[boost] Re: Boost to the rescue

From: Fernando Cacciola (fernando_cacciola_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-04-28 12:19:26

"David Abrahams" <dave_at_[hidden]> escribió en el mensaje 
news:usm1bj8t8.fsf_at_boost-consulting.com...
> "JOAQUIN LOPEZ MU?Z" <joaquin_at_[hidden]> writes:
>
>>> If so, I'd be happy to set up a forum at boost-consulting.com, if we
>>> can decide on the right software.
>>>
>>
>> A couple of seemingly popular free bulletin packages are
>> YaBB and MyBulletinBoard. More ambitious community packages
>> are Plone (which has about anything) and Postnuke: these
>> two latter could serve as the basis for a fuller community
>> site.
>
> Someone will have to build a consensus that tell me what to do; I
> don't know anything about these.
>
FWIW I definitely agree that boost-users is far from a "boost community 
site".
We seldom see people talking about their experiences with boost in any of 
our list, yet in most community sites that's usual. Boost-users is "just" a 
maliling list and can't have "structure" (we would have to define what 
structure we want but that's another issue). For example, a per-library open 
blog, etc, etc... A true community site can offer much more to the community 
than a mailing list. There is also the "topic" issue: while lists have a 
topic (and so things that are off topic are never exposed or put down by 
moderators), a community is often more tolerant about that.. community 
interests usually revolves around a thing but doesn't focus only on it. IOW, 
"boost" as a community could gather developers commonly intereseted in good 
std C++ programming practices... the boost "libraries" would be the pratical 
result of that, but not the only thing around boost, as it is now.
In none of the list I would talk about my experiences with the .NET GC and 
the idioms that result from that; yet in a C++ community site I would, 
drawing of course a connection with std C++, C++0x and the CLR/C++ fusion.

This very thread (the start of it at least) is the kind of stuff that would 
be much better placed in a community site (and it would be much visible 
there)

IMO, right now the only "boost community" is the developers crowd. It is 
clear from this thread that boost is a lot less visible than it should be. I 
bet there are a *lot* of C++ programmers out there getting stuff from the 
CodeProject and perhaps SourceForge at large just because they don't know 
about boost and if they occasionally hit the site page they are scared away. 
If that situation changed our work as boost developers would have a far 
greater impact; and I think a community site a la CodeProject would help 
with boost visibility a lot.
Now of course such a thing requires people to work on it; but it also 
requires some form of support from boost "officials". It might be worth 
adding a top post in the users list to catch the attention of potential 
volunteers and generate some concrete ideas about the site.

Best

Fernando Cacciola