"... you're suggesting we skew our engineering decisions for marketing
considerations
even if the resulting offering's inferior. I find that unsavory. "
Absolutely not. Solid engineering on the core and important applications
is important. This thread started off as a discussion about marketing
and that's
where I hope it remains, separate from engineering matters.
"As far as the poll request, it looks like we're heading back down the
path of suggesting that project direction be set by universal sufferage
of site registrants, rather than by the people doing the bulk of the work.
Project direction isn't going to be set by polls or votes of this
sort, that's
certain."
Hmm. Sounds like somebody's a little sensative due to another bboard
discussion.
The motivation behind my requrest is not about setting direction. Its to
foster interaction with minimal effort. Its just sometimes easier to set
up a poll than to slog through thread after thread on the bboards to get
the pulse of the community on a topic. If everybody else is fine with
just
bboards, that's cool with me.
" On the other hand, this is the very first time I've heard about
PHPNuke.
The word-of-mouth approach hasn't managed to spread the word in my
direction.
Clearly more publicity of this effort couldn't hurt."
Or maybe you're so completely focused on this project that you dont notice
the competition? Of course I'm glad this is the case since I want to see
OpenACS move forward. If you were to poll(there's that word again)
the OpenACS
community as to what packages would be considered competition to OpenACS
for building communities, I'd be very surprised if PHPNuke were not among
the leaders. The fact that you haven't heard of the project/software
doesn't
mean they don't have a large and growing following that's been created by
an good out-of-the-box experience. I hope you do a little marketing
research
on your own in this regard rather than take my word for it.
OpenACS is a fantastic toolbox. As a newbie, its just so frustrating
sometimes
to have to climb up the learning curve to be able to get it to the point
where its look and feel is comparable to other community/bboard packages.
Especially when those other packages are so easy to install, get running
quickly and look so darn good at the same time. I gathered from this
other thread that I'm not the only one who feels this way. I
still maintain
that the best way to promote this great OpenACS software is to make it
easier
to use. You might disagree with some of the examples that I used,
according
to your own tastes, but I dont see anybody saying that giving the OpenACS
a better out-of-the-box experience isn't a good idea to promote its
adoption,
regardless of your target audience.
