We are becoming a joke...

[livestrong2109]

So incase you haven't noticed our forum is being spammed, no one has updated the news letter in over 3 months, and now we have a nice new banner that lets the whole world know we are $8,626 short of our goal path for yearly donations. Seriously how hard is it to release a dam newsletter once a month. I keep coming back her to see what the hell is going on and without going out of one's way to read the commit log. "Which btw new devs unfamiliar with the project wont read..." no one can read up on the project. Really guys the team needs to be more active on the social side. The hell with Facebook and Twitter. Just release a dam monthly newsletter... something normal people can read, is that really so much to strive for...

[jonaspm]

maybe that could help people to realize that is project is not dead and is being active all day

maybe ReactOS can appear more in news

[EmuandCo]

A new dev cares a s*it of a newsletter, he checks the source logs, loads a nrecent trunk version or even builds it himself and plays with it.
In case you did not know, we are working class, we have jobs. Jobs which take much of our time we could otherwise use for ROS. Thats the reason why theres a donation bar above, btw. Paying them makes the work not less, but then they work for us and still have the needed money. My personal opinion is that this topic is a joke.

[Black_Fox]

Really guys the team needs to be more active on the social side. The hell with Facebook and Twitter.

Really? How would you propose to be otherwise active on the social side of the internet, then? Logging on to Chatroulette with ReactOS banners?

[Pesho]

Chill man, the newsletter isn't that important. If you want things to really get done, donate to the fundraising campaign.

[livestrong2109]

EmuandCo just because its not important to you doesn't mean its not important to others. This is part of our public image someone needs to be in charge of it on a monthly basis. I know that there are people out there that would love to read the logs and commits to write one up. However no one in this community can trust anyone outside of the devs with anything more than compatibility testing. I mean we had a social media team and they seem to have just fizzled.

I've been following this project since 2005 during the whole cleanroom check mess. back then there where updates all the time, and people where informed about what was happening in the project. I know many of you are going to write this off as bs. but to many of the sites visitors this really matters. If you guys really don't want to do a newsletter then just remove it. Don't just let it rot for months and months because it really does hurt the project image.

Z98 we love you but find yourself someone you can trust to help you write these things. I can sympathize with having a busy life. I have over 90 hours of lousy WP and Joomla work each week, Its sick but I love it. Not to mention I'm teaching google apps classes for free on the weekends. Please Z98 let someone else help you..!

[fred02]

First, I agree with Pesho, let first calm down.
Second, I trust many people outside the devs for accurate and understandable information on ROS: Z98, vicmarcal, Haos, hto, to name just the firsts that come to my mind. Of course this IMHO.
Finally, I think this discussion belong to off-topic rather than general.

[DOSGuy]

Okay, everyone take a deep breath here. Some good points are being raised here, but there's actually not that much that needs to be done.

When I go to the website for an open source project, I want to see some evidence that it is still being developed. When I go to the front page of this website, I see news item from April 28 and a newsletter from February 28. The project is obviously not dead, but I have no indication that work is being done on a daily basis. I didn't know that until I started visiting the forum and the commit pages. So the first thing I would do is move the "ReactOS SVN" section from the bottom of the righthand menu to its own section under News. I have a widescreen monitor and didn't notice it way over there the first few times I came to the site, and even now the recent commit says "Commit by tkreuzer on dib_rewrite :: r56593 ..." The date is cut off! If this section was right under News, everyone would see it, and they would be able to see the date of the most recent commits, and see that work has (usually) been committed in the last few hours!

The other sign of a living, active project is how active the forum is. There are 86 000 posts! The only other thing I would do to the website, and this one is really optional, is maybe access the forum database and post some stats about how many posts there are, or when the last one was, on the main page. Between the rapid rate of commits and the frequent posts in the forum, anyone visiting the website would immediately see that this is a very active project. The forum part might not even be needed since drawing attention to the commits makes it really obvious that work is happening.

As for a more frequent newsletter, that would be nice, but it's not absolutely necessary.

[SomeGuy]

So incase you haven't noticed our forum is being spammed,

Spam is a very real problem for every open forum on the Internet. It is not in any way unique to ReactOS. The moderators here have been doing a damn good job of cleaning it up. I've seen forums with no active mods and they are filled with hundreds of pages of spam. I remember one that was so bad, that members had to bump a topic on a daily basis so visitors could see it on top of the spam pouring in.

The noise level on the forums has actually improved over the years, with more intelligent discussion than ever. There are a few forum members who seem obsessed with high post counts, but they probably come from twitter or facebook where that kind of behavior is encouraged, so it can't be helped these days. (BTW, there is no super-1337-secret bonus for members with 9000+ posts on this forum )

[milon]

Z98 we love you but find yourself someone you can trust to help you write these things. I can sympathize with having a busy life. I have over 90 hours of lousy WP and Joomla work each week, Its sick but I love it. Not to mention I'm teaching google apps classes for free on the weekends. Please Z98 let someone else help you..!

Pretty much all website changes - including newsletter updates - are waiting on the new site to be finished before they go added on. I'm not really a fan of that approach, but it's what the ReactOS team is doing. I'm quite busy this week, but if I can come up with spare time next week I'll see if I can do anything to help DangerGround speed the development of the new site. Sounds like it's mostly migrating and html/css at this point. I may well be able to contribute something, but no promises.

[PurpleGurl]

Spam is a very real problem for every open forum on the Internet. It is not in any way unique to ReactOS. The moderators here have been doing a damn good job of cleaning it up. I've seen forums with no active mods and they are filled with hundreds of pages of spam. I remember one that was so bad, that members had to bump a topic on a daily basis so visitors could see it on top of the spam pouring in.

The noise level on the forums has actually improved over the years, with more intelligent discussion than ever. There are a few forum members who seem obsessed with high post counts, but they probably come from twitter or facebook where that kind of behavior is encouraged, so it can't be helped these days. (BTW, there is no super-1337-secret bonus for members with 9000+ posts on this forum )

I agree. When I've reported spam, it's always disappeared within 3-6 hours. That is great response time. I've managed blogs and online communities, and even dealt with email spam, and it is a problem everywhere. On Wordpress, I've had to deal with spammers, particularly the "Nice blog" type.

[hto]

[…] even now the recent commit says "Commit by tkreuzer on dib_rewrite :: r56593 ..." The date is cut off! If this section was right under News, everyone would see it, and they would be able to see the date of the most recent commits, and see that work has (usually) been committed in the last few hours!

Maybe it should also display the commit counters/statistics (like on the CIA page).

[BrentNewland]

Without commenting on anything else posted in this topic, I would like to make the following observation:


Without intensive public relations efforts, that fundraising goal will not be met this year.

[ckmox]

maybe adding the daily commit activity on the front page will serve as a basis that the project is active, like whats shown on the HaikuOS front page

[Z98]

1. We already have a commit log on the front page.

2. Newsletters are not held up due to the website revamp. They're being held up because I'm in grad school taking 4 courses this semester along with a 50% RA appointment. As such, any work that I do for the project is in my spare time. Trying to prod me about newsletters like this also is basically meaningless. My free time is what it is, trying to guilt me about not having updated recently will not suddenly make all my projects, homework, and general deadlines disappear.