[20:48] <newz2000> is it almost time? I guess so, date -u says: Thu Jun 11 19:48:28 UTC 2009
[20:55] <boredandblogging> hi newz2000
[20:55] <newz2000> hey
[20:55] <SiDi> oh, today is the meeting day
[20:55] <SiDi> completely got out of my little head
[20:56] <newz2000> \o/
[20:56] <newz2000> I didn't make a big deal out of it, I think we should have a couple meetings before the next release
[20:57] <knome> so the meetings take place in #ubuntu-meeting?
[20:57] <newz2000> no, we do them here
[20:57] <newz2000> this room is normally quiet enough to allow that
[20:57] <knome> oh, right.
[20:57] <newz2000> and we have a log bot
[20:57] <knome> sure
[20:57] <knome> i'll just lurk around then ;)
[20:57] <SiDi> already quite enough is a nice metaphor :)
[20:57] <newz2000> list time though I started talking too much and got kicked for flooding. :-)
[20:57] <newz2000> s/list/last/
[20:58] <SiDi> (thats because everyone works very hard - no time for chatting)
[20:58] <knome> zomg
[20:58] <SiDi> knome: doesnt it remind you someone on #xubuntu ? That guy that continuously speaks...
[21:00] <knome> cody-somerville? ;)
[21:00] <newz2000> hah
[21:00] <newz2000> oh yeah
[21:01] <knome> it would be nice to see some ircstats from #xubuntu-devel ;)
[21:01] <newz2000> I think we should start
[21:01] <SiDi> knome: me /o
[21:01] <knome> okay.
[21:01] <knome> SiDi, ;)
[21:01] <newz2000> here's the agenda: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Website/Meetings
[21:01] <alejandraobregon> hello
[21:01] <newz2000> hello alejandraobregon, you're the first order of business. :-)
[21:02] <newz2000> Let me re-introduce myself first, I'm Matthew Nuzum, the Ubuntu.com webmaster
[21:02] <newz2000> I work for Canonical and do some other webmaster stuff too
[21:02] <newz2000> In recent weeks two more people have been assigned to the web to help out
[21:03] <newz2000> arusha, aka Christina Kolkott and alejandraobregon, aka Alejandra Obregon.
[21:03] <newz2000> alejandraobregon: would you like to introduce yourself and what you do?
[21:03] <alejandraobregon> Hi I'm Alejandra, I'll be working in Canonical's London office as a user experience designer.
[21:04] <alejandraobregon> I'm part of the new design team
[21:04] <newz2000> alejandraobregon and arusha are currently working on canonical.com
[21:04] <SiDi> Well, I hope you'll enjoy Canonical then :)
[21:05] <alejandraobregon> thank you!
[21:05] <knome> o/
[21:05] <newz2000> later they will also be in charge of the user experience for ubuntu.com as well
[21:05] <newz2000> I'm sorry that arusha could not be here, she is sick today
[21:06] <alejandraobregon> we're looking forward to working with everyone on our ptojects
[21:07] <newz2000> They are discussing ways to involve the community doing things like user testing and other experience related tasks
[21:07] <newz2000> but they're not yet ready to decide on what projects to tackle this cycle so we'll have to wait for that
[21:07] <newz2000> but we do have a couple other projects that we need not wait to start
[21:08] <newz2000> Both we've discussed in the past, but now they're official projects and we'd like to publish them during this release cycle
[21:08] <newz2000> you may remember our localization project
[21:08] <newz2000> We don't feel it's wise to translate all of ubuntu.com into other languages
[21:09] <newz2000> but it would be good to help people who prefer a language other than ENglish to find resources in their preferred tongue
[21:09] <newz2000> Has anyone here done much work with localizing a website?
[21:09] <newz2000> s/much/any/
[21:09] <SiDi> I have once
[21:09] <SiDi> for a company.
[21:09] <knome> a few times
[21:10] <SiDi> It was fully french, localized to english/japanese/korean/chinese.
[21:10] <knome> but not at this large scale
[21:10] <newz2000> well, you both have more experience than me. :-)
[21:10] <SiDi> newz2000: i actually think it's feasible to translate it
[21:10] <SiDi> We can use launchpad with a bit of hacking for hosting the translations, imo, and get help from the community for the most exotic locales
[21:11] <SiDi> And if you wrote the site with an UTF-8 codec the weird locales will be a piece of cake (main problem is the database-stored text)
[21:11] <newz2000> how would we use Launchpad?
