Re: [security-services] AI #0327: Draft proposal for SSTC home page cleanup

["Tom Scavo" <trscavo@gmail.com>]

This is done.  Comments below.  Tom

On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 3:34 PM, Eve Maler <Eve.Maler@sun.com> wrote:
> I humbly submit the following to close out AI #0327.  (We do still need one
> or more people to actually make these edits!)
>
> Background:
>
> - Mary's advice on how to distinguish the two wikis: "In case anyone is
> still not clear on the differences between the TC wiki and SAML XML.org,
> http://wiki.oasis-open.org/security is provided as an aid to TC
> collaboration and is used by TC members to discuss and document their
> work-in-progress. It is like an extension of the TC mail list, publicly
> viewable, but only TC members may post to it. http://saml.xml.org/wiki is a
> community knowledgebase, a collection of information topic pages that relate
> to using and understanding SAML. Anyone can create and edit pages."
>
>
> Terminology in this message:
>
> "Home page":
> http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=security
> "TC wiki": http://wiki.oasis-open.org/security
> "Community wiki": http://saml.xml.org/

Aside: Content is input via HTML, not wiki text, so I would hesitate
calling this a wiki.

> Recommendations for editing the three sites:
>
> The bullet items below are taken directly from the existing table of
> contents on the home page.  I'm taking a "home page-primary" approach,
> describing edits needed based on the goal of finishing the cleanup of the
> home page but recognizing that the three sites need to work together.
>
>        • (List of chairs and secretaries)
>
> This is automatically generated metadata.  We might want to consider
> doublechecking among the membership to ensure that all of Prateek, Abbie,
> Rob, Anil, Jeff, Paul, and Eve are still interested in being listed as
> "secretaries" (which carries with it, e.g., the authorization to edit the
> home page and -- I think -- to rearrange categories in the doc repository).
>  I suspect that some of these are now historical, since past chairs tend to
> keep this status.  Here's a proposal: Anil, Paul, and Eve still need this
> status; the others might be happy to let it go, though there's no harm to
> anyone in letting them retain it.
>
>        • Announcements
>
> The announcements currently on the home page, plus significant dates past
> (many of them captured in items lower down on the home page, which had
> originally been dated in blog-entry-like fashion within the individual
> sections but have now mostly been rewritten), are candidates to be added to
> a historical SAML timeline that could be added to the "History of SAML" page
> (http://saml.xml.org/history) on the community wiki.  This is not
> high-priority, but if we're going to blow away any home page content soon,
> the current content should be preserved in amber somewhere so that a
> timeline of dates past can be constructed from it.

I created this page

http://saml.xml.org/wiki/an-historical-timeline-for-saml

and moved the announcements there.

> New announcements we want to make (all spec status changess, e.g.) should be
> added to the community wiki's "news" page (http://saml.xml.org/news)
> instead.
>
> The Announcements section on the home page should be retained but should
> contain one last (undated?) announcement suggesting people go to the
> (linked) TC and community wikis for all their SAML official-info needs.
>
>        • Overview
>
> The Overview content is nice to keep here, but probably doesn't need a
> formal section heading, to save on boilerplate.  (I'm assuming we can safely
> blow away the old required home page TOC structure that was imposed some
> years ago.)  We should include links here to the Exec and (latest) Tech
> Overviews.  No content needs to be transferred to the wiki.
>
>        • Subcommittees
>
> We should remove the Subcommittees section; the subcommittee is inactive
> anyway.  If we feel it's necessary, we can undertake a motion in the next TC
> meeting to decommission the subcommittee officially.
>
>        • Technical Work Produced by the Committee
>
> I think it's a good idea to keep this as a formal section heading to get
> people's attention, but we should use it only to link to
> http://saml.xml.org/saml-specifications (for final stuff) and
> http://wiki.oasis-open.org/security (for fine-grained status of ongoing TC
> work).  The section could be called "Committee Deliverables".  It might be
> good to provide a single link to the latest errata-corrected SAML2 zip file
> here so people can quickly "grab SAML" if they happen to come to this page.
>
> The http://saml.xml.org/saml-specifications page should have something
> prominent added to it about errata.

Done.

