[Clipart] Status of the uploads to the website

[worms invasion]

Well, thanks :-)

I'm a subscriber to this list for almost 2 years now, so I do hang around and talk occasionally ;-)

This list is not only for librarians, it's actually the only mean Users, , Clipart contributors, Librarians, and Developers have to communicate about OCAL. That's why it receives messages from list subscribers, and also bug reports.

As I was saying in my first message on Sept, 11th, uploads to OCAL have stopped since July 31st. 
Basically, it means that OCAL, which relies on users contributions for its content, appears dead to both the group of Users ("No new cliparts uploaded?") and to the Clipart contributors ("where am I going this new clipart I made?")
These two groups are the most numerous groups among the Users, Clipart contributors, Librarians, and Developers groups. 
Another thing is that bug reports have not been touched nor assigned.

I do understand that the limited number of people who might be able to fix the errors are away or busy. On the other hand, there have been news posted to the main OCAL page since the uploads ceased to work, so this means that not all are busy all the time or away all the time.

There are many other sites presenting cliparts to the public on the Internet, OCAL is great because it represents a community effort to share cliparts with the most "open" license. That was, I believe, the goal of its founders, people from various projects (Ted Gould, Bryce Harrignton, Jon Philips, among others... from the archive of this list, which goes back to 2004)

Now, if our site appears unmaintained for a long while - and 6 weeks *is* a long time on the Internet - , users will simply be discouraged from visiting, and will switch to another clipart site, which might, or might not, support the same "cause". We will lose the benefits of years of contributions and usage, and that will be a pity, really. 
We will also lose the potential help of new developers, if maintenance/development problems appear unanswered.

So, what could be done? Maybe it would be worth to allow more people to be involved with the site maintenance? It doesn't need to be a dozen people, just a few... with the right permissions?

Thanks for reading, and I hope, answering this concern.

P.S.: I also see nothing new about what we call OCAL 2.0... but in my understanding, this is less urgent (although it is important).



--- On Sun, 9/20/09, chovynz <chovynz at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: chovynz <chovynz at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Clipart] Status of the uploads to the website
> To: "worms invasion" <wormsxulla at yahoo.com>
> Cc: clipart at lists.freedesktop.org
> Date: Sunday, September 20, 2009, 6:53 AM
> Nope. Just, there's nothing the
> Librarians can do.
> There's only a limited number of people that can fix the
> problems
> server side, and those are busy or away.
> 
> Just hang in there. When Ocal 2.0 come out it'll be
> fantastic and I'll
> be pushing it on all my friends for all it's worth. (and
> that is worth
> very much!)
> 
> On 9/20/09, worms invasion <wormsxulla at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > Hello.
> >
> > So... Is OCAL dead?
> >
> > Cheers.
> >
> > --- On Fri, 9/11/09, worms invasion <wormsxulla at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> From: worms invasion <wormsxulla at yahoo.com>
> >> Subject: [Clipart] Status of the uploads to the
> website
> >> To: clipart at lists.freedesktop.org
> >> Date: Friday, September 11, 2009, 6:13 PM
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> I was wondering whether there was any news about
> the upload
> >> problem to http://openclipart.org
> >>
> >> The last upload appearing is dated from July,31st
> 2009, so
> >> I guess the upload functionality hasn't been
> restored yet?
> >>
> >> We've seen at least two bug reports
> >> http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23312
> >> http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23527
> >>
> >> but nothing in them indicates what has been done.
> >> There is also no assignee to these bug reports.
> >>
> >> Is anyone in charge of checking out the situation,
> or
> >> investigating, or... doing what needs to be done,
> why it
> >> broke, etc.
> >>
> >> Thanks for any information - it would really be a
> pity if
> >> OCAL was dying because no clipart can be uploaded
> :-)
> >>