[21:11] <knome> i think we could think of a wikipedia-style exluding/including translations
[21:12] <knome> let's say that any translation that has over 90% translated, is available in the site
[21:12] <SiDi> newz2000: after a bit of thought, i ended up thinking the fastest and easiest way to make translations is to define the strings you need in some locale files you include
[21:13] <newz2000> let me explain why we're not doing the whole site currently
[21:13] <SiDi> so i think we could parse po files, or just write php <-> po convertors and use the po on launchpad
[21:13] <newz2000> 1: Most of the content in ubuntu.com stinks
[21:14] <newz2000> 2: We're having a hard time maintaining the content to an acceptable standard in one language
[21:14] <newz2000> 3: there are only two reasons
[21:14] <newz2000> :-)
[21:15] <knome> 4: there is no reason four either
[21:15] <SiDi> hm, 1. is a drawback :D
[21:15] <alejandraobregon> newz2000, so what was the localization idea you had?
[21:16] <newz2000> The idea I have is to create one page per human language that helps people find relevant resources in that language
[21:16] <newz2000> So for example, ubuntu.fi could maintain a page that has light content explaining Ubuntu and pointing to help, forums and etc in finish
[21:16] <newz2000> should be ubuntu-fi.org
[21:17] <knome> yeah, i suppose the loco maintained sites differ a lot from each other.
[21:17] <knome> the finnish site is relatively good.
[21:17] <newz2000> Also, the finnish site is an easy example. It's more challenging to think about Spanish
[21:17] <newz2000> where there are a dozen relevant loco teams
[21:18] <newz2000> If a person visits ubuntu.com with a preference for non-english language then we could show a link in a conspicuous location in their own language
[21:19] <newz2000> the link would be to a page preferably in the www.ubuntu.com site
[21:19] <SiDi> newz2000: actually we can use the browser's locale
[21:19] <SiDi> to determine the actual location of the user and give him the good LoCo ressource
[21:19] <newz2000> that may be possible
[21:19] <knome> SiDi, that's not always a good starting point.
[21:19] <knome> i must disagree because many people use english as their locale
[21:19] <knome> even in finland
[21:19] <knome> o/
[21:20] <newz2000> knome: do you feel that the english ubuntu.com site mostly satisfies your needs?
[21:20] <alejandraobregon> perhaps we need to find an international way to say 'languages' on the homepage or the support page and then lead them to a page where they select their preferred language e.g. http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html
[21:21] <knome> newz2000, i use ubuntu.com really little.
[21:21] <knome> newz2000, so it's hard to say
[21:21] <alejandraobregon> that gives us they space we need for the words in english and in the other languages
[21:22] <newz2000> knome: my point is that do you feel that people who set their language to en in Finland are ok with an English site and its' the people who don't sent their preferred language to English who would benefit from this feature?
[21:22] <newz2000> alejandraobregon: this is a very intriguing idea
[21:22] <knome> newz2000, not sure. there are things i rather read in finnish.
[21:22] <knome> automatic redirect is bad at least.
[21:22] <newz2000> we will definitely not do that
[21:23] <newz2000> knome: when you to to www.google.com is it in English or Finnish?
[21:23] <knome> the page might propose something based on your locale and maybe your calculated location (there are services for that etc.)
[21:23] <newz2000> oh, that won't work actually, they go by geoip
[21:23] <knome> google.com is english
[21:23] <newz2000> oh really? very interesting.
[21:23] <newz2000> I wonder if they use the secondary language if the first is English
[21:24] <newz2000> let's ponder alejandraobregon's idea for a moment
[21:24] <knome> the page gives me a link "go to google suomi (finland)" though.
[21:24] <newz2000> ok, so they must grab the secondary language
[21:24] <knome> yeah, they grab it, but don't use it.
[21:24] <newz2000> well, they do use it
[21:24] <knome> (fortunately :)))
[21:25] <newz2000> they use it to offer you the "go to google suomi" link
[21:25] <knome> they don't force *me* to use it :)
[21:25] <newz2000> right, that's what I'm envisioning as well
[21:25] <SiDi> knome: did you ever *define* it to be english ?
[21:25] <knome> SiDi, i suppose i have done it, if one can do it.
[21:25] <SiDi> What is your language preference setting in firefox ?
[21:25] <knome> english.
[21:25] <knome> i think.
[21:25] <knome> let me see :)
[21:26] <SiDi> Actually if i chose google to be english, then it gives me a "Go to google france" link
[21:26] <knome> actually...
