Jordi wrote:
Kyle Mallory wrote:
On 4/1/10 10:51 PM, Justin Johansson wrote:
Nick Sabalausky Wrote:
<snip>
Kyle
I second all this. I understand D is not a "corporative" project backed
up by a huge marketing team or anything like that, but better managing
of its image and communication channels (in usability and appearance)
would help it a lot.
A big start would be ditching the newsgroups for proper forum software.
I know a lot of people here prefer the newsgroups, but like it or not
this is 2010. Newsgroups are from yesteryear. People who weren't online
in their heyday don't expect to have to use them (for that matter, there
are those who *were* around and don't expect to have to use them). When
someone checks out a project for the first time, it's quite common these
days that one of the first stops is the project's forums. No forums? Ah
well, too bad. Next project.
These days, you can't expect people to have a newsreader installed by
default. Nor can they be expected to know how to use one. And as for the
web interface, compared to the quality of forum software out there it is
horribly substandard.
Furthermore, a forum can yield some useful activity statistics that you
just can't get from a newsgroup. That help in gauging the interest in D
itself as well as specific areas/features, moreso than TIOBE/# of DMD
downloads/# of nesgroup posts.
Walter has iterated his gripes with forum software more than once. But
in my mind, the downsides of web forums are far fewer than those of
newsgroups, especially when viewed from the eyes of many of today's
twenty- & thirty-somethings.
