Joel On Software - Online communities
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Anyone read the latest article in JoelOnSoftware, about Building Communities with Software[^]? Pretty interesting. I'd say CP is about 50% compliant with his principles. I immediately recognized some CP features on his no-no list (such as "Notify me by e-mail", or quoting other posts). But to me, CP is not the same as most forums; it's more of a regularly-visited community than a question/answer forum.
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Anyone read the latest article in JoelOnSoftware, about Building Communities with Software[^]? Pretty interesting. I'd say CP is about 50% compliant with his principles. I immediately recognized some CP features on his no-no list (such as "Notify me by e-mail", or quoting other posts). But to me, CP is not the same as most forums; it's more of a regularly-visited community than a question/answer forum.
MS le Roux wrote: CP is not the same as most forums; it's more of a regularly-visited community than a question/answer forum No my friend, CP is a way of life... :)
But I am fantastic in bed! And there are gorgeous women in all the houses I pass. And it would be wrong to leave them unsatisfied! So spam is the only way... - Paul Watson
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Anyone read the latest article in JoelOnSoftware, about Building Communities with Software[^]? Pretty interesting. I'd say CP is about 50% compliant with his principles. I immediately recognized some CP features on his no-no list (such as "Notify me by e-mail", or quoting other posts). But to me, CP is not the same as most forums; it's more of a regularly-visited community than a question/answer forum.
For me, Joel is a rather ... strange guy. I once mailed him about our competetive product (zeta producer) to his CityDesk and got ... no reaction at all. Don't know what I really expected as a reply, but it definitely wasn't _nothing_ :-) -- - Free Windows-based CMS: www.zeta-software.de/enu/producer/freeware/download.html - See me: www.magerquark.de
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MS le Roux wrote: CP is not the same as most forums; it's more of a regularly-visited community than a question/answer forum No my friend, CP is a way of life... :)
But I am fantastic in bed! And there are gorgeous women in all the houses I pass. And it would be wrong to leave them unsatisfied! So spam is the only way... - Paul Watson
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zenboy wrote: CP is Life :-D Please forgive me!
But I am fantastic in bed! And there are gorgeous women in all the houses I pass. And it would be wrong to leave them unsatisfied! So spam is the only way... - Paul Watson
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For me, Joel is a rather ... strange guy. I once mailed him about our competetive product (zeta producer) to his CityDesk and got ... no reaction at all. Don't know what I really expected as a reply, but it definitely wasn't _nothing_ :-) -- - Free Windows-based CMS: www.zeta-software.de/enu/producer/freeware/download.html - See me: www.magerquark.de
Gods do not reply to mere mortals Uwe... BTW did you get my reply on the Citrix Zeta effort? If not (our email has been a bit odd of late) then thank you very much, very cool from what I saw. I have a floating 2 hours set aside to go through the system fully at some time. But thanks for your time :)
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South AfricaMacbeth muttered: I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er DavidW wrote: You are totally mad. Nice.
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Anyone read the latest article in JoelOnSoftware, about Building Communities with Software[^]? Pretty interesting. I'd say CP is about 50% compliant with his principles. I immediately recognized some CP features on his no-no list (such as "Notify me by e-mail", or quoting other posts). But to me, CP is not the same as most forums; it's more of a regularly-visited community than a question/answer forum.
MS le Roux wrote: Anyone read the latest article in JoelOnSoftware, about Building Communities with Software[^]? Pretty interesting. Well the time did have to come when Joel got something terribly wrong. He can't be right all the time. I agree with about 5 of his statements, the rest do not apply to CodeProject or in fact 90% of discussion forums. His principles apply to his own Frog Creek forum which lives in it's own little space-time continum IMO. He keeps on and on about critical mass... Critical mass should not be achieved through dumbing things down, it should be achieved by making the damned thing interesting enough so that enough people WANT to use it. He also insinuates that 99% of discussion forums contain pure and utter tripe which is beneath His Holiness. That bugs me that he is getting such a big head.
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South AfricaMacbeth muttered: I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er DavidW wrote: You are totally mad. Nice.
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Anyone read the latest article in JoelOnSoftware, about Building Communities with Software[^]? Pretty interesting. I'd say CP is about 50% compliant with his principles. I immediately recognized some CP features on his no-no list (such as "Notify me by e-mail", or quoting other posts). But to me, CP is not the same as most forums; it's more of a regularly-visited community than a question/answer forum.
automatic and accurate content language translation is a killer app for online communities, IMHO. Feels like you are at home. While we are it, anyone knows the ratio of non-english audience on the net ?