[21:26] <SiDi> but my first languages are all french variants
[21:26] <knome> i don't even have a finnish lang in ff
[21:26] <SiDi> oh
[21:26] <newz2000> knome: so they're going by geoip then
[21:26] <newz2000> I saw this first hand while in Spain recently
[21:26] <newz2000> google was in Spanish but I changed nothing on my computer except it's physical location
[21:27] <knome> anyway we should propose some of our best guesses about the language.
[21:27] <SiDi> newz2000: geoip fails a lot with my home's ip and yet google works fine
[21:27] <knome> but still present the complete list and in *no* case automatically redirect
[21:27] <SiDi> and when i google from spain i got french results, while bing gives me spanish ones
[21:27] <newz2000> ok, it will take some trial and error, let's discuss alejandraobregon's idea
[21:27] <SiDi> knome: +1
[21:28] <newz2000> alejandraobregon: so we'd have a link in the user's preferred language and it would take us to a page that offers all of the avilable locales, even the various spanish variants?
[21:28] <alejandraobregon> yeah i guess so... because a user may prefer a different language to their locale
[21:29] <alejandraobregon> we want to give users the choice... so maybe a best guess link and a link to more languages
[21:29] <alejandraobregon> then they can go directly to their local language
[21:29] <newz2000> this may make some things easier, for example, we could then have one page per loco team
[21:29] <alejandraobregon> or go and choose an alternative
[21:30] <newz2000> do you think we'd have to translate this "directory" page to the local language or do you think it'd be OK to have minimal English text and the directory with their preferred languages listed first?
[21:30] <alejandraobregon> if you see the firefox link i sent, it has a column with the names in english and a column with the name in each language
[21:31] <alejandraobregon> we could do something similar
[21:31] <SiDi> by the way, does canonical own URIs such as ubuntu.fi ubuntu.fr, etc ?
[21:32] <newz2000> sometimes, usually the canonical ones are ubuntu-XX.org
[21:32] <SiDi> if users chose to use those, we could put them directly to the locale for the domain name
[21:32] <SiDi> but the ubuntu-XX.org are for LoCos right ?
[21:32] <newz2000> correct
[21:32] <newz2000> so does anyone else have thoughts about alejandra's suggestion?
[21:33] <knome> sounds good.
[21:33] <knome> as long as *no* flags are added to indicate any language ;)
[21:33] <alejandraobregon> agreed
[21:33] <SiDi> I think the best guess should be used by default, but if you only want a page / locale with locale information, then yeh, a best guess links and another link seem to be enough
[21:33] <newz2000> agreed
[21:34] <newz2000> we'll have to do some technical evaluation to see what we can and can't do
[21:34] <newz2000> I suspect there are numerous barriers
[21:34] <newz2000> alejandra and I discussed this a little in another meeting and she made a great point
[21:35] <newz2000> that we need to ensure that the text that shows in a conspicuous place on each page does not give the user the impression that it will show them a localized version of the current page
[21:35] <newz2000> it's not a lnaguage preference, it's a pointer to localized information
[21:35] <knome> yeah.
[21:35] <SiDi> Something like "Ubuntu near your location" translated in their locale ?
[21:35] <knome> na!
[21:36] <knome> location is not language
[21:36] <SiDi> near where you live
[21:36] <SiDi> Come on, my english is garbage, knome :p
[21:36] <knome> spain is spoken in argentina and spain, and they are not really so close to each other.
[21:36] <newz2000> I don't think "Ubuntu" needs to be part of it, but maybe, "help in your language" or similar.
[21:36] <alejandraobregon> "Resources in your language"
[21:36] <newz2000> right
[21:37] <newz2000> the shorter the better, but obviously this varies from language to language
[21:37] <SiDi> the question is about should it be language or "country" ?
[21:37] <SiDi> ubuntu vn wont offer the same info than ubuntu es regarding to LUGs and LoCo
[21:37] <newz2000> I think language first and foremost, and where logical, then country
[21:37] <newz2000> For example, in the US there are many Spanish speakers
[21:38] <newz2000> ok, let's make a plan for this and then move to the next topic
[21:38] <newz2000> I propose that we split this into two projects:
[21:38] <newz2000> technical aspects and recruiting translators
[21:39] <newz2000> I think we should discuss the technical aspects on our mailing list in the coming days and schedule a meeting with the ubuntu-translators team to discuss the other part
[21:39] <knome> (ask the loco's :))
[21:39] <newz2000> yes, good point, they need to be in on it too
[21:39] <SiDi> grab the loco website hackers and ask them to participate to the list, too
[21:39] <SiDi> that'll help a lot in the "brainstorming / technical limitations to plan" stuff
[21:40] <newz2000> ok, do you think anything more on this topic needs to be discussed during this meeting?
