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Shortcomings of DC and How to Improve

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Target:
My point is clear:
Stop saying that publicity is not important or DC does not work like a company, there's a lot of time spent on it already that I can see. One of the real questions is why are we still getting this kind of humiliating traffic/participation stats after all these years?-lotusrootstarch (February 28, 2011, 12:45 AM)
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sorry, maybe I'm dim, but I'm still not getting it - just what is the issue here?

I have very constructive opinions, but not available until you acknowledge the problems, dudes.
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difficult, considering you still haven't actually articulated what you perceive them to be...

lotusrootstarch:
sorry, maybe I'm dim, but I'm still not getting it - just what is the issue here?
-Target (February 28, 2011, 12:58 AM)
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Lack of systematic, organized innovation will be the doom of this site... (don't say NANY, NANY is currently a publicity event, not innovation).

One of my ideas is that we need to find a way to encourage people here to work together on big group projects and promote to the public together using the resources we have, like from daily donations and fundraisers.


The current model is that we have everyone developing their own app without much serious support from anyone, and then releasing all the apps together during an event like NANY under the umbrella (or brand?) of DonationCoder.

How did it work out?

After a year of solicitation, preparation and much time and money spent on this "major" event, it enjoyed 3 days of lackluster public attention and then just disappeared from radar... gone.. end of story. Few people outside here know it happened.


Regardless of my idea or the validity of my arguments, something is obviously not right here.

worstje:
So, I can't talk much about DC's strengths, weaknesses, etc. I can only point out the things I have heard, seen or otherwise experienced.


* A few months ago, mouser went totally nuts. To toot my own horn, he called me the posterboy of DoCo. Why? Because I went from lurking and offering my thoughts on the Dina font, to requesting a coding snack, and in the end ended up submitting two applications for the most recent NANY. How did DonationCoder fail to spread the Cody spirit with me? :)
* I have come and gone, come and gone. I'm like the ebbing flow of the tides. Yet DoCo has remained. What that points out to me is that DoCo's strength is not in its day-to-day active memberbase, or the day-to-day content, but in the longterm value it acquires. Yes, DonationCoder promotes Donations, and yes, maybe it needs to work a bit harder on that. But tell me, is DonationCoder not its own best advertisement? Existing for six years on donations alone? mouser said above that running this website costs $500 a year (if I misquoted, my apologies), which just show donations can get you damn far AND get you to feel good. Leading by example, it is called.
* Donating is one way of supporting. Writing coding snacks is another. Writing up free reviews is yet another. They are all equally important. We are the sum of our members, and the sum is generally bigger than the parts. But nothing will happen if someone does not make a first step - and for you, making this post is a great second step (donating was the first ;)). Personally, I've brought up tons of stuff to mouser in the past few months, both involving the site and DoCo-activities-wise. Have you tried to actually change things, as opposed to standing back and going 'wait, two years went by, and nothing really changed'? I don't mean to sound condescending by saying that; all it means is that someone needs to lead. How about you take the initiative and lead DoCo in the direction you want it to to conform to be more like your image of it?
I hope you'll take those comments in good faith as that is their intent. They're not meant to crack down on your opinion or thoughts, as I personally appreciate those, and I can see your point very well. Were DoCo an actual business, it should have flopped five years ago. Thankfully, it is not.

lotusrootstarch:
 :)

How about you take the initiative and lead DoCo in the direction you want it to to conform to be more like your image of it?
-worstje (February 28, 2011, 02:34 AM)
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Let's face it it's mouser's citadel here. You don't lead, I don't, and nobody else does. Back in 2006/2007 when DC was still in its infancy there were a whole lot of discussion on new things that should be added to the site and a bunch of those new ideas in fact got done through collaboration, like the blogging features, help desk, search, among other things. Seems every bit of development is intended to make minor improvements to things that were already there since 3-4 years ago.

You joined the site too late to know the history, but that's alright. :)

Now except for spotty short-lived pseudo-excitements here every once in a while, it's mostly dead water over here, such pity isn't it?
It's so fortunate that we have all these senior members who come here every day even every hour to add content to the forum, but that alone doesn't make a pool flowing does it?

Anyways, let's see how well the fund-raiser is received. None of us is guaranteed to be right. Who knows, let's see.

vlastimil:
I see nothing wrong with the visitor stats. The number of daily visitors is stable and adequate to a niche web site. Mouser actually did something very right this January. According to Alexa, the time spent on site (or pages/visit) has risen significantly in January and remained there. I do not know what mouser dd, but whatever this seemingly invisible change was, it had an impact. Maintaining a web site and a set of software tools is full of similar under-the-hood tasks that take a lot of time and it takes more and more effort the older the web site is. An annual fund raiser is justified by just keeping the web site together.

On the other hand, nothing can be done with the fact that most users do not care much about these invisible maintenance tasks. It might be a good idea to do something trivial, but clearly visible to everybody from time to time.

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