I'd say the best hosting offer should win. :-) I have a shared hosting account with about 7 months prepaid left. (I was maintaining the site for a friend and she moved to another hosting provider that provides better usage statistics for her marketing campaigns.) The annual fee is really cheap and renewing it would not be an issue, but they do not provide real 24/7 suuport. (Not sure if we would really need it either...) Regardless of where the site ends up, I think we should find a simple content management system that allows us to focus on C++ documentation and discussion and not become PHP/MySQL/HTML developers. Been there, done that, hated it. Plone looks O.K. A friend of mine has been raving about Mambo (http://www.mamboserver.com/) lately. On 5/3/05, Fernando Cacciola wrote:

"Eric Goebelbecker" escribió en el mensaje news:7611ef5a05050311052664ea@mail.gmail.com...

...

I'm new to Boost and have been lurking on the list for a short time.

This sounds like a good idea to me. Although I mean lean toward a portal type site, only because wikis have been compromised frequently of late, and a volunteer site doesn't need the additional headaches.

I may be able to help out with web hosting space. I have an "extra" account and a low-budget hosting company.

Great, thank you!

I'll act as a general coordinator for the effort. If others make the same offer I'll see how can we decide who will actually donate the hosting (I guess the first to offer gets the priority)

Best,

Fernando Cacciola SciSoft

_______________________________________________ Boost-users mailing list Boost-users@lists.boost.org http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost-users

-- ---------------------------------- "C is often described, with a mixture of fondness and disdain varying according to the speaker, as 'a language that combines all the elegance and power of assembly language with all the readability and maintainability of assembly language'" - the Jargon File Eric Goebelbecker eric@ominor.net

I'll just respond in general to the thread. It's great to see some enthusiasm from the boost user community. I'm afraid to say, however, that I'm a bit of a skeptic. Having started the Boost Wiki in 2001 after a burst of similar discussion and the initial creation of the Boost-user mailing list, I consider the wiki to be basically a failed experiment. That's not to say that the Boost_User Wiki hasn't been very useful to many people (especially Boost developers). But I'd say that there has never been sustained "user" support to help grow the Wiki and make it more useful for Boost users. The initial vision was that users would contribute 'tutorial' and other useful information. It's been sparse at best. So my thought is that before we go and grow another technological solution and diluting our resources even more, we need to really think about what the 'users' want to achieve and why the current site doesn't meet those needs. Why don't more "users" contribute to the current Wiki? What is it that users really want to contribute to Boost? Why not build on some of the good things on the current wiki (like the 'effective xyz' pages? Why not band together and help work on the current Wiki? If it's additions to docs there are certainly many ways that can be done currently and is done all the time by a variety of users. It's alot of work to do it well I believe -- more than I can do. And if we want to augment with other technologies we can -- I'm fully open to expanding the hosting I already provide. As for the wiki spam problem, I believe it to be a non-issue at this point. The problem really started to take off in mid-2004, but a series of measures have been implemented to reduce and resolve the problem. Yes, spam still appears from time to time, but it is quickly and completely reversed. The spammers that get thru initially get blocked out because the new content filter stops them from posting links to spammer sites after an admin update. The more organized and dangerous spammers seem to have moved on to easier targets. And at this point, any open content system is going to have to face this problem -- so be prepared. Jeff

Very much agreed. I'm all for not re-inventing the wheel. On 5/4/05, Ben Hutchings wrote:

Jeff Garland wrote: <snip>

...

So my thought is that before we go and grow another technological solution and diluting our resources even more, we need to really think about what the 'users' want to achieve and why the current site doesn't meet those needs. Why don't more "users" contribute to the current Wiki? <snip>

Maybe because it isn't visible enough. Yes, it's linked from the Boost front page, but it's very low down the list and it's not under "Support" where I would have thought it belonged.

Ben. _______________________________________________ Boost-users mailing list Boost-users@lists.boost.org http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost-users

-- ---------------------------------- "C is often described, with a mixture of fondness and disdain varying according to the speaker, as 'a language that combines all the elegance and power of assembly language with all the readability and maintainability of assembly language'" - the Jargon File Eric Goebelbecker eric@ominor.net

Jeff Garland wrote:

I'll just respond in general to the thread. It's great to see some enthusiasm from the boost user community. I'm afraid to say, however, that I'm a bit of a skeptic. Having started the Boost Wiki in 2001 after a burst of similar discussion and the initial creation of the Boost-user mailing list, I consider the wiki to be basically a failed experiment.

Oh.

That's not to say that the Boost_User Wiki hasn't been very useful to many people (especially Boost developers). But I'd say that there has never been sustained "user" support to help grow the Wiki and make it more useful for Boost users. The initial vision was that users would contribute 'tutorial' and other useful information. It's been sparse at best.

OK

So my thought is that before we go and grow another technological solution and diluting our resources even more, we need to really think about what the 'users' want to achieve and why the current site doesn't meet those needs.

OK. You're definetly right that we better capitalize on your experience here and the already available resources.

Why don't more "users" contribute to the current Wiki?

