Right, and I completely agree, these are all good things to pursue. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough as by the tone of the replies it seems people inferred that I thought that posting bio's and pics was a bad idea. I don't. ALL I am saying is that it would *also* be helpful if the reason we have two official NH sites were to be explained somewhere prominent. :-)
I feel like we are beating a dead horse, so I'll stop. :) -Michael From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Stephen Bohlen Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 3:57 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [nhibernate-development] Re: NHForge - Pictures of you guys :) Michael: FWIW, I also think we very much appreciate YOUR input on this issue -- I agree that the apparent confusion introduced by having more than one 'ideal' or 'official-looking' clearing house for NH info is a challenge to the overall health of the project but as has been mentioned here, there is little (direct) action that can be taken to resolve this. Instead, by improving the content, structure, etc. of the NHForge content over time even the big G will stop considering nhibernate.org<http://nhibernate.org> to be the top search result. This isn't as direct a fix as either shutting down nhibernate.org<http://nhibernate.org> or taking it over, but its the best possible course of action given the present constraints. We are all affected by the baggage we carry from our pasts :) -Steve B. On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 10:37 PM, Michael Teper <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: +1 :) No disagreement here, I don't think its "either/or" -- I am merely suggesting *another* thing that would help, and I think would address a more in-your-face issue for a newcomes (the apparent schism in the two websites). In any case, all good worthwhile stuff. Thank you!! -Michael ________________________________ From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] On Behalf Of Stephen Bohlen [[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Sent: Monday, February 09, 2009 5:55 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [nhibernate-development] Re: NHForge - Pictures of you guys :) Tobin: FWIW, I applaud your efforts. OSS is built on the backs of volunteers -- people who give of themselves to contribute what they can where they can. One of the very real challenges of OSS is that its often difficult to say to any volunteer "I would prefer you volunteer your free time doing X instead of Y". I really think that ALL of these efforts -- coding, designing, testing, documenting, teaching, and -- yes -- organizing content in NHForge too are all needed around NHibernate in order to help keep its larger ecosystem alive and healthy. No one task is more important, more valuable, or more needed than the others IMHO; instead they all contribute to the life of the project. I say this to any volunteer in just about any context: as long as you aren't doing active HARM to anything, feel free to pick up a hammer, a saw, a paint brush, an ink pen or whatever tools you like and offer up some value to the project. The essence of satisfaction as a volunteer is in pouring your passion for action into a concrete result that others can appreciate for what it is. And whether thats a new feature, a closed bug, a new article or blog post, or even an improved, more professional-looking NHForge that helps to increase the sense of professionalism visitors perceive around the participants in the project, I say: have at it -- all comers are equally welcome because all contributions are equally valued~! -Steve B. On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 8:30 PM, Tobes <tobinharris.uk<http://tobinharris.uk/>@googlemail.com<http://googlemail.com/>> wrote: > My main point is that I think this is a far bigger barrier to adoption than > lack of personability of the NH dev team. > -Michael Putting photos + bios on the home page will help win trust with new visitors. It gives the message that NHibernate is a team of seasoned developers, not some rabble of spurious open source hackers (decision makers often fear the worst!). By winning trust, it will also increase adoption. That's my thinking at least. The failing links, duplicate forums and stale content might be solved by creating gravity around the latest resources. Creating gravity means doing things that pull visitors back time and time again (google forum, nhforge.org<http://nhforge.org/> etc). One thing we could do to give nhforge.org<http://nhforge.org/> gravity would be to make the home page as official as possible. This would leave no room for confusion, so people know it's the place to come to. My hope is that putting developer faces on nhforge.org<http://nhforge.org/> home page will help to make it more official, and therefore reduce the confusion, and ensure visitors keep coming back. Tobin