[21:40] <knome> nay :)
[21:40] <alejandraobregon> newz2000, do you need me for the next topic?
[21:40] <SiDi> newz2000: if i can add a word on the domain names
[21:40] <newz2000> no, thank you so much for meeting with us alejandraobregon
[21:40] <newz2000> SiDi: go ahead
[21:40] <knome> thanks alejandraobregon and see you :)
[21:41] <alejandraobregon> not at all, nice to meet you all! :)
[21:41] <SiDi> Well, i think the goal is ubuntu web presence team is a bit of "marketing"
[21:41] <SiDi> spreading ubuntu by controlling the tools that give us visibility on the web
[21:41] <SiDi> and i think this would include a quite good control of the ubuntu.XX TLDs
[21:41] <SiDi> some of them seem quite outdated, they dont really reflect ubuntu
[21:42] <SiDi> and i know that many french users will for instance visit ubuntu.fr if they use their address bar instead of google
[21:42] <SiDi> cause we're used to .fr sites
[21:42] <SiDi> so i think you should try to find people in the LoCos who can affirm they'll maintain their ubuntu.XX site
[21:42] <newz2000> yes, good idea
[21:42] <newz2000> That reminds me, canonical recently hired someone who would just interface and encourage the loco teams
[21:43] <newz2000> I need to meet that person. Maybe they can help in this project. Or at least provide input.
[21:43] <boredandblogging> newz2000: who?
[21:43]  * newz2000 looks
[21:43] <SiDi> http://www.ubuntu.de is a good exemple :)
[21:44] <newz2000> I think the person is David Planella, aka dpm
[21:44] <knome> .fi domains can be owned by finnish persons or companies only.
[21:44] <newz2000> Title is "Ubuntu Translations Coordinator" and his boss is Jono
[21:44] <SiDi> newz2000: there seems to be no policy about how to manage those TLDs. Some are not bought (uk, for instance), some are redirecting to u.c (.es) some to ubuntu-XX.org (.fi), and some are custom ubuntu sites, while some are othher sites that just own the TLD
[21:45] <knome> oh, we have ubuntu.fi? great.
[21:45] <newz2000> there is a policy, but not for tlds
[21:45] <knome> what's the policy for xubuntu.fi for example?
[21:45] <newz2000> The policy is ubuntu-XX.org for physical locations, ubuntu-xxx.org for languages, and YY.ubuntu-XX.org for sub-regions
[21:46] <SiDi> i meant about the ubuntu.XX TLDs
[21:46] <newz2000> we don't register or maintain ubuntu.XX tlds in most cases
[21:46] <SiDi> i suppose we would like them to redirect to the ubuntu-XX.org ?
[21:46] <newz2000> though there are a couple, mostly pre-existing our policy for ubuntu-xx.org
[21:46] <newz2000> SiDi: no, we leave that up to the decission of locos.
[21:47] <SiDi> newz2000: is there a reason apart from the cost of maintaining TLDs for leaving some out of your control ?
[21:47] <newz2000> I'm sure there is, I think it's just because you have to draw the line somewhere.
[21:48] <newz2000> I'll discuss the quality control issue with dpm when I meet him
[21:48] <newz2000> because that is a valid point
[21:48] <SiDi> alright
[21:48] <newz2000> let's discuss the "choose a location" project
[21:48] <newz2000> this one is important to me, but it's also hard for me to know how to get community involvement
[21:49] <newz2000> I picture it as a three-phase project
[21:49] <newz2000> 1: reduce the list to countries instead of listing each mirror
[21:49] <newz2000> 2: using geoip, pre-select the user's country (or one logical)
[21:49] <newz2000> 3: hide the selection list altogether
[21:50] <newz2000> My goal is to get at least through step 2 by karmic beta
[21:50] <newz2000> I've got a few other thoughts, but maybe you guys would like to comment first
[21:50] <SiDi> hm, the 1. can have problems though
[21:50] <SiDi> for instance, in france, the mirrors are mostly universities and a very opensource friendly ISP
[21:51] <SiDi> but the ISP only gives decent bandwidth to its own clients
[21:51] <SiDi> so only them (still a fair 25% of french people) should use this mirror
[21:51] <newz2000> Yuck
[21:51] <knome> :D
[21:51] <knome> that sounds like finland.
