Erlang forums (was Re: PING TEST)

[Fred Hebert]

On 12/24, Leonard B wrote:
>I'm honestly surprised there has been no offer from EEF to
>handle/control/manage both the forum and the ML.
>
>Surely that would be the 'correct' group now that it is established?
>Possibly as a function of Marketing WG?
>
>KInd regards,
>Leonard
>

The EEF has some money, but it's mostly all relying on volunteer work.
There are not enough volunteers to do all the work that's required, as a
general rule. Like even for the EEF website itself and our own
marketing, we have to sometimes go through stipends and contract work to
be able to do the footwork required for everything, but finding the
people having the time and desire to do that work is also not
straightforwards.

An extra observation I have is that most people joining the foundation
as contributors tended to already be involved in a project, and we've
had far fewer people coming in looking for something to be involved
with, so the net capacity to run new stuff hasn't moved a lot. 
We've made it easier for existing projects to get funding, at the very
least, but haven't found a way to provide more hands to do the work. 

If I recall some of the disussions around the forums and the mailing
list, the issue is not in running the software and servers, it's in
managing and moderating the community and having people willing to do
the long-term work of dealing with everyone involved. It's work that
tends to look invisible but is unrewarding and generally full of
complaints, and far-removed from what most of everyone involved would
like to do: be able to focus on writing code and improving software.

Even the offers here tend to be about "running the servers," with a
bunch of comments about how there should be fewer or no rules, but
nobody is really rushing to moderate and running the whole show. If so,
they could easily just start their alternative mailing list right now.