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zenboy wrote: CP is Life :-D Please forgive me!
But I am fantastic in bed! And there are gorgeous women in all the houses I pass. And it would be wrong to leave them unsatisfied! So spam is the only way... - Paul Watson
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Anyone read the latest article in JoelOnSoftware, about Building Communities with Software[^]? Pretty interesting. I'd say CP is about 50% compliant with his principles. I immediately recognized some CP features on his no-no list (such as "Notify me by e-mail", or quoting other posts). But to me, CP is not the same as most forums; it's more of a regularly-visited community than a question/answer forum.
nobody goes into an empty restaurant, they'll always go into the full one next door even if it's totally rubbish. BS. I go to the empty restaurant because it is higher quality (and often more expensive) and/or it serves food that actually utilizes herbs and spices, unlike the bleached flour crap that Americans seem to go for. Software forums and restaurants is a really bad analogy too. The two are completely different paradims for interaction. What happens is that people go to the group to ask a question. If you offer the "notify me" checkbox, these people will post their question, check the box, and never come back. They'll just read the replies in their mailbox. The end. Dude. It's called PRODUCTIVITY. It's one of the best features of CP, because after I get them email notification (which hasn't been working too well recently! :(( ) I then click on the link that CP has so graciously given me and I can instantly go to my message, read all the other replies, AND browse through other forum messages. Saves me tons of time! Branching is very logical to a programmer's mind but it doesn't correspond to the way conversations take place in the real world. Conversations in the real world suffer from an incredibly low bandwidth specifically because branching does NOT take place. Branching, while it can be distracting, dramatically increases the bandwidth of conversation by allowing new concepts to be introduced which, in conversation, are difficult, if not impossible to keep track of. Most people's "stack" is only about 2-3 items deep. There are books on how to increase your "stack" size so you can have conversations of greater depth and breadth. but if I put a "reply" link anywhere but the bottom of the page that would positively encourage people to spew their little gems before they've read what's already there. Dude. People don't read. Their interested in getting there own opinion down. They don't care whether someone else has said something already. At least, the dumb people don't. And for some reason, I find that there are very few repetitions in CP replies. Maybe we just have a smarter community than the other guys. :-D Because that will tempt you to quote a part of it in your own reply. Anything I can do to reduce the amount of quoting will increase the fluidity of the conversation, making topics interesting to read. What BS is this? The best thing is to be able to quote from a long (or even a short) post so that I know the context in whic
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automatic and accurate content language translation is a killer app for online communities, IMHO. Feels like you are at home. While we are it, anyone knows the ratio of non-english audience on the net ?
If you scroll down a little bit, there's a graph on languages used to access Google. I wonder if it's skewed though, because probably there's a lot of non-english people that might be accessing Google in English instead of their native language. http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html[^] Marc Help! I'm an AI running around in someone's f*cked up universe simulator.
Sensitivity and ethnic diversity means celebrating difference, not hiding from it. - Christian Graus
Every line of code is a liability - Taka Muraoka
Microsoft deliberately adds arbitrary layers of complexity to make it difficult to deliver Windows features on non-Windows platforms--Microsoft's "Halloween files" -
nobody goes into an empty restaurant, they'll always go into the full one next door even if it's totally rubbish. BS. I go to the empty restaurant because it is higher quality (and often more expensive) and/or it serves food that actually utilizes herbs and spices, unlike the bleached flour crap that Americans seem to go for. Software forums and restaurants is a really bad analogy too. The two are completely different paradims for interaction. What happens is that people go to the group to ask a question. If you offer the "notify me" checkbox, these people will post their question, check the box, and never come back. They'll just read the replies in their mailbox. The end. Dude. It's called PRODUCTIVITY. It's one of the best features of CP, because after I get them email notification (which hasn't been working too well recently! :(( ) I then click on the link that CP has so graciously given me and I can instantly go to my message, read all the other replies, AND browse through other forum messages. Saves me tons of time! Branching is very logical to a programmer's mind but it doesn't correspond to the way conversations take place in the real world. Conversations in the real world suffer from an incredibly low bandwidth specifically because branching does NOT take place. Branching, while it can be distracting, dramatically increases the bandwidth of conversation by allowing new concepts to be introduced which, in conversation, are difficult, if not impossible to keep track of. Most people's "stack" is only about 2-3 items deep. There are books on how to increase your "stack" size so you can have conversations of greater depth and breadth. but if I put a "reply" link anywhere but the bottom of the page that would positively encourage people to spew their little gems before they've read what's already there. Dude. People don't read. Their interested in getting there own opinion down. They don't care whether someone else has said something already. At least, the dumb people don't. And for some reason, I find that there are very few repetitions in CP replies. Maybe we just have a smarter community than the other guys. :-D Because that will tempt you to quote a part of it in your own reply. Anything I can do to reduce the amount of quoting will increase the fluidity of the conversation, making topics interesting to read. What BS is this? The best thing is to be able to quote from a long (or even a short) post so that I know the context in whic
Marc Clifton wrote: Context is everything. Context is what allows one to have multiple branches. Ah. Now I see why he doesn't like branching. It's because he also doesn't have a clue about context I knew you would plug AAL somehow. :laugh:
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Marc Clifton wrote: Context is everything. Context is what allows one to have multiple branches. Ah. Now I see why he doesn't like branching. It's because he also doesn't have a clue about context I knew you would plug AAL somehow. :laugh:
:rolleyes: Honest, that's not what I was thinking!!! :-D Marc Help! I'm an AI running around in someone's f*cked up universe simulator.
