Reply inline:
On Tue, May 12, 2009 2:01 am, Rachel Hamilton-Williams wrote:
I agree with this 100%. Let's have a separate page that lists sponsors (like the About page in Koha itself) but let's keep the "for pay" page exclusively for companies in the Koha community wishing to offer their services.
1. FAILING TO SHOW EXPERTISE.
Yep - and I see no contradiction with a company saying the features that they've developed - it's good to show what their expertise is, which is what people are interested in
Showing expertise by identifying features which support companies have developed or to which they have made significant contributions is important. However, the new presentation of such information in the pay for support page is not representative of the work actually done and the multiple parties which have contributed significantly to that work as a community project.
The presentation over-represents the work of some and under-represents the work of others. That presentation is unfair to both 'major contributors' and 'minor contributors'. The presented contributions of one 'major contributor' are overrepresented relative to the contributions of the other 'major contributor'. Some 'minor contributors' have contributed major features and made major contributions to features originally developed by others, but the presentation does not distinguish them by any contribution. Most of all the presentation is unfair to the Koha project itself which is a community project to which everyone is expected to contribute. Can you please list some specific examples of support vendors on that
On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 12:39 PM, Thomas Dukleth <kohalist@agogme.com> wrote: page who's contributions are under-represented? That would really help because we could add those contributions directly to the page. Cheers, Josh
Consequently, the presentation does not adequately identify the expertise which it supposedly intended to show. People are interested in knowing the expertise of companies but the actual information presented is counter-informative. Much less information is presented than would be needed to be informative and not be very misleading.
A proper full presentation of significant contributions to Koha does not belong in a directory of support companies because giving due attributions for significant contributions would transform a directory of support companies into a feature list. Only a separate contributions page or set of pages would have the space to properly represent significant contributions. Such a contributions page or set of pages could be linked from the pay for support page.
2. ANNOTATION VALUE LISTS.
Some set of annotations constrained by value lists for which there is real consensus may be helpful on the pay for support page. Annotations from constrained value lists would be very different from what is presented currently where some of the annotations do not seem to have any objective criteria applied for their inclusion or omission.
3. ATTRIBUTION PAGE OR PAGES.
Contributions should certainly be acknowledged with appropriate attribution but they must be fairly presented where there is proper space to present them fairly. In a fair presentation, the contributions of the 'major contributors' would be appropriately seen to be enormous but they would not detract from the contributions of others or the community nature of the project.
People contributing to Koha are working towards a common goal. As they pursue their own particular interests for their own contributions they help others and create a better system which everyone can use and on which everyone can build.
4. FAIRNESS AND BEING SEEN TO BE FAIR.
Supposedly historical ordering which is not actually historical is a worse problem than the inadequate presentation of contributions because it is more obviously inaccurate. Yet, every problem of unfair presentation needs to be addressed.
We should not impute people's motives much as we may wonder and try to understand them. We should merely encourage others not only to pursue their interests fairly but also in a manner which is seen to be fair. This fundamental respect and fairness towards others despite private differences and problems has always been a self-evident characteristic of the Koha community from the beginning.
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Thomas Dukleth Agogme 109 E 9th Street, 3D New York, NY 10003 USA http://www.agogme.com 212-674-3783
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