[21:52] <newz2000> I wonder how common this is
[21:52] <SiDi> well, the main mirrors are ISPs and univerisities
[21:52] <SiDi> usually people chose their mirror carefully when they download :)
[21:53] <newz2000> that statement may be contestable
[21:53] <newz2000> it is a core ubuntu philosphy (from my perspective) to continually lower the barrier to adoption
[21:53] <knome> even if the isp doesn't *try* to limit the bandwidth, for technical reasons it just might be faster to download from your own isp :)
[21:53] <SiDi> oh, some people dont look at all, though, thats true
[21:55] <newz2000> arusha suggested using the words, "from a location near you..." and hiding the select list
[21:55] <newz2000> but making it clickable to choose a mirror
[21:55] <newz2000> in my mind I'd pictured this still being, "choose a country" not "choose a mirror within that country"
[21:56] <newz2000> The benefit for "a location near you..." is that it hides the sometimes complex and non-obvious logic from the end user
[21:56] <knome> maybe the latter would be better anyway.
[21:56] <SiDi> an obvious link that'd make the list popup with ajax could be good
[21:56] <SiDi> but you'd also have to display the "location" so the user can easily check if it looks ok
[21:57] <newz2000> well, that's the problem
[21:57] <newz2000> sometimes the best location may not look OK
[21:57] <knome> maybe we need to reconsider the descriptions/titles then.
[21:57] <newz2000> as I understand it, some south american countries are better off going to europe to download rather than the neighboring country
[21:58] <newz2000> I wonder if there's a way that we can be scientific about this
[21:58] <knome> maybe we could ask the locos to provide a list of the best mirrors to them
[21:58] <knome> and then suggest them to user in that order
[21:58] <knome> and after that, fallback to nearest location
[21:59] <newz2000> mirrors are constantly changing. every day at least, sometimes every couple hours
[21:59] <knome> countries then,.
[21:59] <newz2000> let's talk about technical aspects
[21:59] <SiDi> then suggest a random mirror, put something like "We chosed a location for your down : Bolivia ISP#20394" and a link "If it is slow, click here to chose another location"
[22:00] <newz2000> I wonder if we can do some A/B testing where we count how often a location is changed
[22:00] <SiDi> (remind me to evocate the alt attributes of images in ubuntu.com after this topic by the way)
[22:00] <newz2000> and we try, "a location near you..." as one option and "Bolivia ISP#xyz" for the other.
[22:00] <knome> newz2000, if the code is written by us, it's possible.
[22:01] <newz2000> we get to write the code. \o/
[22:01] <newz2000> this will be a combination of server side code (php) and client side code
[22:01] <knome> yes
[22:01] <newz2000> what's the best way to work on this code collaboritively?
[22:01] <SiDi> oh you mean spotting the favourite mirrors for each user ?
[22:02] <newz2000> SiDi: referring to my statement about A/B testing?
[22:02] <SiDi> (i woke up early so it sometimes take me time to understand things)
[22:02] <knome> i wonder if the client side code could ping the download location and output it to the server, which by that info determines if the mirror is ok for the user.
[22:02] <knome> output it = the ping reply time
[22:02] <newz2000> knome: hmm...
[22:02] <newz2000> same domain policy may make that challenging
[22:03] <newz2000> but maybe it could work
[22:03] <knome> maybe.
[22:03] <SiDi> knome: except we cant ask our average "client" to host such code so we'd have to find people worldwide for heavy testing
[22:03] <knome> SiDi, hmm?
[22:03] <knome> SiDi, why can't we? ;]
[22:03] <newz2000> SiDi: we can actually. I know the Ubuntu release manager
[22:03] <knome> we can do whatever we want... buahahaha
[22:03] <SiDi> im not even sure what we call clients, now
[22:03] <newz2000> it would have to be a little bit of jsonp or similar
[22:04] <newz2000> some code that lives on the mirrors that can be ajax included from the client
[22:04] <knome> newz2000, i suppose rime could help you with that... ;]
[22:04] <newz2000> yes, he is a genius
[22:04] <knome> hehe okay
[22:04] <newz2000> ;-)
[22:05] <SiDi> ive got a question thought. That'd mean we base our information on the ping value between u.c and mirrors, right ?
