(aren't you a geronimo PMC member? they do the confluence exporting
stuff, too).

BTW I think we are on a loop: I summarized the 4 options that have been
discussed so far in the previous message.

Stefano

RE: [Proposal] James News List & Feed

["Noel J. Bergman" <no...@devtech.com>]

Stefano Bagnara wrote:

Noel J. Bergman wrote:
>>> I'd like to propose that we add a new mailinglist, an announce type
>>> one called news@james.apache.org.
>> We ALL agree that we want more responsive handling of news.  Let's
>> focus on the consensus, and come to an agreeable solution.
> We already focused on the consensus: and we had pretty much consensus
> before you arrived ;-)

No comment other than what I read I found somewhat disturbing.   Danny had a
good idea, and I agree with it.  Moving from that to an off-site blog is
*the* part that I am strongly against.

> We moved from the mailing list to the blog because mailing list are
> "write-once" and we are not allowed to review the content (moderation
> is done by a single moderator anyway).

Simple solution: post the announcement as a draft to the dev@ list for
review.

I agree that we want a simple way to post news.  For years, we have
neglected the site, and just posted announcements to the mailing list.  Once
or twice every other year, someone would update the news area of the site.
Again, I agree with Danny's goal entirely.  And if you notice, in another
e-mail I've asked you a specific question about process, and agreed that it
could be at least an interim approach.

> Danny showed us a javascript

Yes:

  <script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/apache-james?format=sigpro"
          type="text/javascript" />

Separate issue, but I like Javascript *almost* as much as I like Maven.  I
have to deal with it daily, but I am in the anti-camp due to security
issues.  Sure, *I* can selectively enable/disable Javascript, but I don't
want to subject the general community to security vulnerabilities (enabling
Javascript) just for the sake of a news feed on our home page.

I do like what Danny accomplished.  As I said in another e-mail, I want to
see the news integrated into our site, and Paul Querna had also suggested
feedburner.  But he suggested that it be used to generate static HTML, not
used as above.  There has to be a better way than Javascript.  Let's find
it.

I'll be looking for details on your proposed workflow.  Again, not against a
nice workflow for publishing news.  Against an external URL, and against
Javascript for security reasons.

	--- Noel

Re: [Proposal] James News List & Feed

[Stefano Bagnara <ap...@bago.org>]

Noel J. Bergman ha scritto:
> Danny,
> 
>> I'd like to propose that we add a new mailinglist, an announce type
>> one called news@james.apache.org.
> 
> Or announce[ments]@james.apache.org.
> 
> Makes perfect sense.  But how in the world did we get from this sanity to
> blogspot?  Just to unify posting the e-mail and updating the web site?
> 
> Ironically, this is the reason I had suggested using Roller back at A/C SD.
> Roller would grab the feeds and act as the news aggregator.  Paul Querna
> (who is reading these threads now), has suggested that feedburner could be
> used to republish the Atom feed into HTML for the site in the meantime.
> 
> Besides, http://apache-james.blogspot.com/ isn't integrated into our
> web-site.  It would be even better if the news WERE automatically
> aggregated, no?  So let's revist this.  We ALL agree that we want more
> responsive handling of news.  Let's focus on the consensus, and come to an
> agreeable solution.
> 
> 	--- Noel

We already focused on the consensus: and we had pretty much consensus
before you arrived ;-)

We moved from the mailing list to the blog because mailing list are
"write-once" and we are not allowed to review the content (moderation is
done by a single moderator anyway). Also for us, non native english
speaker, it is a big limitation to know that what we write will not be
spell-checkable by others.

The concrete fact is that most news we have on the website now have been
written by me or Norman and we both have problems in english speaking:
and you can probably find many errors. If we had a simpler way to
publish content (in this case news) that does not require you to have a
full checkout of 2 project (the project + the site folder) to run a
maven2 build, to commit the changes, to check them and then go to
minotaur for an "svn up" we could have better news and less active
committers could have probably fixed our errors.

That said I don't have big problems with the current way to publish
content as most time I need to change the website I also have maven2
builds and everything else ready to be used (maybe that's why I'm the
one that made most website generations in the last year). But I'd really
like to find a solution that simplify the workflow for others, but I
prefer to avoid a solution that will require me more time or problems
than now (the mailing list solution).

Furthermore, about the integration Danny showed us a javascript to
automatically integrate the headlines in our homepage (it is explained
in the message of the VOTE we called):
http://www.killerbees.co.uk/mailfeedtest.html

Stefano

RE: [Proposal] James News List & Feed

["Noel J. Bergman" <no...@devtech.com>]

Danny,

> I'd like to propose that we add a new mailinglist, an announce type
> one called news@james.apache.org.

Or announce[ments]@james.apache.org.

Makes perfect sense.  But how in the world did we get from this sanity to
blogspot?  Just to unify posting the e-mail and updating the web site?

Ironically, this is the reason I had suggested using Roller back at A/C SD.
Roller would grab the feeds and act as the news aggregator.  Paul Querna
(who is reading these threads now), has suggested that feedburner could be
used to republish the Atom feed into HTML for the site in the meantime.

Besides, http://apache-james.blogspot.com/ isn't integrated into our
web-site.  It would be even better if the news WERE automatically
aggregated, no?  So let's revist this.  We ALL agree that we want more
responsive handling of news.  Let's focus on the consensus, and come to an
agreeable solution.

	--- Noel