Finally some open words concerning the forum
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I am approaching three years of activity in this forum. Certainly over this time the forum changed quite a bit. New people are coming in. "Oldtimers" are drifting out and you hardly see new activities from them. However, that is life as it is. Focuses of people are changing.
When I have started in forum Qt was owned by Nokia. Alexandra was the official contact point for this forum appointed by Nokia (or whatever the exact name of her employer was). Alexandra left and a next official maintainer (Marius, later Gurudutt) had been assigned. However, with the turbulence around the takeover of Digia as owner and this forum more changes came, apparently no real assignment of someone really responsible for the forum has been made.
Occasionally some "Trolls" are showing up in contributions. However, according to their statements they are answering only on topics when they are involved with their internal Digia assignments and have a good insight in the problem. In addition, they seem to do it (at least they state this) on a voluntary basis in their spare time.
It is certainly for Digia to set the priorities for the forum, but it is a bit a pity. The forum builds the reputation of Qt libs and tools and finally also of Digia. This somehow affects also people's view of all commercial aspects in connection with Qt in my opinion.
I might be wrong, but in my opinion at least for a year the quality of the forum goes down the drain. Fellow moderators are posting only occasionally. If they read posts and act as moderators, I cannot and do not want to monitor.
However, taking the hall of fame lists on the entry page I am the only active moderator.
For the sake of the forum I appreciate the appointment of at least some more moderators. My proposal would be to add those having the status of a "Mad Scientist", which has the same meaning as being in the list of the hall of fame based on yearly collected points. Certainly, those people have to agree to act also as a moderator.
I am going make this post sticky. And certainly I appreciate other views.
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I have to agree here. For last several months the forum is stagnating when it comes to involvement from the "top". Great ideas proposed by Knut seem to have been lost and he has become silent, so has the web mailing list.
I have offered my help several times, but to no avail. It looks bad and your analysis is - IMO - correct.
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[quote author="sierdzio" date="1389265071"]I have to agree here. For last several months the forum is stagnating when it comes to involvement from the "top". Great ideas proposed by Knut seem to have been lost and he has become silent, so has the web mailing list.
I have offered my help several times, but to no avail. It looks bad and your analysis is - IMO - correct.[/quote]
Thanks for your support.
The strategy of Digia is not clear. Apparently, their employees had been asked to give devnet and the open source some focus, but this evaporated very fast.
Also the handling of bug reports from open source community suffers. In September last year they went obviously through bug reports and took care at least for a moment.
Someone answered on a bug report of mine and asked for more information which I supplied immediately. There was a quick exchange and something did apparently move.
I had to supply log information. When I asked for direct email contact, because I did not want to post publicly, I got a response towards a private communication with commercial license.
So the message was "either you pay or you have to let down your pants in public.". This certainly is something one can argue about.
In addition the bug report was closed immediately. So the message was then extend to: "Either you pay or we do not care at all."
So the different questions coming up may raise everybody for her/himself. Also the possible responses.
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Hi,
I completely agree, a known and reachable "Community Manager" is needed. Someone involved (even if part-time) that also interacts with the users (thinking of badges, halloffamers etc…)
Somebody managing the technical side would also be a plus (again, full time is not needed but having some hours dedicated to that is not a bad idea) I don't know if the Qt model can be applied to the website but it could be interesting.
As for the moderating part, indeed, more people wouldn't be bad, recently I only saw you and Andre and IIRC the last moderator appointment was last year.
All in all, a little bit of life from the official side would be really great.
As a side note, I remember a job offering posted not so long ago that was related to the social aspect of Qt but I don't know if the position has been filed.
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Hi,
Just a quick first post in the middle of a lot of things.
I'm coming in as the 'reachable community manager' here. I started on Monday, and haven't gotten round to introducing myself yet.Anyway, I see a lot of things that need to be addressed, and I'm trying to list them as they come (first on a pad next to my laptop and later to the wiki). Once I have gotten my list to some shape, I'll start asking for your comments on different things and we can work out what to do.
I'll post a proper introduction of myself once I get the hang of things around here, hopefully today :)
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Hi Tero Kojo, this is great news! I wish you lots of luck.
You will find a lot of people willing to help you on your quest here :D
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Well… Hi and welcome do devnet ! :)
Nice to have you here !
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Great! Welcome! :)
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Hi Tero Kojo
welcome to the community.
I am pretty sure that you will do a marvelous job here. As noted above the whole forum was deteriorating in the wake of all those changes. Anyone with the proper rights concentrating on the forum is certainly a big plus.
