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catalin
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10000+ Registered Users!!!

Post by catalin »

Hi everyone,

I came across wxForum's 3rd Birthday! post and just realized that Jorgen's wish came true - the 10k registered users number was exceeded! :wink:

Congrats, and many more to come !!
wxWidgets Discussion Forum wrote:Our users have posted a total of 98688 articles
We have 10001 registered users
The newest registered user is Racsi
Jorg
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Post by Jorg »

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to thank everybody who is making an effort in helping other wxWidgets users here on the forum. I would not have hoped this back in 2004 when the forum first came into existence, that we would reach the 10.000 members boundary!

I did not expect it so soon either. I was closely monitoring the counter, but it slipped my attention as one day more members register then other days.. :-)

Thanks everyone for making this happen!
With regards,
- Jorgen
Forensic Software Engineer
Netherlands Forensic Insitute
http://english.forensischinstituut.nl/
-------------------------------------
Jorg's WasteBucket
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jorgb/wb
jacmoe
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Post by jacmoe »

Yay! :)
Now we only need the wxWidgets developers to frequent it.
If I got it right, they are still hanging out at ye olde mailing list..
upCASE
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Post by upCASE »

Hi!
Hurray! Thanks everybody!

As usual, I missed the crossing of the 10000 member mark :)
jacmoe wrote:If I got it right, they are still hanging out at ye olde mailing list..
True, but some of them occasionally visit here. I guess most of them don't post, but read in silence :)
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tierra
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Post by tierra »

upCASE wrote:
jacmoe wrote:If I got it right, they are still hanging out at ye olde mailing list..
True, but some of them occasionally visit here. I guess most of them don't post, but read in silence :)
It's the same situation on the IRC channel. If you really want to know why... (sorry in advance for the rant)

The mailing lists have been the official communication channels for the project since the beginning almost 18 years ago now, and will continue to be for the life of the project. Many of the developers don't have the time to keep up on both the mailing lists as well as the forums, and the forums are optional, the mailing lists aren't. Would you rather they were spending time closing tickets, and making improvements to the library, or helping newbies with mundane questions that could have been answered by reading the manual or just doing a small amount of research themselves?

The IRC channel could obviously never serve in an 'official' capacity since even if it was logged (and it sort of it, privately), not everyone can be in there at the same time to discuss important details. That doesn't apply to these forums, but these forums have a different problem with them that the mailing lists don't have that keeps them from ever being an 'official' communication channel. There's some aspect of forums that is so much easier to sign up and post on when compared to the mailing lists that there's a much larger flood of much younger newbies jumping on asking even more mundane questions, and giving nonsense responses to discussions (I don't mean to offend anyone here, but it's just the truth). This would quickly become a nuisance in serious discussions about library architecture. It already is on the mailing lists from time to time, but not nearly as bad as it would be here.

In any private company working on closed source software, the solution is simple: you filter resumes, and fire any that get through that become a problem. Very little of the discussion about development is done openly. In an open source project, you need public communication, so you do what you can to keep development moving along as smoothly as possible. You just have to deal with the egotistical 16 year olds, especially when there's usually no indication that you're talking with a 16 year old until it becomes obvious based on technical knowledge and behavior. Anyway, one of the things open source projects can do that statistically helps with those problems is to make your official communication channels mailing lists instead of forums.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate these forums (quite obviously based on my post count and wxAwards), and they do provide a very important role in the wxWidgets community. By now, they've probably been solely responsible for most of the adoption growth of wxWidgets in the last 3 years (it was growing slowly before, but I doubt it would have grown at the rate it has without the forums). Developers come here and learn about the library, how to use it, and a small portion eventually even dive into the wxWidgets source code and contribute back. Some may even eventually become official developers. It has also helped myself from time to time when I just needed a fresh set of eyes on my problem to get it figured out when no-one on the mailing lists were able to help.
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Post by Jorg »

Hi Tierra,

You summarized that perfectly, and it is a huge compliment to me (and to everyone involved) that you noticed that the growth of wxWidgets improved because the wxForum is here to help people that just start, or need to take the first steps in learning the toolkit. This was the sole purpose I started back in 2004. This year we will have our 5th bday. I am thinking about some new skin for the forum, and maybe some other stuff. I might be absent from time to time (as my primary language shifted from c++ / python to Java and .NET), I am not gone. So we will have to think somewhere in summer about some improvements. The forum is much appreciated considering the five digits now, and was neglected for a while ... we are all busy ;-)

Regards,
- Jorgen
Forensic Software Engineer
Netherlands Forensic Insitute
http://english.forensischinstituut.nl/
-------------------------------------
Jorg's WasteBucket
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jorgb/wb
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