Matomo IRC meetup #2

Contents

After our first successful IRC meetup, here is the schedule for Matomo (Piwik) IRC meetup #2

Date: Thurs March 18th, 1pm UTC
Duration: 30min
IRC #piwik channel

Agenda:

  • Matomo 0.5.5 follow up(which should be out by then)
  • Discuss Matomo user documentation plan, and how to find documentation writers?
  • General Q&A

To join the chat, you can use the website: http://webchat.freenode.net/ – See also what will be the time in your country at 1pm UTC.

Anyone can join, and if you are interested in participating in the project, this is your chance to introduce yourself and get to know others.

Hope to see you there!

Update: Meetup Logs

(00:01:30) mattab:  <meetup>
(00:01:51) mattab: as a quick update, 0.5.5 will be released tonight or tomorrow morning first thing
(00:02:32) mattab: I don't know if anyone has any particular idea they want to discuss?
(00:02:56) thomas[phorum]: <- just listening as a user
(00:03:00) mattab: if not, we can talk about the (missing) Matomo user documentation
(00:03:42) mattab: and more specifically... could we find writers (community members) to help write these docs?
(00:04:11) rschilt: apologies guys but I'm sick as tonight - just enough energy to sit in on the meet but not much more. I'm bascially going to sit back and listen 
(00:04:57) rschilt: Although I might throw in the odd thought!
(00:05:09) mattab: well any idea or suggestion is good, even users just listening.. meetups are open to anyone :) not just the dev team! so go ahead..
(00:05:45) Peter-: get well soon, Robert
(00:05:57) vipsoft: wrt user documentation ... are you thinking a standalone user guide or context-sensitive help from within Matomo?
(00:06:07) rschilt: Anyone on the team now that is particularly motivated to do some doco for the project? 
(00:06:24) nonickname [~86f5f96c@gateway/web/freenode/x-bomjlgmbnrlwjump] entered the room.
(00:06:50) mattab: I was thinking out of product documentation, which would sit in https://matomo.org/docs/
(00:07:16) vipsoft: it might help if we put together an outline, and then let community members fill in the blanks
(00:07:24) mattab: I also wrote a proposal for the documentation... http://developer.matomo.org/trac/ticket/1164 - but the missing bit is to have documentation writers hehe
(00:07:50) rschilt: Perhaps we need to engage some member of the Matomo Community to assist?
(00:07:58) rschilt: (or members)
(00:08:34) mattab: yes, how could we do this?
(00:09:16) rschilt: I would like to see an online manual but one that could also easily be printed as a PDF - a self contained manual and one that could easily accommodate and reflect changes - a living document. 
(00:10:12) Peter-: i think this is a good idea - just like a piwik cheat sheet
(00:10:24) rschilt: The idea of the job board comes to mind - will create a Trac ticket for this tomorrow.
(00:10:25) mattab: PDF manual would be nice to have... not sure if we can do that with WP
(00:11:09) Peter-: i would say that a dedicated print-css would do it at first
(00:11:22) mattab: yes I guess the job board would be the first towards finding interested people to participate or even lead Matomo doc process
(00:11:55) rschilt: The 1st lot of jobs to go on the board could be documentation related.
(00:11:57) mattab: Anthon, I like your suggestion of drafting something ourselves and then let users improve it over time.. this is basically how we've done it so far
(00:12:15) mattab: maybe we (I?) should be less lazy and just sit there for a day and write these docs ;)
(00:12:20) rschilt: Like an open wiki?
(00:12:37) thomas[phorum]: we went for docbook format (on phorum.org) to generate html and pdf formats of the docs. kinda works against community interaction though, not an easy format for the casual user ;).
(00:13:36) rschilt: Guys... perhaps we need to think out side the none dots
(00:13:49) vipsoft: none dots?
(00:13:55) reinhard [~557e5d5b@gateway/web/freenode/x-rnblkmtfckjotxxg] entered the room.
(00:14:11) rschilt: sorry nine dots... think laterally.
(00:14:33) mattab: docbook is a bit complex.. if we have it in WP, we can just add new users and let them edit these pages
(00:14:48) rschilt: At times I refer to WP as a model and guide for Open Source development
(00:15:15) vipsoft: at times, I refer to the WP code as a model of how not to code something...
(00:15:19) mattab: what do you think of my doc proposal http://developer.matomo.org/trac/ticket/1164 ? would the sections outlined there work for a simple user doc?
(00:15:36) rschilt: Why don;t we follow WP's model? Create a user editable wiki?
(00:15:56) mattab: I tried the wiki before, and it's a mess regarding spam
(00:16:05) vipsoft: I agree with matt
(00:16:34) mattab: also the WP doc is really complete, but quite messy
(00:18:16) mattab: problem with wiki is really spam and dealing with low quality contributions.. it requires someone to lead this effort. if we find a person that wants to be Doc leader / maintainer, I'd be open to this suggestion
(00:18:24) Peter-: another Idea, why not doing it like the php.net docs - spam will always be a problem with user generated content but perhaps we could control that
(00:18:39) rschilt: spam can be managed!
(00:19:06) mattab: yes it can! it's just time consuming
(00:19:23) vipsoft: (speaking from experience)
(00:19:24) rschilt: I like the php.net documentation - generally things are easy to find and info is very details and complete
