[Devel] Fixing the /people/ backend: A technical, but well-defined, project within the OpenHatch site

[Asheesh Laroia]

Hi all,

There is a feature on the OpenHatch site that should be rewritten in a way 
that involves *removing* a bunch of our custom code. I'm hoping that 
someone on the list will want to take this on.

If you work on it, you'll learn more about Django and Haystack, the system 
we're using for site search. You'll also be rescuing the OpenHatch code 
from the sloppy code it gained in the 2009-2010 period.

https://openhatch.org/bugs/issue89 is the ticket.

If you're interested, take a look at the code that implements the /people/ 
view. It's "def people" in mysite/profile/views.py . Follow the trail... 
yowch, a bunch of ad-hoc hard-to-read code.

Here's what we should do:

* Use Haystack's built-in ability to do "faceted search"

* Remove any custom code in the OpenHatch codebase that poorly 
re-implements faceted search

* (Preferably) make sure the test suite covers the changes you made.

http://docs.haystacksearch.org/dev/faceting.html covers faceting.

I would be extremely happy to be around and make sure that I help in any 
way I can.

This is not a "bitesize" issue! But it's a good way to sharpen your Django 
skills.

-- Asheesh.