Spreading the word about D

[Chris R. Miller]

Yigal Chripun wrote:
> Chris R. Miller wrote:
>> Yigal Chripun wrote:
>>> Also, what about using Google groups?
>> Googlegroups would be a very powerful tool indeed.  I have some
>> experience administering various Google Groups, and as such I have to
>> warn that they are subject to a large amount of spam.  Perhaps a GNU
>> Mailman list instead, or perhaps a phpBB3.0 forum?
>>
> definitely NOT any kind of a mailing list - those are user unfriendly.
> I'd prefer mirroring the D news groups on Google groups and I'm sure the
> spam can be dealt with, for instance by requiring a sign-up.

Also in my experience is that a sign-up system greatly reduces the 
number of new sign-ups, mainly because people never read the instructions.

A funny anecdote from that is the story of the Linux Users Group on 
Google Groups (http://groups.google.com/group/linuxusersgroup), where we 
were getting so much spam that the administrators decided to manually 
screen all potential new members by hand by asking a security question: 
  "Do you intend to spam the group?"

The majority of applicants put nothing there, presumably because they're 
mindless spambots.

Some people read the instructions and wrote "no."

Others condensed their whole resume and autobiography down to a size 
that it would fit in the tiny input box.  Of course, they never answered 
the question, so we were forced to deny them.

Some people answered "yes."

Others treated it like some kind of door, and they'd write stuff like 
"hello plz let me in plz i want to ask qestionz abt linus!"  These guys 
were so funny we actually started a private Google Group for just the 
admins to share these funny replies with.



So, returning to the original topic, while screening newbies does have 
its merit, I have found that it really doesn't do that well.  People are 
used to captchas, proving their humanity by responding to an email from 
a mailman list manager, and they have also proven an inability to read a 
question and answer it (which would explain the dismal scores seen in 
schools nowadays).  You're welcome to try, and it will be successful, 
but you may end up inadvertently screening out people who will in time 
become good members of the community.  Heck, when I first started on 
mailing lists and forums so many years ago, I was not very smart, I was 
annoying, and if I now were an admin and I then entered, I would ban me 
in an instant.  Eventually I straightened myself out and learned to shut 
up (most of the time) but I caution you to think of the newbies.  Yes, 
they're annoying, but they do get better over time.

> Of all the Language sites the php site is widely known for its
> organization and documentation. D needs something /at least/ of that
> level. My perfect D site would run on a CMS with different perspectives
> for different user types. D programmers require a different set of tools
> and documentation from the set of tools and documentation required for
> the developers of the language and its environment itself ( that means
> the compiler, runtime, standard lib, etc...).

Perhaps Drupal?  Maybe using it as an opportunity to upgrade and expand 
dsource?  There are many paths we might take.  In my experience Joomla 
is just a pain to work with.  I rather like the idea of making the site 
in D itself, perhaps using Wombat or FastCGI4D.  It would be an epic 
project assuming it's aimed as a whole CMS, so perhaps something on 
Django would do better?  Then we could use Pygment's excellent D source 
code highlighter.  We'd have to convince someone to leave D long enough 
to mess around in Python long enough to make the site, and even then 
convincing someone to maintain it would be bothersome to say the least.

There are many possible choices, so we should probably make a list of 
advantages and disadvantages of each on Wiki4D or something like that, 
assuming it does become a community decision (I was always under the 
impression that what Walter does with his site was his own business, 
though if he's willing to entertain our ideas that's great too).

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