[22:05] <knome> no
[22:05] <knome> the client and the mirror
[22:05] <knome> if the client side script pings the mirror
[22:05] <SiDi> client = user who downloads ?
[22:05] <knome> yes.
[22:05] <SiDi> ahem
[22:05] <knome> or the application of the user who downloads.
[22:05] <SiDi> I'm sorry but i thought our goal was to have *new* people downloading the ISO
[22:05] <knome> (like "irc client")
[22:05] <SiDi> not *current* people on which we control the browser :/
[22:06] <newz2000> well, I was picturing having a short ping pull in external data to the web browser before the download begins
[22:06] <knome> SiDi, client-side scripting can happen automagically when the user looks at the page first time.
[22:06] <SiDi> (unless you use JS... im so sorry, im exhausted)
[22:06] <newz2000> that's OK
[22:06] <SiDi> i'll go grab coffee, im really sorry for my few above comments
[22:06] <knome> SiDi, yes, js is what we are talking about ;)
[22:07] <newz2000> let's re-focus
[22:07] <newz2000> how can we work collabortively on this project?
[22:07] <newz2000> any suggestions? I've never done such a project.
[22:07] <knome> just split it in parts and let the experts examine their thing.
[22:08] <knome> then gather around in maybe a week or two and see what are the outcomes and see if it's possible to put together
[22:08] <knome> (or alternatively ask rime and he will provide the code in a few hours)
[22:08] <knome> ;)
[22:08] <newz2000> well, again, there's several parts
[22:08] <newz2000> js and php
[22:08] <knome> sure.
[22:09] <newz2000> and there is a good bit of logic relating to which mirror to use if you're country isn't listed
[22:09] <knome> so we need to determine the best download location for the user and then ask the client to ping that server, right?
[22:09] <newz2000> well, the ping part is debatable but yes
[22:09] <knome> so which methods are we going to use?
[22:09] <knome> geoip?
[22:10] <knome> randomness?
[22:10] <newz2000> geoip
[22:10] <knome> loco provided lists?
[22:10] <newz2000> well, if we start with geoip...
[22:10] <knome> ;)
[22:10] <SiDi> on another side, i suppose we dont wanna flood mirrors with ping
[22:10] <newz2000> we can pick randomly from a mirror in the same country, giving preferential treatement (weighting) based on bandwidth
[22:10] <knome> SiDi, it's one ping per downloader per server.
[22:10] <newz2000> SiDi: good point
[22:11] <SiDi> is there a way to also retrieve the ping value from user to u.c without adding server charge so we can compare the two pings without pinging another mirror and judge if it looks ok or not ?
[22:11] <newz2000> SiDi: wow, that coffee works fast!
[22:11] <SiDi> actually i didnt finish prepairing it :p
[22:11] <newz2000> must be the smell triggering a response
[22:12] <newz2000> if we have a mirror in the user's own country we should use it, agreed?
[22:12] <knome> yeah, but as we noted, it might not be the best mirror
[22:12] <SiDi> yes
[22:12] <SiDi> what im wondering is how to judge the quality of the mirror for the user
[22:12] <SiDi> at minimal cost
[22:13] <knome> the servers can take the pinging... ;)
[22:13] <newz2000> they can before release day
[22:13] <knome> lol
[22:13] <newz2000> on release day we would not want to do this
[22:13] <knome> true
[22:13] <SiDi> thats what i thought :D
[22:13] <newz2000> So we should start this project soon so that we can do our testing well before beta comes out
[22:13] <knome> we get the user hostname, right?
[22:13] <newz2000> yes
[22:14] <newz2000> but we have geoip
[22:14] <knome> can we calculate the times that user from isp.fi has chosen mirror X
[22:14] <newz2000> oh, interesting
[22:14] <knome> and then provide the mirror which most people have used
[22:14] <newz2000> again, not on release day, but yes, we could do that
[22:15] <knome> why not on release day? if the statistics are created now, what's the drawback?
[22:15] <knome> we would not need to even ping the servers
[22:15] <SiDi> knome: the servers die on release day
[22:15] <newz2000> on release day everything is cached and dynamic content is difficult
[22:15] <knome> well of course we can freeze the counters
[22:15] <newz2000> but we can server our rules to the client as js, we just couldn't reliably update our own server side database with results
[22:16] <knome> what do you mean?
[22:16] <newz2000> So once we gather data during non-heavy load times we could then make some rules...
