Some Points, about Arabeyes [Part I]

[Muhammad Alkarouri <malkarouri at yahoo dot co dot uk>]

Salam Arabeyes people,

As we all know, Arabeyes has done a lot of contribution to the Arab open source
and continues to do. In fact, it is now the flagship website in this area. As
it comes of age, it needs various changes to adjust to its current size and
position.

I have some suggestions that I hope you may consider:

1. Documentation on Arabeyes policies needs to be improved in two dimensions:
   a. Historical records of valuable discussions need to exist
   b. Arabeyes policies and general 'agreed-upon' things need to be widely
known and easily accessible.
Both these points are now actually met by Arabeyes to some extent. Failures do
occur. Specific examples that I know of:
a. Due to lack of feedback, some projects do most of their feedback through irc
and outside projects lists. A case is the Arabization support in Debian
Installer[1]. This will lead to duplication of work or loss of valuable support
opportunities.
b. Recently, a row has happened about the Arab/Muslim duality which some assume
to be from fully existing to non-existant. While there is a policy in Arabeyes,
it is not documented in the About page, the manifesto or other similar pages.
Result: everyone has to know about it on his/her first row.

Suggestion: 
a. Use a kind of Request for Comment (RFC) of Policy Enhancement Proposal
(PEP).
If any topic needs to be a policy, somebody can suggest it as a policy
proposal. Discussion can be done about it and it may be changed to reflect the
general consensus. In the end, the core team will decide the policy taking into
account opinions and/or consensus. I am speaking with
http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0001.html in mind.

b. All important correspondence should be through public e-mail, as it is
already archived. In case there is some good reason to do otherwise in a
particular project, a feedback channel should be established frequently enough
to get any possible contributors, coordination between two projects, etc. This
should be the maintainers responsibility.

c. Every document should be dated. Yes, that includes the charter and the
manifesto.

2. In all projects, enough research should be done in the start so as not to
duplicate other work done in other places, or at least to give good reasons for
doing so. This includes duplicating work in Arabeyes, but also includes
attempts to translate every single technical word without referring to various
Arabization projects (not web based) and authorities around the Arab world[2].

Enough for a first part..

Salam,
Muhammad Alkarouri

[1] From my point of view, what has happened is that Debian Installer needs
Arabic support, both as translation and as BiDi supporting in text mode.
Translation went along nicely. We needed BiDi and shaping in newt
(http://lists.arabeyes.org/archives/developer/2004/January/msg00042.html). The
Arabeyes community had no feedback about that, until it was working. Though it
was mentioned before that proper support for Arabic in newt will benefit other
distros.

[2] Many of the universities in the Arab world teach computer science in Arabic
already. When Sudan tried to go that way, we found a large experience from
Egypt, Syria and Iraq. No doubt there are other countries as advanced.


	
	
		
____________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping" 
your friends today! Download Messenger Now 
http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html