Hi Paolo, On 17/02/11 13:02, Paolo Castagna wrote: > The fact that we need a website and documentation is obvious and > it's given for granted. > > But, "why" do we want a website? > > The aim has not been clearly stated, so far. > > If you ask me and in the context of an Apache project, the overall > aim of a Jena website is to have as much (happy) people as possible > using Jena (i.e. increasing user base and supporting current users). +1
> We should aim at quickly move them from new users to expert as quick > as possible and with a self-service process as possible. +1 > Finally, the ultimate goal is to transform expert users from users > to developers, contributors and, maybe, (smart) committers. I disagree that this is the ultimate goal. Certainly we do want to grow the community of Jena contributors and committers - this was a key motivation for entering Apache. But in a steady state, I would expect Jena to have multiple thousands of users, but tens or maybe at a pinch hundreds of committers. So while serving the needs of Jena developers and committers is important, indeed very important , it's not, to me, the ultimate goal. > In less words, the website should be tuned at growing a community > around Jena. Therefore, in my opinion, we need to think about those > steps and movements and make it as easy as possible for everybody > who might be interested. Certainly these aims should be included. My advocacy is actually that the *primary* aim of the documentation is to help users make effective use of the toolkit. One measure of success, for me, would be that the growth of the support load on jena-users is slower than the growth in the number of downloads. > How are we going to transform new users into expert users? I proposed several goals for the site around the theme of learning Jena, for both new users (getting started, tutorials) and more experienced users (task-based documentation, reference material) > How are we going to transform expert users into developers/contributors? There should definitely be a developers/committers section, I agree. However, beyond the process questions (how to submit a patch) and detailed reference materials (above), it's hard to know what else could be done to bring about the transformation you describe. In fact, I don't know what *I* would want in such a section on another OS project I was interested in. > So, why do we want a website? Hopefully, I've made my answer clear above. Happy for anyone else to chime in :) Ian -- ____________________________________________________________ Ian Dickinson Epimorphics Ltd, Bristol, UK mailto:[email protected] http://www.epimorphics.com cell: +44-7786-850536 landline: +44-1275-399069 ------------------------------------------------------------ Epimorphics Ltd. is a limited company registered in England (no. 7016688). Registered address: Court Lodge, 105 High St, Portishead, Bristol BS20 6PT, UK