[22:16] <newz2000> if user's hostname is X use Y
[22:16] <newz2000> oh, can JS do that? maybe not
[22:17] <SiDi> with a fat js table it can
[22:17] <newz2000> :-/
[22:17] <SiDi> or with some XQuery but thats server activity too ?
[22:17] <newz2000> if it's a GET request it can be cached and is OK
[22:17] <knome> there's no limitation on where we store the data
[22:17] <newz2000> true
[22:17] <knome> so what's the problem?
[22:18] <SiDi> may i ask how many people downloaded jaunty during the first release week, btw ?
[22:18] <newz2000> yo may ask but I may not say
[22:18] <knome> o.O
[22:18] <newz2000> *a lot*
[22:18] <knome> how secret is that? :P
[22:18] <SiDi> *more* than official estimations about our users, which say we have less than Fedora ? :/
[22:18] <newz2000> according to some people in Canonical (my boss for example) very
[22:18] <knome> right :)
[22:19] <SiDi> alright then ^^
[22:19] <newz2000> no, Fedora publishes their stats and I can say for sure that the numbers I have are far greater than what they publish
[22:19] <knome> lol
[22:19] <newz2000> but fedora's methodology for collecting data is very different than ours
[22:19] <newz2000> so it is not a fair apples to apples comparison
[22:20] <SiDi> indeed. a download doesnt mean an user
[22:20] <knome> the numbers are: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, we just don't know how much of them or in which order
[22:20] <knome> ;))
[22:20] <SiDi> knome: come on :p
[22:20] <SiDi> knome: we know we have more xubuntu users anyways ~
[22:20] <newz2000> ok, let's get back on topic
[22:20] <knome> SiDi, than fedora? sure ;)
[22:20] <knome> newz2000, yes, sir
[22:20] <newz2000> a problem comes up when the user is from a country where we have no user
[22:20] <SiDi> so the best solution would be to serve the favourite mirror for the users with a similar hostname / geoip data ?
[22:21] <knome> except if we have the data what is gathered.
[22:21] <newz2000> yes, that sounds right
[22:21] <knome> i like that idea.
[22:21] <SiDi> and if we fail to find the country, fall back to most popular / fastest servers ?
[22:21] <knome> yeah, sounds okay.
[22:21] <SiDi> (by the way, if we do this, we put the ping idea aside, right ?)
[22:21] <knome> SiDi, of course.
[22:22] <newz2000> SiDi: well, maybe this is where loco teams can help us
[22:22] <newz2000> they can help us create some rules
[22:22] <newz2000> oh, there is an open source project by Fedora that may already have the ruls
[22:22] <knome> this would be *human* created data, not computer (a server can give a fast ping reply but usually just suck)
[22:22] <newz2000> do you guys remember this?
[22:22] <knome> nope.
[22:22] <SiDi> what about using a ping (or even download speed) js algorithm to evaluate the quality of the mirrors from different locations and ajust the favourite mirrors list with the result ?
[22:22] <newz2000> knome: right, and remember, serving a 700M file is different than a 10k file
[22:23] <knome> newz2000, of course.
[22:23] <knome> SiDi, the mirror quality can change heavily in a day, for example
[22:23] <SiDi> true
[22:23] <knome> so it's kind of unreliable, if we don't do many tests
[22:24] <newz2000> launchpad does periodically (couple times per day) test each mirror
[22:24] <knome> (once per week, for example)
[22:24] <knome> oh, that much
[22:24] <knome> why don't we use that data then?
[22:24] <newz2000> we do
[22:24] <newz2000> that's why the mirror list changes so often
[22:24] <knome> right
[22:24] <knome> i haven't d/l'ded ubuntu since 7.10 so i wouldn't know
[22:25] <SiDi> i was thinking of client-side tests
[22:25] <SiDi> to ensure the mirrors selected from the users are consistent
[22:26] <SiDi> and not just the first of the list, but actually the likely to be the best one
[22:26] <knome> SiDi, so you still suggest we let the client do pinging? :P
[22:27] <newz2000> there are some problems with that idea
[22:27] <knome> yes.
[22:28] <newz2000> it doubles or tripples the mirror traffic, it causes a delay while the ping is done, and it requires us putting a suitable script, like a json file, on the mirrors
[22:28] <SiDi> knome: just experimentally, to compare the data gathered
[22:28] <SiDi> but if its too hard to setup we can drop it, also :p
[22:28] <newz2000> it has some merit, I'll discuss it with the release manager
[22:29] <newz2000> but it's only a small part of the tasks we need to do
[22:29] <newz2000> so maybe we should create a project in Launchpad that has the js and php code needed to do this
[22:29] <newz2000> and then share it so we can work colaboritively
[22:30] <SiDi> yeh
[22:30] <SiDi> i wont do it anyway, i'm a total noob with js :)
[22:30] <newz2000> ok, that will be our next step
[22:30] <knome> i don't know much js, but i can ask rime to look at it.
