Newsgroups Summaries

The Mozilla Newsgroups provide a forum for discussions about topics related to key areas of the Mozilla products, processes, tools, and community. However, while this breadth and depth is excellent in general, it becomes overwhelming for an individual wishing to follow all the currents.

Each week you and a partner are responsible for producing a Newsgroup Summary and FAQ from the list of newsgroups below. Create a link out of the newsgroup title below and make a page (here is a sample) for your summaries; you'll create links each week for the summary.

Your summaries should cover the Friday to Friday period each week, which means you'll have some overlap--that's ok. Deb Richardson (dria) has produced an example summary and a document explaining how to do yours:

• http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Newsgroup_summaries
• http://wiki.mozilla.org/MDC_newsgroup_summaries

Some of the these lists will be more question/answer than content to be summarized. In this case you will put the good questions/answers into an FAQ format. So, during the course of a week, if a technical question comes up and is answered on the newsgroup, write up a clear summarization of that discussion, including links to relevant documentation, bugs, etc.

These Summaries and FAQ lists are something the Mozilla project has never had before. You are essentially working to launch a whole new aspect to the project that will continue on indefinitely on MDC.

Newsgroups

The Mozilla Newsgroups are available via Google Groups and as as mailing lists.

1. mozilla.dev.apps.firefox
2. mozilla.dev.l10n
3. mozilla.dev.tech.js-engine
4. mozilla.dev.planning
5. mozilla.dev.builds
6. mozilla.dev.apps.thunderbird
7. mozilla.dev.tech.layout
8. mozilla.dev.quality
9. mozilla.dev.security
10. mozilla.dev.i18n
11. mozilla.dev.embedding
12. mozilla.dev.platform
13. mozilla.dev.tech.xpcom
14. mozilla.dev.tech.xul
15. mozilla.dev.extensions
16. mozilla.dev.apps.calendar
17. mozilla.dev.accessibility

Grading

Each weekly summary/faq will be worth 2% of your final grade, to a maximum of 20%. You will be graded on the completeness and quality of your summary:

• 0/2 - incomplete
• 1/2 - completed
• 2/2 - completed and good quality

Publishing to MDC

I have now read all of your first summaries, and I'm impressed. There are a few places for improvement (I've emailed you all), but generally, you've done a good job.

You can all begin posting directly to MDC. Melissa and Eva have already done this, so you can follow their example:

1. Find your newsgroup title here and follow the link.
2. Create a page for your summaries by date (here is an example).
3. Create your summary like this. NOTE the page title format: http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Newsgroup_summaries:mozilla-dev-apps-thunderbird:2006-09-29
4. Provide a link on our wiki in your summary page (like this)

All of this must be done each Friday so that it can be announced in the Mozilla community on MDC. If you have questions, please speak to me (dave).

Feel free to put your name(s) on your summary somewhere so that people get to know you as they read your work each week.

FAQ vs. Summary

Some newsgroups are more FAQ than Summary. If that is the case, you should follow the instructions on creating an FAQ on MDC instead of, or in addition to, creating a summary as outlined above.

You can and should publish your FAQs to MDC just like the summaries.

What if my newsgroup has no traffic this week?

Some newsgroups are very busy, and others have little or no traffic in a given week. If you find that there is no activity in your newsgroup, you should dig through the group's archives and compile some FAQ questions, following the instructions here on MDC.