From my own personal view I think the main answer to this question is lack of visibility. So a related question is why isn't the wiki as visible as it should? Users in this thread already mentioned that they were unaware of the existence of the wiki. There is a link to it down the main boost site, but many people never get to read those "additional stuff rolls" on a web page. I never do for instance. AFAICT there was little marketing for the wiki, specially of its evolution. I remember I visited it once long ago when it was basically just a spread of ideas for new libs and additional docs. I never got back but likewise I never _heard_ of it anymore expect on a couple of occasions. It was never clear to me what it was about.

I see this "failed experiment" as you called it not as an indication that the idea won't work but as a source for learning from mistakes. We might fail again, but then we will have had learned even more. There are succsefull communitites out there so we _can_ do this; we just need to learn how.

What is it that users really want to contribute to Boost?

Well, in reality, users want boost to contribute with them. Now of course that _requires_ them to contribute to boost, but the site must stand out as a place were resources can and will be found. It is only after users recognize that they'll turn to participate as content providers. I guess there is a transitional phase were people must be actively requested to provide content until we reach a content level sufficiently good to attrack most of the users that are just wanting something they can get, not give. When I first came to boost there were already very good libs. If I had saw just a couple of libs and/or of poor quality I would have moved on. So IMO the site must somehow market itself as best as it can and at that promise a good deal to users _before_ they become providers.

Why not build on some of the good things on the current wiki (like the 'effective xyz' pages? Why not band together and help work on the current Wiki?

Can the wiki we extended in such a way that would ressemble the community sites that can be deployed with off the shelf community products like plong?

If it's additions to docs there are certainly many ways that can be done currently and is done all the time by a variety of users.

This is one thing yes.

It's alot of work to do it well I believe -- more than I can do. And if we want to augment with other technologies we can --

OK. I know close to nothing to wiki tech and the "other" community products.

I'm fully open to expanding the hosting I already provide.

Great!

As for the wiki spam problem, I believe it to be a non-issue at this point. The problem really started to take off in mid-2004, but a series of measures have been implemented to reduce and resolve the problem. Yes, spam still appears from time to time, but it is quickly and completely reversed. The spammers that get thru initially get blocked out because the new content filter stops them from posting links to spammer sites after an admin update. The more organized and dangerous spammers seem to have moved on to easier targets. And at this point, any open content system is going to have to face this problem -- so be prepared.

Right, this shouldn't be considered a problem anymore. The bottom line of my opinion regarding the wiki is this: I believe the wiki failed becasue of marketing. Not only in terms of publiticing the site but also in term of the wiki look-N-feel. As I said, users want boost to contribute with them first, only then, when their main need was satisfied, they may turn to contribute with boost. Therefore, the site success is greatly influenced by its attraction capability. That means a great design, a good feature set, etc... I definitely want to capitalize on the work already done. The question is, can the wiki be extended to acomodate the features of something like Plong or Mambo? I'd like to see a feature-by-feature comparison. Of course, you might argue that is worth lossing feature X in order to reuse the wiki work, but I'd like to see a rational for each such case. Best, Fernando Cacciola SciSoft

Maybe someone could convince the boost.org webmaster to due a redirect for us? Something like: http://www.boost.org/wiki I also think that adding a link to the wiki somewhere in the first 1/3 of the main Boost page would increase traffic immensely. On 5/4/05, Jon Kalb wrote:

On 5/4/05 8:05 AM, "Fernando Cacciola" wrote:

...

From my own personal view I think the main answer to this question is lack of visibility. So a related question is why isn't the wiki as visible as it should? Users in this thread already mentioned that they were unaware of the existence of the wiki.

We could change the configuration of the footer for messages sent to this list to include the wiki's URL.

...

_______________________________________________ Boost-users mailing list Boost-users@lists.boost.org http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost-users

Could be something like:

______________________________________________________________ Boost-users@lists.boost.org http://boost.org http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost-users http://www.crystalclearsoftware.com/cgi-bin/boost_wiki/wiki.pl

I'm not crazy about adding more text to the footer and I'm not certain that anyone actually ever *reads* the footer, but perhaps it would raise the visibility of the wiki. (I wish the URL wasn't so long.)

-- Jon Kalb Kalb@LibertySoft.com

_______________________________________________ Boost-users mailing list Boost-users@lists.boost.org http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost-users

-- ---------------------------------- "C is often described, with a mixture of fondness and disdain varying according to the speaker, as 'a language that combines all the elegance and power of assembly language with all the readability and maintainability of assembly language'" - the Jargon File Eric Goebelbecker eric@ominor.net

David Abrahams writes:

Eric Goebelbecker writes:

...

Maybe someone could convince the boost.org webmaster to due a redirect for us?

Something like:

http://www.boost.org/wiki

No problem. But not tonight ;-)

This is done now. -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com

Jeremy Siek schrieb:

One of the coolest things about the PHP user community is how users can contribute notes to the documentation of the PHP libraries. It would be really cool if Boost had something along the same lines.

I second that. I had to work with php for a while and that was highly useful. prefereably with some slashdot-like did-you-find-this-useful prioritizing. it's a good compromise between wiki and static doc. -- Stefan Strasser