Oolite Bulletins

The wiki states that Maik authorises new accounts for our wiki (he last logged in on July 2021), and oolite.org just states that it is done through this forum, and unhelpfully brings one to the top level of it.

1) Can anybody other than Maik authorise new accounts for our wiki?

2) Who can authorise new Expansion Pack writers to log in for the Expansions Manager? I bugged cim, and it took him over a month to get back to me... (which I was fine with, but who should others go to?).

3) Is it possible to give more detail on Oolite.org as to how new Expansion Pack writers should go about registering - maybe direct them to a thread?

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Dec 15, 2021 12:36 pm

Who can authorise new Expansion Pack writers to log in for the Expansions Manager?

I can do that bit.

phkb wrote: ↑Wed Dec 15, 2021 1:18 pm

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Dec 15, 2021 12:36 pm

Who can authorise new Expansion Pack writers to log in for the Expansions Manager?

I can do that bit.

No! We can't have somebody helpful doing it. No way. It has to be somebody who has been eviscerated, devoured and absorbed by the Witchspace Lobster and has yet to be regurgitated...

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Dec 15, 2021 1:26 pm

phkb wrote: ↑Wed Dec 15, 2021 1:18 pm

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Dec 15, 2021 12:36 pm

Who can authorise new Expansion Pack writers to log in for the Expansions Manager?

I can do that bit.

No! We can't have somebody helpful doing it. No way. It has to be somebody who has been eviscerated, devoured and absorbed by the Witchspace Lobster and has yet to be regurgitated...

For running Oolite smoothly, I would suggest having another person except phkb able for the expansion manager. For the wiki it would be time for 1 or 2 persons more to get deletion rights.

montana05 wrote: ↑Wed Dec 15, 2021 1:51 pm

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Dec 15, 2021 1:26 pm

phkb wrote: ↑Wed Dec 15, 2021 1:18 pm

I can do that bit.

No! We can't have somebody helpful doing it. No way. It has to be somebody who has been eviscerated, devoured and absorbed by the Witchspace Lobster and has yet to be regurgitated...

For running Oolite smoothly, I would suggest having another person except phkb able for the expansion manager. For the wiki it would be time for 1 or 2 persons more to get deletion rights.

I hope to write Winston a letter. Do you think that you could do something positive if you had them?

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Dec 15, 2021 8:12 pm

I hope to write Winston a letter. Do you think that you could do something positive if you had them?

Well, my modifications of the wiki are intended as an improvement. While deletion rights would be nice to have, I would see them as a merely backup. Currently, I am usually contacting Maik for the wiki and phkb for the manager which, most of the time, works fine. This year I deleted around 7 pages with 2 more pending, so it is not a feature used on a daily basis.

montana05 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 16, 2021 1:30 am

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Dec 15, 2021 8:12 pm

I hope to write Winston a letter. Do you think that you could do something positive if you had them?

Well, my modifications of the wiki are intended as an improvement. While deletion rights would be nice to have, I would see them as a merely backup. Currently, I am usually contacting Maik for the wiki and phkb for the manager which, most of the time, works fine. This year I deleted around 7 pages with 2 more pending, so it is not a feature used on a daily basis.

Even if it is rarely used, we may want someone active on the job.

Compare it to a fire brigade. Usually there is no fire. But in the event of one happening, you better have some firemen happy to assist...

hiran wrote: ↑Thu Dec 16, 2021 10:22 pm

montana05 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 16, 2021 1:30 am

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Dec 15, 2021 8:12 pm

I hope to write Winston a letter. Do you think that you could do something positive if you had them?

Well, my modifications of the wiki are intended as an improvement. While deletion rights would be nice to have, I would see them as a merely backup. Currently, I am usually contacting Maik for the wiki and phkb for the manager which, most of the time, works fine. This year I deleted around 7 pages with 2 more pending, so it is not a feature used on a daily basis.

Even if it is rarely used, we may want someone active on the job.

