Future plans for musescore.org

[Thomas Bonte]

It has been more than 6 months now since the musescore.org website was made public. With more than 1300 registered members, 1000 news letter subscribers, translated in 10 languages and a very lively discussion forum, we can say it's a success already in terms of adoption. Also worth mentioning is the MuseScore handbook, which is written collaboratively on musescore.org and completely translated in Dutch, French, Galician, Italian, Spanish. So, what's up for the coming 6 months? There is place for quite some improvements, especially connecting the users and developers with each other. Here comes the battle plan:

1. Implement an issue tracking system: - Each forum topic can become an issue (bug, feature request, support request, ...) with a status (active, fixed, closed, duplicate, needs more info, patch needs work, patch needs review, ...) - It will be a bridge between users and developers - Musescore.org users and anonymous users can subscribe to the issue to follow it's development or to express a vote to the feature request - Technically: project_issue, subscriptions
2. Improve handbook wiki editing: - Although the handbook is wikified, it is not yet a public wiki. There is work to be done regarding permissions: the handbook translations should only be editable by translators, whereas the English original can be altered by anyone. - Technically: i18n_access
3. Improve search: - By adding faceted search, it will be easier to find results in the handbook and forum separately - Technically: faceted_search or apache_solr
4. Rebrand the website - Once the MuseScore rebranding project is delivering results (http://musescore.org/en/node/981), the website needs a redesign as well

Each of these tasks are connected with Drupal, which is the content management MuseScore.org is built on. This means that the faster Drupal module development evolves, the faster these improvements can be incorporated in the MuseScore website. Reply if you have more ideas how to improve musescore.org.

[Nathan Hale]

I'm looking forward to public wiki at MuseScore.org. The project is
really starting to gain some traction, and I'm looking forward to
wholeheartedly recommending MuseScore in the context of music
education at my university. It would be great to have collaborative
place share presentation ideas, promo materials, etc. It's amazing to
think that we are well on our way to a full-featured, wysiwyg, yet
free and open notation editor.
~Nathan R. Hale
Rom. 12:2

------M y __W e b s i t e s--------------------------------
http://nathanrhale.com - personal site
http://productivelinux.com - get stuff done w/Linux!
http://linuxmusicians.com - create music freely
---------------------------------------------------------------------



On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 6:00 AM, Thomas Bonte <[hidden email]> wrote:

>
> It has been more than 6 months now since the musescore.org website was made
> public. With more than 1300 registered members, 1000 news letter
> subscribers, translated in 10 languages and a very lively discussion forum,
> we can say it's a success already in terms of adoption. Also worth
> mentioning is the MuseScore handbook, which is written collaboratively on
> musescore.org and completely translated in Dutch, French, Galician, Italian,
> Spanish.
>
> So, what's up for the coming 6 months? There is place for quite some
> improvements, especially connecting the users and developers with each
> other. Here comes the battle plan:
>
> Implement an issue tracking system:
> - Each forum topic can become an issue (bug, feature request, support
> request, ...) with a status (active, fixed, closed, duplicate, needs more
> info, patch needs work, patch needs review, ...)
> - It will be a bridge between users and developers
> - Musescore.org users and anonymous users can subscribe to the issue to
> follow it's development or to express a vote to the feature request
> - Technically:  http://drupal.org/project/project_issue project_issue ,
> http://drupal.org/project/subscriptions subscriptions
>
> Improve handbook wiki editing:
> - Although the handbook is wikified, it is not yet a public wiki. There is
> work to be done regarding permissions: the handbook translations should only
> be editable by translators, whereas the English original can be altered by
> anyone.
> - Technically:  http://drupal.org/project/i18n_access i18n_access
>
> Improve search:
> - By adding faceted search, it will be easier to find results in the
> handbook and forum separately
> - Technically:  http://drupal.org/project/faceted_search faceted_search  or
> http://drupal.org/project/apachesolr apache_solr
>
> Rebrand the website
> - Once the MuseScore rebranding project is delivering results
> (http://musescore.org/en/node/981), the website needs a redesign as well
>
>
> Each of these tasks are connected with Drupal, which is the content
> management MuseScore.org is built on. This means that the faster Drupal
> module development evolves, the faster these improvements can be
> incorporated in the MuseScore website.
>
> Reply if you have more ideas how to improve musescore.org.
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Future-plans-for-musescore.org-tp2340400p2340400.html
> Sent from the MuseScore Developer mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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> -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation
> -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD
> http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H
> _______________________________________________
> Mscore-developer mailing list
> [hidden email]
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mscore-developer
>

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA
-OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise
-Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation
-Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD
http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H
_______________________________________________
Mscore-developer mailing list
[hidden email]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mscore-developer

[Thomas Bonte]

Just to let the people know who are involved in the handbook creation & translation:
1. An outstanding issue with freelinks has been solved (info: http://www.musescore.org/en/node/1042 )
2. The i18n_access module has been deployed: now every translator can only create translations for the language he/she has permissions for.
Next step is to open up the handbook editing to all registered users. It will require some directives regarding an editing code of conduct etc. To be continued.