Sensitivity and ethnic diversity means celebrating difference, not hiding from it. - Christian Graus
Every line of code is a liability - Taka Muraoka
Microsoft deliberately adds arbitrary layers of complexity to make it difficult to deliver Windows features on non-Windows platforms--Microsoft's "Halloween files" -
I chose not to choose life - I chose something else -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
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nobody goes into an empty restaurant, they'll always go into the full one next door even if it's totally rubbish. BS. I go to the empty restaurant because it is higher quality (and often more expensive) and/or it serves food that actually utilizes herbs and spices, unlike the bleached flour crap that Americans seem to go for. Software forums and restaurants is a really bad analogy too. The two are completely different paradims for interaction. What happens is that people go to the group to ask a question. If you offer the "notify me" checkbox, these people will post their question, check the box, and never come back. They'll just read the replies in their mailbox. The end. Dude. It's called PRODUCTIVITY. It's one of the best features of CP, because after I get them email notification (which hasn't been working too well recently! :(( ) I then click on the link that CP has so graciously given me and I can instantly go to my message, read all the other replies, AND browse through other forum messages. Saves me tons of time! Branching is very logical to a programmer's mind but it doesn't correspond to the way conversations take place in the real world. Conversations in the real world suffer from an incredibly low bandwidth specifically because branching does NOT take place. Branching, while it can be distracting, dramatically increases the bandwidth of conversation by allowing new concepts to be introduced which, in conversation, are difficult, if not impossible to keep track of. Most people's "stack" is only about 2-3 items deep. There are books on how to increase your "stack" size so you can have conversations of greater depth and breadth. but if I put a "reply" link anywhere but the bottom of the page that would positively encourage people to spew their little gems before they've read what's already there. Dude. People don't read. Their interested in getting there own opinion down. They don't care whether someone else has said something already. At least, the dumb people don't. And for some reason, I find that there are very few repetitions in CP replies. Maybe we just have a smarter community than the other guys. :-D Because that will tempt you to quote a part of it in your own reply. Anything I can do to reduce the amount of quoting will increase the fluidity of the conversation, making topics interesting to read. What BS is this? The best thing is to be able to quote from a long (or even a short) post so that I know the context in whic
Marc Clifton wrote: Branching is very logical to a programmer's mind but it doesn't correspond to the way conversations take place in the real world. I've read a few forums where all the posts were in chronological order, with no indentation. It made it hard to follow a sub-thread. Forums aren't supposed to like real conversations - that's what chat rooms are for. Forums are there so that you can read the threads later, and to be able to do that, the posts need to be logically grouped.
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Anyone read the latest article in JoelOnSoftware, about Building Communities with Software[^]? Pretty interesting. I'd say CP is about 50% compliant with his principles. I immediately recognized some CP features on his no-no list (such as "Notify me by e-mail", or quoting other posts). But to me, CP is not the same as most forums; it's more of a regularly-visited community than a question/answer forum.