[22:30] <newz2000> I'm sure we'll have no shortage of resources
[22:32] <newz2000> ok, anything else to discuss for this meeting?
[22:32] <knome> well, were trying wordpress with xubuntu, as you might have read from the cc'd mail.
[22:33] <knome> just informational. :)
[22:33] <newz2000> yes, I saw that
[22:33] <newz2000> If that will meet your needs it's a great choice. It's a good product.
[22:33] <knome> i think it will.
[22:34] <SiDi> newz2000: i'd like to raise your attention about
[22:34] <SiDi> the use of u.c without images
[22:35] <newz2000> oh?
[22:35] <SiDi> sometimes i (and other people with poor bandwidth) disable it, and it really breaks things in ubuntu.com
[22:35] <SiDi> cause there is some text displayed in pictures, and too many empty alt attributes
[22:35] <newz2000> ah
[22:36] <newz2000> we should definitely address this
[22:36] <newz2000> we could file bugs but as it is I'm getting behind on the bug tracker
[22:36] <SiDi> http://imagebin.ca/view/eyfYgCC.html
[22:37] <newz2000> ah, right, because the animation uses mostly bg images
[22:37] <newz2000> hmm... that's a very interesting point
[22:37] <SiDi> well, as you can see, it lacks information :)
[22:38] <SiDi> the alt should be removed from the left side icons as theyre decorations for existing text
[22:38] <SiDi> and the text should be displayed otherwise in the alt attributes
[22:38] <newz2000> yes indeed
[22:38] <SiDi> for the bg images, there are js scripts that check if the user has support for images, i think
[22:38] <newz2000> Do you feel like submitting code patches per chance?
[22:38] <SiDi> with such a script, you could spot users without images and inject some html at worse
[22:39] <newz2000> or use header image replacement techniques
[22:39] <SiDi> i'll add this to my todo list then :)
[22:39] <newz2000> oh, that may not work actually
[22:39] <newz2000> SiDi: it would be a big help. But I will also look into it.
[22:39] <SiDi> wheres the code hosted on launchpad, btw ? (if it is)
[22:39] <newz2000> this code is not hosted
[22:39] <newz2000> you'd have to view the source
[22:40] <newz2000> but you'll see that most of the content in question is in drupal blocks
[22:40] <SiDi> that'd help me much in seeing what we can put in alts and how to workaround the background images
[22:40] <SiDi> great - i dont know what a drupal block looks like :)
[22:40] <newz2000> view the source and search for block
[22:41] <newz2000> it's a div with a class="block" on it
[22:41] <SiDi> okey
[22:41] <newz2000> for example: http://pastebin.com/d42d32f36
[22:41] <newz2000> bad example
[22:41] <newz2000> http://pastebin.com/d344054e8
[22:41] <SiDi> xubuntu.com looks almost perfect without images
[22:42] <newz2000> who made that theme?
[22:42] <SiDi> knome or vinnl i think
[22:43] <newz2000> There are several things I'd like to do differently
[22:44] <newz2000> ok, let's call it a wrap.
[22:44] <newz2000> I'll post the log on the website and summarize the topics into emails to the list where we can follow up
[22:44] <newz2000> Thanks a lot for your time
[22:44] <knome> newz2000, SiDi, i did
[22:45] <SiDi> alright, you're very welcome :)
[22:45] <SiDi> a last comment though
[22:45] <knome> heh, np ;)
[22:45] <SiDi> on u.c's main page, in the sexy js
[22:45] <SiDi> when you put the mouse over netbook or server, there is no "Find out more" text for the desktop one
[22:46] <SiDi> i dont know if its intentional but it doesnt look fine since the others are granted this text when not hovered
[22:46] <SiDi> my 2cts  :p
[22:46] <newz2000> I doubt we'll fix that
[22:47] <newz2000> but I'm always happy to hear your comments. :-)
[22:48] <SiDi> well, im a perfectionist and an idealist :p
[22:48] <SiDi> it doesnt help in real world
[22:49] <SiDi> there are news job offers on your webby, hmm
[23:17] <SiDi> good night ;)