Miles (and others previously), great point about the word "Donation" and the name of the site.
I'll be honest, I've always been a bit dubious about that name too. For one thing the site isn't necessarily (in practice) that much "about" (or affected by?) the whole donation model, though it is well implemented here in the forums and hopefully used with good frequency. But in some sense you could think of it as just a part of the system here, not necessarily the *point* of it. Just like other forums may have a "Karma" system or similar, but they're not called "Karmatown". That may not be a fair analogy though as the intention *here* may actually be that the donation model does take more of a front-seat than other similar systems on other sites. That being said, it's a question whether A: that approach is actually most beneficial to promotion of donationware as a concept, and B: whether it's still relevant as a core aspect of where the site has evolved to.
The reason I haven't been more vocal about all this before though is my understanding is mouser founded the site with this model in mind, and with the intention of promoting it and trying to make it successful. So some promotion of that approach is perhaps implicit in the "mission", even if unstated. But as I alluded to above, the idea of direct promotion of the donationware model, particularly through naming, may not actually be as beneficial to the concept as we might like. In fact, often times *not* calling attention to a controversial concept, and simply demonstrating its efficacy, will have better results. So that would be exemplified here by e.g. renaming the site to "SoftwareSnacks.com", and having donationware as just part of the encouraged model, with the same systems we have now, just not trying to *focus* on the donation aspect (as indeed for all practical purposes we already do not, but the name perhaps betrays that reality). Then people would come to the site, use the software, go through the same processes, and if they found the software good, and the process for registering and using it is not onerous, they might automatically have their perspective on a "donation" model changed, at least a bit. It's purely by positive demonstration of the model, rather than outright advertisement of it.
I realize the idea of changing the name of the site is huge and has large repercussions, but I have to be honest, it's something that has always bugged me a bit (and not because I don't support the donationware concept!), and I think it *does* affect the initial impression for many users.
At the same time I don't think a name change necessarily addresses many of the other concerns here. It's really just *another* concern that needs consideration I think. It's not going to make content easier to find or more relevant or organized or anything.
- Oshyan
