[Design] Wiki organization for parcels

[Greg Noel]

Hi,

Since this is my first substantive message, please look at 
http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Main/GregNoel for the 
semi-obligatory biographical sketch.  My major interest here is email, 
since I've never found a decent program that could deal with the kind 
of high volume I had to handle most of my career, and a lesser interest 
in collaborative scheduling, mostly so that I can keep up with family 
events.

I've read through the design-list archive (and started on the 
development list) so I have a feeling for the issues that have been 
discussed.  My issue is that I can't find that information on the Wiki 
in any organized fashion.

For any parcel, let me tell you what areas I expect to find:

   o  An all-inclusive exploration of the most complete feature set that 
could ever be present in the parcel.  It would include blue-sky ideas 
that it may not be quite possible to implement yet, but only concepts 
that are clearly impossible should be excluded.  This area provides 
basis.

   o  A discussion of what features can be found elsewhere.  Suits like 
to call this "competitive positioning" but I'd want it to be more 
generic than that and also include features in applications that are 
not direct competitors.  This area provides context.

   o  The current OSAF thinking on how the topic is to be approached, 
including a rough ordering of the order in which features will be 
implemented (in other words, things that will be present somewhere 
between version 0.1 and 1.0).  From this, a reader should be able to 
get a feeling about which things need to be worked out immediately.  
This area provides focus.

   o  The standards and technologies that are applicable.  This area 
provides resources.

   o  Something that describes how we're getting there from here, 
including decisions reached and topics still needing resolution.  This 
area provides issues.

In general, much of the information is present, but it's a complete 
mishmash.  A page titled issues contains competitive positioning.  A 
page titled requirements (e.g., basis) has current thinking in it.  A 
page of resources gets itself involved in the issue of which is best.  
And so forth.

If one is looking for a particular class of information, it's possible 
to search for it, but even that is fraught with difficulties.  For 
example, I found the EmailRequirements page, which is an excellent 
example of that a basis page should be like.  As I worked my way 
through it, I even made a few additions myself, only to discover that 
the page is an orphan; it was cut off from the EmailIssues page some 
time ago and there's no page to replace it.

So this message is an appeal: can we do a better job of organizing and 
managing the information on the Wiki?  It may be that the organization 
I've outlined above is not the best and a modified version would be 
better, but I believe that the current navigation concepts could be 
(and should be) improved.

Hope this helps,
-- Greg Noel, retired UNIX guru