Organisation
  • Perhaps I am the only one, or maybe one of few?, but I have no idea what is happening around here. Are we extending Vanilla at present? Is there a project plan?

    There seems to be very little real discussion and I generally notice that when I logon .. there's nobody else here :(

    Can we organise a meeting on Google Wave or GTalk/MSN/Skype etc and sort out a few priorities and goals?

    Let's strive, no squander.
  • Why don't we discuss here, that means we can keep the conversation documented and the discussion is open to anyone for ideas.
  • We could, I just fear that discussions on here will be left abandoned for days at a time.
  • And a chat session won't be abandoned?
  • In my experience a lot more is always accomplished with direct communication. A thread like this would remain active for weeks before a final conclusive decision was made on anything.

    I am happy to be proven wrong though!
  • I'm for keeping it on a thread.

    Many FOSS mailing lists, I feel, manage to achieve a lot by maintaining a certain objective approach to discussions. These discussions may not resemble real-life (or even very friendly) discussions, but work. Although we do not have sub-thread capabilities, we can always make sure that posts clearly indicate who and what they are replying to (so that streams of discussion don't get lost somewhere) and restrict random derailing from the discussion track. Given that we are very enthusiastic about this, I don't see it failing. Someone or the other will keep trying to push an answer through for issues that they have strong views about.
  • Alright, I've got something for us to think about. I was trying find ideas for a SigCONT Tool (using the JSON API) and tried to think of what use it could be of. Although cool ideas like a aptitude inspired (with vim like movement keys, Emacs/vim editor, etc) curses interface, etc came up, I finally realized that what we really need is something that lets us interact with the community in a way that is appropriate for us.

    We aren't the type of community that will have loads of threads open all the time with constant chatter/Q&A/etc. We want to have discussions and not be worried about the rest. Now obviously this means that there will be times when we have low activity - excellent opportunities for members to forget the website exists (for those of us who started it, it won't be as simple, but you can't say that with confidence for the others who may join later). So I though of making a front end that works exactly how most of us may want it: one that simply checks for new and updated conversations so that it isn't disheartening to see the homepage without any new discussions. The rest the website can handle. This wasn't very satisfying.

    So, I came up something completely out of the scope we've been think off - a mailing list with archives hosted on the website. Why? It will allow us to focus on discussion that can take as long as they want and no one (except those not interested) will drop out or lose interest. There is no hurry to keep activity going. Alongside this, we could also have a wiki to showcase some of the work of our members, put articles, etc. If required, we could hang on to the web interface and make the email work like Debian's BTS (which doesn't have a web interface but can be controlled very well by email) or Launchpad (you may never know that you access lp only through email if you didn't look it up), thus allowing us to retain threads, ability to manipulate them, a nice looking website that doesn't look like an old and boring archive, etc.
  • I was going to add "What do you think?", but, apparently, we have a character limit for comments...
  • @Tesiox: It seems you were slightly wrong:
    A thread like this would remain active for weeks before a final conclusive decision was made on anything.
    It isn't active at all!
  • lol - drats. Still ... conclusively proves my point ;)
  • Yes and no. Yes because the thread died/lost momentum and we haven't even begun a discussion let alone reaching a conclusion. No because I don't think a chat session would've been more conclusive. This is more revive-able and, given that we're only a small group we can't hope to maintain a chat discussion until a conclusion is reached.
  • People are drifting away because of a lack of communication, progress and substance. Something needs to be decided or actioned to spark that urge we all have to make something happen and grow.
  • I agree. I don't think a web forum like this can provide enough substance. I see two "solutions".

    Either, there needs to be more (I don't have anything in mind at the moment) happening than just discussions and we need to center the website around something else or we need to accept that there isn't enough sustained energy to keep a web forum running by itself and use a system (like email) that can keep members from forgetting the community even if there is little or no activity for a while.
  • Can I be the first to say "content is king" and without interesting stuff happening on whatever discussion platform people will loose interest?
  • I don't disagree. I'm just hoping we can find a way in which we can generate and maintain content without the need to have a huge amount of continuous activity to keep people from forgetting the community exists.
  • Not forgetting


    I think everybody has a different way of keeping in touch and for me that is one of the biggest problems. I leave the site for a few weeks (... okay maybe closer to two months :O) and there are plenty of interesting posts. In my opinion, I would like to be informed of potentially interesting content before coming to the site, although you may regard this as cheating.

    Example: If nothing happened on Facebook, I wouldn't visit it anywhere near as often. I get an email for really important things such as a friend add, or a PM, and my iTouch will beep for every other thing (ie comment) or I keep Facebook as a pinned tab in Chrome and wait for Notifications to pop up. If Vanilla updated without refresh it would work better as a pinned tab, too. Haha or maybe an iTouch app (I am SO obsessed haha).

    Substance


    Okay, maybe I'm missing the point. @Umang, your point was content. We need to decide what sort of content to post. What is the topic? Tutorials? Questions? Reviews? News? I'm happy for all the above and more...

    As for veering away from the forum format, I love the mailing list idea, as it will force me to keep in contact. I will read everything (I might not get time to reply for a day or two, but by then I would have had time to think up a good reply) that comes my way. Aside from the mailing list idea, I can't think of anything.

    Question: What are we looking for? A small community, focused on helping each other, socialising? A large organisation focused on helping ourselves and making money?
    Haha the question almost lends itself to the answer...
    Anyway, what do we want to build?
  • We need to decide what sort of content to post. What is the topic? Tutorials? Questions? Reviews? News? I'm happy for all the above and more...
    <...>
    Anyway, what do we want to build?
    I'm not sure, but I'm keen on having us put that in words so that we can move the community in a direction
    As for veering away from the forum format, I love the mailing list idea, as it will force me to keep in contact. I will read everything (I might not get time to reply for a day or two, but by then I would have had time to think up a good reply) that comes my way.
    Exactly!
  • Alright, shall we try a chat session? This doesn't seem to be going anywhere...

    If we do, we should plan in advance and choose a time carefully so that everyone (we have important members from at least four continents, if my count is correct) can attend.
  • Sometime this week I definitely should be available, besides my two exams. What about everyone else?
  • I am out till the 24 but we have several from the usa.
    Hello World!

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