Sponsorship [Re: Go 1.9]

[Wulfklaue via Digitalmars-d]

On Saturday, 24 June 2017 at 21:56:20 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
> On 6/24/17 1:11 PM, Wulfklaue wrote:
> [snip]
>
> Thanks, this is a good point. The bountysource has been tried by
> Facebook (with D and other projects) and was deemed 
> unsuccessful. It may
> be the time for trying a new angle on bountysource though.

The issue with pure bounties is that while they may incentive 
people if the work vs reward is good. But unfortunately, when 
reading the bounties currently posted, a lot seem to be major 
amount of time vs little pay.

That is why Nim / Crystal simply work with collecting money to 
pay developers for specific bounties or pay for full time people. 
It does not prevent people from doing there own bounties if they 
want.

> We'll look into defining a page listing existing sponsors 
> (though the majority by monies are anonymous) and a simple 
> method to donate on the website.

As seen with Nim, Crystal, ... there are plenty of people who do 
not have a issue given a name or nickname. I think the current 
reason for a lot of anonymous donation is simply there is no real 
"advantage" for that person to have his/her name known.

People are competitive animals. If you see what amount of money 
people sometimes donate to  ( small ) youtube'rs. Sometimes 
thousand of dollars. All for being grateful by the person 
receiving the money and being the top donater.

> What other methods of payments do you have in mind?

Germany: www.sofort.com
Netherlands: www.ideal.nl
...

Those are all popular in there respected countries. At times 
bigger then paypal etc...

> Nevertheless we need to update that.

Might be interesting to also move the donation a bit more 
"visual" on the website. Its not the first time that issues 
regarding the website have been mentioned.

* The library still using the horrible phobos/index.html 101 page 
library. There is now a link to the library/index.html that is 
way better. But its something that most people will overlook.

* Tutorials:

I found the old:

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/d_programming/d_programming_associative_arrays.htm

A more interesting spot to actually learn D examples, then the D 
website /spec/class.html. It more messy and finding out about 
sometimes as simply as associative_arrays, only to discover that 
its buried somewhere.

* It might also be interesting to do a "Rust" and have Ali's D 
book provided as a standard free D book ( and maybe pay him 
something per download ). Now it already requires some searching 
or forum knowledge to find out the book is also available for 
free. Make it a prominent feature item on the website. Worth a 
extra blog post = free publicity again. :)

* Local language websites.

As somebody with family relations in China, i can say that there 
is a thriving Go community in China, where most Go related 
documentation got translated. Unfortunately, its a bit of 
"western" thinking, that everybody speaks / reads on a good level 
English. By not having localized language versions of major 
markets, D loses out on target audience. Go had the luxury that a 
lot of people comited time to do the translations and was 
rewarded with a large Go community in China. Something that most 
western developer do not even realize how big Go is in China. The 
idea that every software  developer knows (any/good ) English is 
sometimes a bit exaggerated. So this is again a overlooked 
potential focus point.

... Plenty of topics regarding the website around ;)

My biggest advice is to find or hire a community director. 
Somebody who's job is community management, media management, to 
focus resources etc. Some of the things that i mention seem to 
have been mentioned a lot of times before.