Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: Some Feedback From an OpenACS Newbie

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Posted by Torben Brosten on
Hi all,

Glad to see this thread's topic expanding (else consider OT)

I get teased daily about OpenACS as I have been talking about ACS/OpenACS since 1995 and have yet to publish a site based on it, as I keep running in to snags that eat into my busy schedule.

One of my team members talks about OpenACS as being NASAware, ie. characteristic of NASA software from the 1970's and early 1980's (poor documentation, full of bugs/undocumented implementation snags, and written by/for the experts who wrote the sw). The irony of NASA possibly using it is almost too much!

Another team member calls OpenACS my "boat on the south seas" project, ie. a dream that I will talk about and work on but somehow never get to implement.

I respect and appreciate their views even when it can seem disheartening at times. In my own stubborn way, I know that the beauty of the OpenACS system shall prevail!

My point:

OpenACS.org is a developer website for a developer toolkit, but there needs to be a place for end-users, decision-makers, managers/moderaters/instructors, and stakeholders to contribute directly and indirectly.

This site desperately needs an end-user forum dominated by end-users. A separate forum would help shelter the clash of development/open-source and end-user/commercial/consumer cultures, and foster basic communication attributes, such as respect and positive feedback. Developers (and end-users) can extract valuable info that drives documentation etc. and more aptly search for contextually useful information. Most major opensource projects have these separate boards for the benefit of all.

Has anyone measured the attrition rate of users? What are the statistics about the time between first registration and last login?  How many (active) users are subscribed to the forums?  Can 3 month periodic history be created of this?  I think the results would be quite informative.