Food for thought...
Until now a highly under-used form of communication. As part of the revamp efforts I suggest we spice up this tool, and use it mainly to create an end-users platform.
1. Add header picture to the template, as in Coudal this livens up the user experience, and adds some color in the current dull blue/grey text only environment without the need to redesigning the whole Openacs.org site top to bottom.
2. We use the blog to publish the forum recap
3. Add a category where users can showcase their site development. Effectively, replacing the current ETP page.
4. Don't talk to much about the hardcore hacking issues that are curently dominating the forums. A blog editor could add issues to the bugtracker on behalf of the blog subscribers, after evaluating the relevance of the request. This will greatly reduce the number of active bugs.
5. To endusers/non hackers, IRC is not the most user friendly form of communication. I guess a full set of IM communication solutions makes more sense. In that respect creating an Openacs helpdesk, using all tools in the toolkit, from simple javascript chat, to Jabber IM will both increase community actvities, and help promote Openacs. As you may know I have been fussing about chat for the last five years, and have now resorted to a shoutbox, hosted in South Africa, which is a shame realy, only because we still have stupid issues like this around.
I have a feeling if this action would get us 20 extra afficionados (= extra resources), we have a great skelleton crew to cleanup the system.
Just some thoughts
Ben