Thomas Bonte wrote:

It has been more than 6 months now since the musescore.org website was made public. With more than 1300 registered members, 1000 news letter subscribers, translated in 10 languages and a very lively discussion forum, we can say it's a success already in terms of adoption. Also worth mentioning is the MuseScore handbook, which is written collaboratively on musescore.org and completely translated in Dutch, French, Galician, Italian, Spanish.

So, what's up for the coming 6 months? There is place for quite some improvements, especially connecting the users and developers with each other. Here comes the battle plan:<ol>
<li>Implement an issue tracking system:
- Each forum topic can become an issue (bug, feature request, support request, ...) with a status (active, fixed, closed, duplicate, needs more info, patch needs work, patch needs review, ...)
- It will be a bridge between users and developers
- Musescore.org users and anonymous users can subscribe to the issue to follow it's development or to express a vote to the feature request
- Technically: project_issue, subscriptions
</li>
<li>Improve handbook wiki editing:
- Although the handbook is wikified, it is not yet a public wiki. There is work to be done regarding permissions: the handbook translations should only be editable by translators, whereas the English original can be altered by anyone.
- Technically: i18n_access
</li>
<li>Improve search:
- By adding faceted search, it will be easier to find results in the handbook and forum separately
- Technically: faceted_search or apache_solr
</li>
<li>Rebrand the website
- Once the MuseScore rebranding project is delivering results (http://musescore.org/en/node/981), the website needs a redesign as well
</li>
</ol>
Each of these tasks are connected with Drupal, which is the content management MuseScore.org is built on. This means that the faster Drupal module development evolves, the faster these improvements can be incorporated in the MuseScore website.

Reply if you have more ideas how to improve musescore.org.

[Thomas Bonte]

As of now, all registered users on musescore.org can edit the English handbook. The translations can only be created or edited by translators. So the handbook workflow is setup in such as way that changes made to the English handbook, should find their way into the translated handbooks via the translators. Translators can see whether a page is outdated or not via a designated page for each language.

I started the second step which is the deployment of an issue tracking system. The first solution I would like to test is one which comes with this module: http://drupal.org/project/comment_alter_taxonomy
The idea is that each forum topic can be optionally tagged with one or more taxonomy fields. While adding a comment, one can change the taxonomy. In concreto:
--
Field1: Category
Values: bug report, support request, feature request, task, ...
--
Field2: Status
Values: active, reproduced, fixed (in 0.9.x), ...
--

Field 1 actually already exists in some way because the forum is separated in these categories.
So we are left with field2. I will put this in place the next week so we can test and see how it works out. If you have another idea, remarks or questions, do not hesitate to post them.

Thomas Bonte wrote:

Just to let the people know who are involved in the handbook creation & translation:
1. An outstanding issue with freelinks has been solved (info: http://www.musescore.org/en/node/1042 )
2. The i18n_access module has been deployed: now every translator can only create translations for the language he/she has permissions for.
Next step is to open up the handbook editing to all registered users. It will require some directives regarding an editing code of conduct etc. To be continued.

Thomas Bonte wrote:

It has been more than 6 months now since the musescore.org website was made public. With more than 1300 registered members, 1000 news letter subscribers, translated in 10 languages and a very lively discussion forum, we can say it's a success already in terms of adoption. Also worth mentioning is the MuseScore handbook, which is written collaboratively on musescore.org and completely translated in Dutch, French, Galician, Italian, Spanish.

So, what's up for the coming 6 months? There is place for quite some improvements, especially connecting the users and developers with each other. Here comes the battle plan:<ol>
<li>Implement an issue tracking system:
- Each forum topic can become an issue (bug, feature request, support request, ...) with a status (active, fixed, closed, duplicate, needs more info, patch needs work, patch needs review, ...)
- It will be a bridge between users and developers
- Musescore.org users and anonymous users can subscribe to the issue to follow it's development or to express a vote to the feature request
- Technically: project_issue, subscriptions
</li>
<li>Improve handbook wiki editing:
- Although the handbook is wikified, it is not yet a public wiki. There is work to be done regarding permissions: the handbook translations should only be editable by translators, whereas the English original can be altered by anyone.
- Technically: i18n_access
</li>
<li>Improve search:
- By adding faceted search, it will be easier to find results in the handbook and forum separately
- Technically: faceted_search or apache_solr
</li>
<li>Rebrand the website
- Once the MuseScore rebranding project is delivering results (http://musescore.org/en/node/981), the website needs a redesign as well
</li>
</ol>
Each of these tasks are connected with Drupal, which is the content management MuseScore.org is built on. This means that the faster Drupal module development evolves, the faster these improvements can be incorporated in the MuseScore website.

