----- Original Message ----- From: "David Abrahams" <dave@boostpro.com> To: <boost@lists.boost.org> Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2010 2:05 PM Subject: Re: [boost] [proposal] The boost.org Maintenance Effort
* A blog -- where only the maintainers and those nominated by the maintainers to have blog posting access can communicate what's happening, what's coming, whether they need help, or whether there are any nasty bugs that need attention (as well as just some general updates or cool findings regarding the library).
* Static Pages -- typically there would be pages like "About", "History", "Examples", and "FAQs" which generally are mostly static. These can be edited by the maintainers and those nominated by the maintainers who would have access to these pages.
* Support Information -- this would be a special static page which would point to Trac, or other places where the development and support system of the library is hosted. I am not excluding the possibility of having libraries developed in github/gitorious/sourceforge. Links to things like the mailing list on which the discussion happens, whether there's a web-based forum, or whether there's a number/company to call for support would generally go here too.
* Online documentation -- as an absolute minimum there should be a page on documentation for each library in Boost accessible from the boost.org website. It would be a good thing to integrate the generated library documentation into the wordpress system itself, but at the minimum links to the generated library docs that are statically served (just like now) would be acceptable.
My personal vision for boost.org would be to become the hub over which the Boost C++ community and the surrounding ecosystem of companies can join in on the action.
I would even go so far as say that we should encourage and allow industry players that offer support for Boost libraries or who use Boost libraries to place advertising on the site to help with shouldering the cost of BoostCon, or other things that the Free Software Conservancy would deem necessary to spend money on.
I also would like to see it be the face of the Boost community, and really a means to get users to start using boost, get excited about it, and eventually contribute back to the cause.
Users who are already passionate about providing support for a wider audience of Boost users could also contribute to the cause not as library developers but people who publicize and liberally put links to the boost.org site on their blogs, on their email correspondence, and in stackoverflow.com answers.
Ultimately I would personally want to see boost.org be able to handle the growth of the Boost C++ Library, and allow for more communities (not just one community) to through the site. I don't want it to replace the mailing list for Internet old timers like me who like this feel of email conversation, but for things like announcements and communicating to the wider audience I think the website should do that job superbly.
I think web forums like BBPress support a mailing-list-like experience, don't they? I'd really like to see lightweight subscribable discussion topic areas.
-- Dave Abrahams Meet me at BoostCon: http://www.boostcon.com BoostPro Computing http://www.boostpro.com
_______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost