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[LUG] Website and Volunteers was Re: IRC: Freenode -> Libera

 

First I'd like to thank Paul for his work on the website, and for his other 
work organising and promoting the group, and hope he will continue in both.

We've had a number of threads over the years about the website, but the upshot 
has generally been a burst of interest, and then it has gradually declined 
until it is just or mostly Paul again. We've had contributions from Ron and 
Matthew this year, otherwise all the posts on the website are from Paul, and 
they cover everything from NCSC hardening guidance for Ubuntu LTS to local 
coding events. The content is relevant, interesting, and contributed 
consistently by Paul.

I'm as guilty of leaving it to Paul as others, possibly more so, as whilst 
I've sorted the occasional problem, I've left Paul without the benefits of any 
relevant experience I may have most of the time. I also have outstanding 
maintenance activities relating to the site to do.

That said the current criticism seems to be based on aesthetics, and the 
belief that because a product is owned by Microsoft it must be inherently evil 
(although most geeks seem to except GitHub for some reason).

(No I've not seen the site on a 4K monitor, and I'm pretty sure Paul won't 
have either, feel free to email screenshots to admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx - I know 
the heading text scales up rather keenly on my monitor at full size).

The WordPress tracker is the only tracker, and the only statistics provided to 
anyone on the website (since my own log analysis code fell into disrepair). My 
browser (Brave) blocks this tracker by default, an approach I suggest to those 
who are worried about being tracked on the web.

The website doesn't pull in huge numbers of views, so I don't think it merits 
huge attention. It was being used to update various social media sites about 
activities of the group, and I think that is a reasonable use, and something 
that the current tooling allows.

If we want the group to thrive, we need to organize more meetings & events, at 
which point the tooling to support them will I'm sure receive more love and 
attention. We've always taken a relaxed (anarchic?) approach to organising 
meetings, any member can organise a meeting, and promote it through the 
mailing list, and the website. Since meetings are currently largely virtual 
this doesn't even require a room (which was the usual problem with organising 
physical  meetings).  Although best to co-ordinate these, usually Paul was 
that co-ordinator, as he could say when other meetings that might conflict were 
taking place, and I hope he is happy to continue doing that.

More generally we may have too many groups and social media sites, with too 
little content. Again the best fix for that is for other people to help 
organise events or contribute relevant content.





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