[Slashcode-general] Slashcode is dead, long live Slashcode?

[Alexandre L. <ale...@ec...>]

Dear list!

Here's my latest Slashdot journal entry, trying to get feedback in order 
to make the best decisions for the future of my slashsite.

Don't hesitate to share comments! :-)

Thanks -
Alex

http://slashdot.org/~Lord+Satri/journal/231231

/Slashcode is dead, long live Slashcode?/

/"The good news is Slashdot <http://slashdot.org/> is still an 
interesting site to me, continues to evolve and is in active 
development. But the good news about Slashdot do not apply to Slashcode 
<http://www.slashcode.com/>, Slashdot's open source engine. I'm the main 
manager of a small Slashcode-based website 
<http://slashdot.org/%7ELord+Satri/journal/slashgeo.org>. Despite my 
enthusiasm, the truth is Slashcode is dead. It has been dead for quite 
some time and I wonder if it can be resurrected. How can Slashcode be 
dead? There is no community behind it anymore. There has been no 
official release since 2002, granted you can and should use the CVS 
tags, but it has not been updated with anything recent such as the AJAX 
code used on Slashdot for the last few years./

/Rebuilding the community? Maybe, but enthusiasts quickly hit a wall. 
Slashcode's own main page is not up to date, there's a lot of missing 
information and my previous efforts at helping updating it got no 
answers from the site admins. How can you build a community when there's 
no way to learn who's in the boat with you 
<http://www.slashcode.com/sites.pl>? Ah! The mailing lists, of course! 
There are two main Slashcode mailing lists. On the Slashcode-general 
list 
<https://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_name=slashcode-general>, 
there was only 8 threads in 2008, 3 so far for 2009. For the 
Slashcode-development, it's worse: 2 posts since May 2007, both from our 
small team. You can ask questions, but you never know if someone will 
answer the phone./

/A few years ago our small team developed a plugin that adds webmaps to 
stories and GeoRSS to the feed but failed to get much feedback from 
anyone. We're far from the community and the development workforce than, 
to name just one, the one behind Drupal, which has its own conference 
and 2000 developer accounts 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drupal#Community>. Slashdot's 
responsibility? None directly, Slashcode is open source software, they 
rightfully have no obligation to contribute to a community./

/Slashcode still has some attracting features and an excellent 
auto-moderation system. So, what's Slashcode future? I'm interested in 
the insights you have to share. I fear my own Slashsite will die out of 
technological obsolescence and that other Slashsites have no future. A 
Slashcode community won't spring out of the digital blue overnight, but 
it all has to start somewhere. Is it too late to try to build a vibrant 
Slashcode community?"/

-- 
Alexandre Leroux, M.Sc., Ing.
Environnement Canada / Environment Canada
Centre météorologique canadien / Canadian Meteorological Centre
Section de la réponse aux urgences environnementales /
Environmental Emergency Response Section
ale...@ec...