> We should ensure that people find it
> much easier to grab the errata-corrected versions of SAML2 than the old
> ones.  (There are good links on the home page for this now.)
>
>                • SAML V2.0
>
> This subsection contains a whole bunch of links to individual schemas, which
> are missing from the community wiki's SAML2 page.  The doc repository is
> nearly unnavigable, which is why we bothered providing all these links on
> the home page in the first place.  Do we want to add them to the community
> wiki somehow?  Or is it pointless?

I added links to all the schemas to the community site.  I figured it
would be easier to delete them down the road than recreate them.

> These are individual pieces of the real
> official SAML2.  Once a disposition is decided and links copied over as
> necessary, this section can be blown away.
>
> There's a sub-sub-section here on "auxiliary and outreach information",
> which has some very important and useful stuff in it.  This should be
> migrated to a new page on the community wiki that's a companion to the
> saml-specifications page, and prominently mentioned at the top of that wiki
> and linked from here.

Some of this information was migrated to a new page on the community site:

http://saml.xml.org/wiki/saml-introduction

The rest of the information was moved to the SAML wiki.

>                • Additional Profiles, Bindings, and Extensions Being
> Produced by the SSTC
>
> This subsection has already been turned into a link to the TC wiki.  This
> will be taken care of above, so the subsection can be blown away.
>
>                • Third-Party Profiles, Bindings, and Extensions
>
> We probably over-cooked the process that we invented for this listing.  I
> think it's worth adding a page on the community wiki to list known
> third-party uses of SAML, and not wait for people to inform us formally that
> they'd like us to list theirs.  We can even advertise the new page and
> invite third parties to add listings themselves! :-)  The new page could be
> linked from the top level of the community wiki in the any one of a number
> of categories: Applications for SAML, Working with SAML, and/or even Related
> Specifications.
>
>                • The SAML V1.1 page on the OASIS SAML wiki has information
> about this older version of SAML, including awards won during that era of
> its development.
>
> This appears in the home page TOC (somewhat strangely); it can be removed as
> it's taken care of by other edits above.
>
>                • SAML V1.0
>
> This old content should be moved somehow to the
> http://saml.xml.org/saml-specifications page on the community wiki, under
> the SAML 1.0 section.
>
> The links to the IRTF AAA RFCs that did successfully get migrated to the
> community wiki are frankly not as interesting as the old Domain Model and
> Use Cases/Requirements docs still linked from the home page.  The latter
> links should definitely be preserved as it's impossible to dig them up
> easily from the doc repository.  (Perhaps these should be added to the
> "History of SAML" page rather than the SAML 1.0 section of the specs page.)

All the SAML V1.0 information has been migrated to the community site:

http://saml.xml.org/saml-specifications#samlv10

I also reorganized the SAML wiki with respect to the SAML Standards.

>        • External Resources
>
> I think this section should get pretty much the same treatment as the
> "auxiliary and outreach" information above.  It should be migrated to the
> public wiki as a prominent high-level page, linked from sensible places.

Done.

>  And similarly to the third-party profiles and bindings info as noted above,
> we should solicit third-party edits and input to this material.
>
>        • Mailing Lists and Comments
>
> This section should still appear on the home page.  I think the links to the
> old inactive mailing lists would be nice to keep, but we should probably
> migrate them to the community wiki's historical timeline area (as suggested
> above).
>
>        • Additional Information
>
> This mostly contains Acknowledgments.  The SSTC has a long and distinguished
> history, and I think it's fine to leave this here, but it could also be
> migrated to the historical timeline area on the community wiki (as suggested
> above).  Having the home page be short and to the point will hopefully
> encourage people to explore the wikis more.
>
>
> *** Finally, some general comments about the community wiki apart from the
> home page structure: It looks like some parts of the FAQ linked off the home
> page have been migrated here.  Should we be migrating more of the FAQ
> formally (and editing it down on the home page site)?  Should we also
> advertise the existence of the community wiki forum actively on saml-dev?
>
>        Eve
>
> Eve Maler                                         +1 425 947 4522
> Principal Engineer                            eve.maler @ sun.com
> Business Alliances group                    Sun Microsystems, Inc.
>
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