Reply if you have more ideas how to improve musescore.org.

[Thomas Bonte]

As of today, you can start testing a faceted search on MuseScore.org which offered via the Acquia Search service. The enabled facets are:
- language
- content type: book page, menu page, forum topic
- author
- forum: the forum container

There are a few things which can be improved:
- the results should automatically be filtered on the language of the website so you don't have to perform an extra click on the language facet
- the content biasing and weights can be adjusted in order to tweak the search results
- the theming can be done better, but thats for later

Wanna test? http://www.musescore.org/en/search

Thomas Bonte wrote:

Improve search:
- By adding faceted search, it will be easier to find results in the handbook and forum separately
- Technically: faceted_search or apache_solr

[Thomas Bonte]

After a few days of testing with David, MuseScore.org now has its own issue tracker:
Website: http://musescore.org/en/project/issues
RSS: http://musescore.org/en/project/issues/rss

An issue comes with 3 extra fields: Category, Status, Priority. Each of them have a set of values. If you think there is one missing or simply a few too many, let me know.

Every registered users can create an issue. Registered users can subscribe on the issues in order to receive all new issues in your mail box: http://musescore.org/en/project/issues/subscribe-mail

[Thomas Bonte]

It's great to see the issue tracker is getting some love and hopefully addiction as well ;-)
http://www.musescore.org/en/project/issues

Thanks!

Thomas Bonte wrote:

After a few days of testing with David, MuseScore.org now has its own issue tracker:
Website: http://musescore.org/en/project/issues
RSS: http://musescore.org/en/project/issues/rss

An issue comes with 3 extra fields: Category, Status, Priority. Each of them have a set of values. If you think there is one missing or simply a few too many, let me know.

Every registered users can create an issue. Registered users can subscribe on the issues in order to receive all new issues in your mail box: http://musescore.org/en/project/issues/subscribe-mail

[Thomas Bonte]

Some statistics: during the past 2 weeks, these are the terms which are most searched for on the musescore.org website:
playback 22
transpose 12
midi 9
tempo 9
MIDI 7
soundfont 7
tie 7
Chords 6
Lyrics 6
lyrics 6
Play panel 5
dynamics 5
mac 5
mixer 5

The number next to it indicates the amount of times the term was submitted. Next time, I will post the most searched terms which do not yield any result.

Thomas Bonte wrote:

As of today, you can start testing a faceted search on MuseScore.org which offered via the Acquia Search service. The enabled facets are:
- language
- content type: book page, menu page, forum topic
- author
- forum: the forum container

There are a few things which can be improved:
- the results should automatically be filtered on the language of the website so you don't have to perform an extra click on the language facet
- the content biasing and weights can be adjusted in order to tweak the search results
- the theming can be done better, but thats for later

Wanna test? http://www.musescore.org/en/search

Thomas Bonte wrote:

Improve search:
- By adding faceted search, it will be easier to find results in the handbook and forum separately
- Technically: faceted_search or apache_solr

[Thomas Bonte]

While analyzing the search keywords, I noticed that some people are looking for the pdf version of the handbook. So I added a download link to the handbook page for each handbook we have a pdf for. See http://musescore.org/en/handbook If anyone wants to make a better icon, feel free.

Thomas Bonte wrote:

Some statistics: during the past 2 weeks, these are the terms which are most searched for on the musescore.org website:
playback 22
transpose 12
midi 9
tempo 9
MIDI 7
soundfont 7
tie 7
Chords 6
Lyrics 6
lyrics 6
Play panel 5
dynamics 5
mac 5
mixer 5

The number next to it indicates the amount of times the term was submitted. Next time, I will post the most searched terms which do not yield any result.

Thomas Bonte wrote:

As of today, you can start testing a faceted search on MuseScore.org which offered via the Acquia Search service. The enabled facets are:
- language
- content type: book page, menu page, forum topic
- author
- forum: the forum container

There are a few things which can be improved:
- the results should automatically be filtered on the language of the website so you don't have to perform an extra click on the language facet
- the content biasing and weights can be adjusted in order to tweak the search results
- the theming can be done better, but thats for later

Wanna test? http://www.musescore.org/en/search

Thomas Bonte wrote:

Improve search:
- By adding faceted search, it will be easier to find results in the handbook and forum separately
- Technically: faceted_search or apache_solr