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Re: Am I Doing a Good Job?
I have no specific complaints, but I will comment.
Cscgal, you may underestimate the driving power behind a community feel for a forum.
There used to be a lot of unity here. I remember being constantly supported, directly and indirectly, by many regulars in the Python forum. In fact, my experience stems solely from many immensely informative threads we've had here by the gurus who would take away some of their own time, to share their common interests. And in all forums, people would talk about their individual goals, and their personal amibitions. We would help each other accomplish these individual goals, while others worked together on community and team projects.
Recently, these projects have all died out, and no one seems to be keeping PFO up to date with the fun things they've been doing. Grim is one of the few who has been keeping us up to date, and I'm a strong supporter of that. That is precisely what keeps the forums interesting-- people discussing their goals, personal ambitions, and projects. Maybe even most importantly, something we've often missed: support for each other. And that is precisely the driving force behind a community forum that specializes in people persuing computer science as a career, but more importantly, as a hobby.
So what is Jessehk up to? What is TheChristeLegacy up to? What about IR, Arevos, TitaniumDecoy and Uman? You know I used to have a remote idea, but now I couldn't tell you squat about anyone, except maybe that Ancient Dragon is still the king of MSDN, Narue is the queen of all things C, and Grumpy might not be so Grumpy any more. So people hardly seem to touch base now with their lives in computer programming, where in contrast, our activities used to be quite frequently discussed. Maybe they think we don't care?
And there are potentially many reasons for this downward slope in posts from computer science advocates. Some of these potential reasons have little to do with DaniWeb, and some of the reasons have everything to do with DaniWeb. The main reason I can think of is the "soulless" forum skin, as Uman pointed out. This place feels less and less like a specialized forum for computer science addicts, and more like a place for a tolerating few to help one-nighters with their homework.
For example, earlier this week I competed in a computer science contest. I had a lot of fun and would love to share some of the problems with you guys. But there's really no suitable forum for this. I've also forseen the possibility that no one will be interested, and the time I spend creating a discussion will go to waste (as it has often lately). I would also like to study with someone equally enthused for an upcoming competition, and maybe even pay one of you to tutor me. But I'm not sure if I should bother asking.
I'm not sure what can be done about it either. Sure you could switch the skin back, but will that get people talking about what they've been up to lately? Will it get people talking again about their goals, and posting the broken code to some webserver some talented person here has been coding up in secret? I have no idea. Other things could be done though, such as programming competitions, badges to reward the helpful contributors (tutorial authors, book reviewers, etc), more interesting post rankings (instead of just Hobbyist, Guru, etc...), and general changes with the main goal of giving computer science back to this forum.
In reality, things aren't bad. Honestly. I have fun here. So do keep up the good work. But for every place I've overstated the truth about how things used to be, compared to how they are now, I'm sure some have felt this way at some point too. I won't speak for David, but as he touched on some of these notes upon his departure, I have a feeling his opinions of PFO do not stray too far from my reasoning in this post.
Cheers.
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