Hello, it would also be nice to see in once glance what is the current latest version of each component. For example, in the current listing of proper components, a column 'Latest version' would be very nice, as well as a short summary of latest released components in the commons home page.
My 2 cents, Regards, Julien 2013/7/12 Benedikt Ritter <brit...@apache.org>: > 2013/7/8 Thomas Neidhart <thomas.neidh...@gmail.com> > >> On 07/04/2013 10:20 PM, Benedikt Ritter wrote: >> > Hi, >> > >> > we had this discussion lately where we talked about attracting new >> > contributors for commons [1]. Over the past few days I've been thinking >> > about this topic again and I've come to the conclusion that there are >> > several things we could do to improve our "public relations". >> > >> > Here is a list of things that I would like to change (and by this I mean, >> > that I volunteer to do the work ;-) >> > >> > 1. Make commons more visible in coding social media >> > - request git mirrors for every proper component, so that everything is >> > also at github >> > - add all proper components to Ohloh (and clean up the existing ones) >> > - create a Twitter account where we can post news from commons. The >> Mesos >> > project already has such an account. [2] >> > >> > 2. Make the website more attractive >> > - Use a modern design - I don't know who said it, but I loved it when >> > someone said "our website looks like we're java 1.3 users". Well, this is >> > true. Simone made several attempts to make commons switch to the maven >> > fluido skin [3,4,5]. I think the time has come to finally do something >> > about the website. >> >> I like the design of the log4j2 site, I am unsure if it is based on >> fluido or actually the same, but something like this I would like to see >> for commons too. The current design looks so old and rusty and can give >> a wrong impression on the state of the project. Website design in >> general and of open-source projects has greatly improved in the last >> couple of years, we should not stay behind. >> > > It is fluido, as far as I know. I'm planning to start working on the > website in two weeks. > > >> >> I am not so much into the social coding stuff, although I find it quite >> nice, especially if somebody else handles it ;-). >> >> Otoh, the single most important factor to attract users and/or >> contributors is simply to actively maintain the project and try to be >> better than competing libs, imho. There are several examples of >> components that were probably great a few years ago, but are now way >> behind other libs in terms of features, usability, java language >> support, community. > > >> Personally, I think we should be more open to deprecate components that >> are not maintained for years and have better alternatives. Right now, >> commons sometimes looks like a graveyard of once cool stuff (with a few >> exceptions). Cut it down to well maintained and really used libs, and >> probably more people will think that commons is a good place to develop >> new stuff / components. >> > > Yes, I agree. There are two other things I have in mind about our > components. > > 1. I'd like to make it easier for users to identify which components may be > of interest for them. One way to accomplish this would be to introduce > categories like they did in the wikipedia article about commons [1] > 2. I came across the Leiningen project [2] lately. In their bug tracker > they use a newbie tag to mark issues that may be a good starting point for > people who want to get involved. I wonder if this makes sense for us too? > I've talked to several people who wanted to get involved but didn't know > where to start. > > Benedikt > > [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Commons > [2] http://leiningen.org/ > > >> >> Thomas >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@commons.apache.org >> For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@commons.apache.org >> >> > > > -- > http://people.apache.org/~britter/ > http://www.systemoutprintln.de/ > http://twitter.com/BenediktRitter > http://github.com/britter --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@commons.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@commons.apache.org