(00:19:35) mattab: that's a good point, I guess we could open the comments on the docs page and make it really clear that it's open to feedback, and then delete comments after updating the doc
(00:20:24) Peter-: and often you find the really important information in the comments (at least at php.net ;)
(00:20:42) rschilt: The working examples are excellent
(00:21:05) rschilt: what doc tool does php.net use?
(00:21:29) mattab: OK so I think next steps are, Robert to draft the job board, then we can see who is interested to help with user doc
(00:21:59) mattab: Anthon and I could also be drafting some user docs with the most important things, and have the pages open for comments
(00:22:32) vipsoft: actually, step 1 is to identify the intended audience
(00:23:07) mattab: I was specifically talking about user documentations, so audience would be... Matomo users? ;)
(00:23:34) rschilt: step 1 (tick)
(00:23:43) mattab: ie. we don't talk about technical stuff too much, except for specific topics such as "Advanced tracking (flash, ajax, etc.)"
(00:24:31) vipsoft: there are different classes of Matomo users -- those who install it for themselves; those who've had it installed by others; users who understand why an SQL update fails; those who can't...
(00:24:54) rschilt: The collection of all documentation should cover the needs for both newbies and advanced users and everyone else in between
(00:25:15) mattab: I agree, I think docs like "Update" and "Install" can be a bit technical, but docs regarding how to understand web analytics reports don't need to be
(00:26:03) Peter-: for extreme non-experienced users, we could extend the consultant-area later for example
(00:26:45) rschilt: Perhaps each topic/section in the manual could have a rating
(00:26:53) vipsoft: this should probably be scoped like the roadmap
(00:27:00) mattab: yes exactly, that's a great point... we should improve our consultancy model and have "basic" consultancy jobs: install piwik, 1 hour Matomo training, etc.
(00:27:35) mattab: Peter, if you're interested in this idea, maybe you can propose changes to the consulting page
(00:28:19) mattab: do you have any other thoughts about user documentation?
(00:28:29) Peter-: ok, i'll think about the topic
(00:29:10) mattab: we've worked hard over the last few days and we're released a new version of the website, that now allows full translations of piwik.org! that's pretty cool; check out the alpha of http://de.piwik.org/
(00:29:20) mattab: contributed by Peter
(00:29:28) rschilt: Onya Peter!!
(00:29:47) Peter-: thank you ;)
(00:29:48) rschilt: The power of synergy!
(00:29:52) mattab: the great folks at WPML helped us getting the technical side sorted out
(00:30:14) Peter-: we're struggling with a last issue, but i think we will solve it very fast
(00:30:21) mattab: so once the german translation is all ready to go, we'll do blog post announcing the release
(00:30:41) mattab: and then we can pitch the idea to other community members for new languages (I know maciej was interested to contribute Polish()
(00:31:02) mattab: any thought on this?
(00:31:13) mattab: or anything else? ;)
(00:32:09) Peter-: we'll see, there are many bloggers from germany which want to extreme contribute... I have to think about, what they could do, but we'll talk about that, when the translation is done
(00:32:39) Peter-: "hardcontribute" so to speak ;)
(00:32:55) rschilt: as in code?
(00:33:07) mattab: cool, btw vipsoft contributed the new feature in Matomo that goes out in 0.5.5 that allows IP anonymization
(00:33:20) mattab: which the German community was really waiting for
(00:33:37) rschilt: onya Anthon !!
(00:33:59) Peter-: yes, that's great!
(00:34:35) Peter-: Robert: posting experience reports, help to make piwik better, test it in high traffic abilities and so on
(00:34:54) rschilt: I see
(00:35:32) rschilt: What percentage of Matomo users are german speaking?
(00:36:00) rschilt: any guesses?
(00:36:28) Peter-: Don' know - Matt, do you have a number?
(00:36:50) rschilt: He must be looking it up!
(00:36:57) mattab: no we don't have this info actually... we can just see download from german
(00:37:03) Peter-: at least I can say, that Matomo is well known here in germany
(00:37:04) mattab: let me check
(00:37:39) mattab: http://demo.matomo.cloud/index.php?module=CoreHome&action=index&idSite=1&period=year&date=yesterday#module=Goals&action=goalReport&idSite=1&period=year&date=yesterday&idGoal=1
(00:37:48) vipsoft: may not be accurate as it depends where you host your server
(00:37:56) vipsoft: mine's in texas
(00:38:09) mattab: this one is based on downloads of piwik on piwik.org, tracked by piwik
(00:38:18) mattab: you see that germany is the biggest sub community
(00:38:25) mattab: (in 2010)
(00:38:35) Peter-: ok that should be pretty exact
(00:40:05) mattab: ok thanks for joining guys!
(00:40:07) mattab: </meetup>

Enjoyed this post?
Join the 160,000+ subscribers who receive the Matomo Newsletter straight to their inbox every month
Get started with Matomo

A powerful web analytics platform that gives you and your business 100% data ownership and user privacy protection.

No credit card required.

Free forever.

Get started with Matomo

A powerful web analytics platform that gives you and your business 100% data ownership and user privacy protection.

No credit card required.

Free forever.