Re: Webplatform dead?

These kinds of projects also don't just get a jump start then take off and
keep going. Initial interest happens, all the people who are just
interested head out, then you are left with a far smaller group of core
contributors. Then over time that core group even changes as life happens
and new shiny things come along. (Try to recall the often provided
bell-curve of tech adoption, then make the curve narrower and far more
dramatic. Then toss a few more curves in over time.)

Documentation projects in particular have one major flaw, people don't feel
it is worth their time to contribute. They are paid to do write code that
functions and move on to the next thing. So taking time out to contribute
to a document is hardly on their mind. WPD is in a very slow-pace area and
we want contributors that really care about the quality of their work. That
quality comes at the cost of things moving even slower.

Things aren't dead, they are just stagnant. As WPD offers wider community
engagement then hopefully we can collect a few more core contributors that
will make things not seem so slow. I'd much rather have a handful of core
contributors that do true quality work then an army of low-quality
contributions that makes things seem more active. The content provided is
far more useful in the end that way.

On Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 7:10 PM, Doug Schepers <schepers@w3.org> wrote:

> Yes, Austin has been a really prolific contributor (thanks!), and we also
> have Nishanth Babu adding beginner DOM tutorials, among many other
> contributors and content.
>
> We've actually concentrated quite a lot on infrastructure over the last
> few months; Renoir has done a great job.
>
> We're even adding over some new functionality, like specs.webplatform.org
> that hosts more experimental specifications, and adding a technical
> discussion area where developers and designers can ask questions about spec
> development. Our emphasis is on closing the gap between standards
> development and developers.
>
> Regards–
> –Doug
>
> On 4/10/15 6:31 PM, Austin William Wright wrote:
>
>> Slow maybe, not dead. Over the last month I've touched almost all the
>> HTML element pages, merging duplicates, adding examples, correcting
>> normative references, and importing data.
>>
>> I also noticed a great TLS/HTTPS upgrade, and MediaWiki upgrade, iirc.
>> So even the server is getting love, it's not just me.
>>
>> Austin Wright.
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 1:15 PM, Ric Johnson <ric@opendomain.org
>> <mailto:ric@opendomain.org>> wrote:
>>
>>     Is the WebPlatform project dead?  I have not seen any progress in
>>     quite a while.
>>
>>     I thought this was an amazing chance to help new developers learn
>>     web technologies, but it seems that we have dropped the ball.
>>
>>     Is there anyone interested in kicking this project back on gear?
>>
>>     Ric Johnson
>>     OpenDomain
>>
>>
>>