I have tremendous respect for Joel for one simple reason: you know who he is, to the point that many consider him a deity. Unless you've spent any time at all in the promotional world, you'll just never appreciate the extremes of that accomplishment. <Looks over shoulder to make sure Chris M. isn't listening, so as to avoid any unnecessary swelling of his head> Chris M. would understand this from a personal perspective, as he has also gone from absolutely scratch to having one of the premier developer sites on the web. "If you build it, they will come." is the greatest fallicy to which web developers succumb. If you build it, you will be ignored. If you promote it, they will come. These guys understand this. How did Joel go from a guy working on a software project to a popular cult figure on the topic of software development? How did he go from being a complete unknown to not only getting a lot of attention, but respect as well? What steps did he take to spread the Gospel of Joel, and to get others to do the same with rabid enthusiasm? Truth be known, I have only a passing interest in his thoughts on software development, placing them no higher or lower than the things I hear from my friends here. However, in terms of promotion he's one of my heros, as is Chris M. When they talk about increasing visibility, I listen. They have results that demonstrate that they know what they're talking about. Chistopher Duncan Author - The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World (Apress)
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I chose not to choose life - I chose something else -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
[Warning foul language below, but totally called for] benjymous wrote: I chose not to choose life - I chose something else "Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family, Choose a fucking big television Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit-crushing game shows Stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home Nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats You have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life. " Awesome track! I have both Trainspotting album CDs and I listen to them regularly. PF Project ruled in this track.
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South AfricaMacbeth muttered: I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er DavidW wrote: You are totally mad. Nice.
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nobody goes into an empty restaurant, they'll always go into the full one next door even if it's totally rubbish. BS. I go to the empty restaurant because it is higher quality (and often more expensive) and/or it serves food that actually utilizes herbs and spices, unlike the bleached flour crap that Americans seem to go for. Software forums and restaurants is a really bad analogy too. The two are completely different paradims for interaction. What happens is that people go to the group to ask a question. If you offer the "notify me" checkbox, these people will post their question, check the box, and never come back. They'll just read the replies in their mailbox. The end. Dude. It's called PRODUCTIVITY. It's one of the best features of CP, because after I get them email notification (which hasn't been working too well recently! :(( ) I then click on the link that CP has so graciously given me and I can instantly go to my message, read all the other replies, AND browse through other forum messages. Saves me tons of time! Branching is very logical to a programmer's mind but it doesn't correspond to the way conversations take place in the real world. Conversations in the real world suffer from an incredibly low bandwidth specifically because branching does NOT take place. Branching, while it can be distracting, dramatically increases the bandwidth of conversation by allowing new concepts to be introduced which, in conversation, are difficult, if not impossible to keep track of. Most people's "stack" is only about 2-3 items deep. There are books on how to increase your "stack" size so you can have conversations of greater depth and breadth. but if I put a "reply" link anywhere but the bottom of the page that would positively encourage people to spew their little gems before they've read what's already there. Dude. People don't read. Their interested in getting there own opinion down. They don't care whether someone else has said something already. At least, the dumb people don't. And for some reason, I find that there are very few repetitions in CP replies. Maybe we just have a smarter community than the other guys. :-D Because that will tempt you to quote a part of it in your own reply. Anything I can do to reduce the amount of quoting will increase the fluidity of the conversation, making topics interesting to read. What BS is this? The best thing is to be able to quote from a long (or even a short) post so that I know the context in whic
Marc Clifton wrote: Well. I've learned two things. 1. CP rocks [edit]um...I already knew that! It just got validated again.[/edit] 2. Joel is not as cool as I once thought I wonder if he'll read this. Well said, all of it. Thing is I think he is coming from a totally different environment for discussion forums. He should make note of that and not generalise his opinions. But yeah, not as cool as I once thought either.
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South AfricaMacbeth muttered: I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er DavidW wrote: You are totally mad. Nice.
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Marc Clifton wrote: Branching is very logical to a programmer's mind but it doesn't correspond to the way conversations take place in the real world. I've read a few forums where all the posts were in chronological order, with no indentation. It made it hard to follow a sub-thread. Forums aren't supposed to like real conversations - that's what chat rooms are for. Forums are there so that you can read the threads later, and to be able to do that, the posts need to be logically grouped.
Yes, that too! Good point. Marc Help! I'm an AI running around in someone's f*cked up universe simulator.
Sensitivity and ethnic diversity means celebrating difference, not hiding from it. - Christian Graus
Every line of code is a liability - Taka Muraoka
Microsoft deliberately adds arbitrary layers of complexity to make it difficult to deliver Windows features on non-Windows platforms--Microsoft's "Halloween files" -
automatic and accurate content language translation is a killer app for online communities, IMHO. Feels like you are at home. While we are it, anyone knows the ratio of non-english audience on the net ?
.S.Rod. wrote: While we are it, anyone knows the ratio of non-english audience on the net ? Some time ago I read somewhere that only 40 per cent of the web users understand english. I just wonder what the other 60% speak?
Shaken, stirred, or strained through a diaper, nothing can make a martini palatable. Roger Wright, Soapbox