Compare it to a fire brigade. Usually there is no fire. But in the event of one happening, you better have some firemen happy to assist...

You do have a point, as a backup and for emergencies it would be useful.

Well, I probably have sufficient rights to the download manager to elevate other users into an admin-level account. Does someone want to put their hand up? I promise it won't hurt a bit!

phkb wrote: ↑Fri Dec 17, 2021 5:12 am

Well, I probably have sufficient rights to the download manager to elevate other users into an admin-level account. Does someone want to put their hand up? I promise it won't hurt a bit!

Better take your offer as long as it is open. I could volunteer, and I promise I will not "montanacise" the manager.

phkb wrote: ↑Fri Dec 17, 2021 5:12 am

Well, I probably have sufficient rights to the download manager to elevate other users into an admin-level account. Does someone want to put their hand up? I promise it won't hurt a bit!

I'd put my hand up as well.

After all I dug around in how things work, and this way I could experience it in practise rather than pure theory.

Bugbear has just intimated that he might just be an expert on rejigging tired systems such as ours...

Bugbear wrote: ↑Sun Dec 26, 2021 1:55 am

...This is inspired in part from my real life work. I work in IT primarily in the administration of ITSM toolsets (anyone heard of ServiceNow?).

ITSM (Information Technology Service Management - for anyone that's interested) is built on the Information Technology Infrastructure Library framework which provides recommendations for how to manage your IT infrastructure.

A component of this is a concept of Change Management. This is a set of guidelines for managing how to do things like upgrade software, install servers, even trivial things like rebooting servers that host important software. A lot of it (should) include providing notifications for when infrastructure will be offline as a result of maintenance and improvement work...

References:
•phpBB update to 3.3.3
•Aftermath of wiki collapse

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Sun Dec 26, 2021 9:25 am

Bugbear has just intimated that he might just be an expert on rejigging tired systems such as ours...

<snip>

References:
•phpBB update to 3.3.3
•Aftermath of wiki collapse

Yeah umm I'm not sure what you have in mind. I can perhaps assist with looking at processes and the way things are done, but my technical skills with Oolite itself are quite rudimentary.

Bugbear wrote: ↑Sun Dec 26, 2021 1:42 pm

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Sun Dec 26, 2021 9:25 am

Bugbear has just intimated that he might just be an expert on rejigging tired systems such as ours...

<snip>

References:
•phpBB update to 3.3.3
•Aftermath of wiki collapse

Yeah umm I'm not sure what you have in mind. I can perhaps assist with looking at processes and the way things are done, but my technical skills with Oolite itself are quite rudimentary.

So what? You know something about it. You've actually been involved doing it for others. I'm just an utter ignoramus.

But it's not Oolite that's the issue. Oolite is just fine - we each have a few pet things we'd like to see, but it works (unless you play too long on an AppleMac and lose all the sound... but even then, the rest of it works).

It is this BB (which seems to creak at the seams), and the wiki - if it needs it.

I'll admit you have my curiosity. What I do for work is administer what essentially boils down to a ticketing system for large enterprises. All that a large enterprise does with regards to managing their IT infrastructure won't be applicable to a volunteer enterprise such as the Oolite developer community but there may be some practices that can be put in place.

So the first question is: what problem are you trying to solve?

And perhaps to help answer that first question, you need to address other questions.

What is the "product" in this scenario?
Who is the system custodian/owner?
Who is it that approves changes in functionality?
Who is responsible for implementing changes?
Who needs to be consulted when changes are being developed?
Who needs to be informed of changes made?

Do we have a bug tracker for logging incidents (i.e. things going wrong) and requests? (I would assume the answer to this is: Yes)
Does the bug tracker only cover the Oolite code base or can it be extended to track events related to supporting configuration items like the Wiki and Bulletin board? Do you even want to go down to that level of complexity?

I'm sure you can imagine that this can get very complex, very fast. I've never tried applying ITIL principles to a volunteer enterprise so this will be interesting to see what level of maturity is possible.