General - Call for Maintainers and Longterm Plan

[skipjack]

Adding this as general outline and todo list for what's planned in terms of high-level changes and organization. Please feel free make suggestions and, if you are interested in picking up something from here, let us know and we can give some guidance. I think it's important that most issues on this repo stay focused on content.

Infrastructure

We either need to finish #980 -- which still needs some work, possibly on the antwar level -- or port the site to a more stable build tool like phenomic or gatsby. Porting the site would also offer a few things, like full HMR, that #980 doesn't address but will require some serious thought. Either way these are the infrastructure issues we need to solve:

• Synchronized routing and /content structure with less configuration.
• Resolve <title> issues (e.g. Dev - Title Missing on Voting Page #720).
• Display index pages correctly (Dev - Display Index Pages Correctly #1085).
• Bail if YAML/Markdown parsing fails (Dev - Bail if YAML/Markdown Parsing Fails #1070).
• Interactive bundles contain duplicate code (Dev - Bundles Contain Duplicate Code #877).
• Easier specification of custom layouts per guide (e.g. Comparison is hard to read #1367).
• Migrate away from marked and clean up process (Markdown Syntax and Processing webpack-contrib/webpack-defaults#73).
• Better HMR, faster builds, and quicker build tests.
• Allow illustrations via Mermaid (Dev - Allow Illustrations Via Mermaid #469).
• Turn the site into a PWA (sync w @TheLarkInn).
• Consider a better hosting/deployment setup like Netlify (e.g. 404 CSS not loading for https://webpack.js.org/ #845).
• Mark releases (synced with main package) and archive them (Dev - Archive Versions #176, feat(automatic-release): Generation of automatic release #1017).
• Continue component/utility modularization and simplification.

The last one refers to outsourcing much of the custom dev-related stuff to more modular packages like the voting app or extracted banner.

Information Architecture (#438)

Certain infrastructure changes should make some of this much easier. Specifically the fact that in newer versions of Antwar as well as in Phenomic and Gatsby -- routing is automatically synchronized/based on the structure of the /content directory. This means far less configuration and a more intuitive repository.

• Top level pages should use a wider layout (e.g. Comparison is hard to read #1367)
• Support, Development, and maybe sponsors/backers => Contribute (Consider renaming the "support" page #1365)
• CLI nav link should be removed (it will instead just be found under API)
• The articles should then be organized and structured as discussed in Dev - Information Architecture (Page Groups) #438

Content

This is the main reason I've added this umbrella issue and closed many of the smaller dev-related enhancements and bugs. The main focus of this site should always be the content. We are making a lot of progress on #1258 but new issues and PRs crop up every day making it very hard to get things done without letting the repo slip back into chaos. This also provides a location for maintainers to quickly touch base and keep track of the overarching plan.

We really need a team of 3 - 5 consistent content writers/maintainers that can help ensure the docs have a fairly consistent voice/approach and each section has well-defined goals. Please ping me if you are interested. I've seen many people frustrated with the old docs and parts of the current docs but much fewer who will take the time to help us address these issues once and for all. Don't get me wrong -- we appreciate every one of the 400+ contributors 🎉 🎉 🎉 -- but at the same time it's very hard to build a coherent site without some core authors/reviewers.

Here's where we're at from a high-level:

• Finish open tickets and missing documentation (or at least keep them under control).
• Review, organize, and define clear goals for Concepts.
• Review, organize, and define clear goals for Guides (in progress -- Guides - Review and Simplify #1258).
• Review, organize, and define clear goals for Configuration.
• Review, organize, and define clear goals for API (including CLI -- sync with @ev1stensberg)

[skipjack]

Ok... I know some might be saying "woah" with all these issues closed but, as mentioned above I'd like the focus to be finishing the high-priority content issues and then pushing much of this forward. Also many of the issues I closed relate to similar build-process updates whether it be #980 or a port.

I did leave some of the more active threads open like #438 and #469 open... and once work has begun on any of the things above I think it'd be fine to open new issues or re-open the older tickets. My main problem with them is that many are related to one another and have been stagnant for far too long. My hope is that having them in one place will lead more discussion and action to get them resolved.

[montogeek]

I could help with the site issues, I have fixed some errors from antwar in the past and also improved a few pages.