[JDEV] JabberCentral [Was: Trillian Poll]

[Michael Brown]

From: "Peter Saint-Andre"
> On Wed, Jun 11, 2003 at 10:50:06AM -0500, Thomas Muldowney wrote:
> > I think this is a sign of a larger end user problem.  We have no site
> > that caters to end users...
> > [Snip]
>
> I agree, much more is needed than just an easy user guide. If we really
> want to reach the average IM user, we need an icq.com-style portal that
> makes users happy by providing general-interest chatrooms, easy ways to
> find like-minded users, fun little quizzes and polls, games, and all
> that jazz. I don't think this is something that the JSF would excel at,
> so I doubt that it's a good focus for the JSF. But I do think that this
> would take Jabber to the next level. People are offering Jabber-based
> consumer services (nioki.com, etc.), but there is no "human face" to the
> Jabber movemement. All I know is, it will be a lot of work to create and
> maintain such a service. :)

I find this list really frustrating at times.  We *had* a Jabber End User
site that included polls, client reviews etc and was getting a great deal of
hits - doesn't anyone remember Jabbercentral? - but someone *chough*you
Peter*chough* insisted that it be closed down despite multiple offers to
take over running it.  It was replaced but a small link saying "clients"
somewhere on the left of the jabber.org site, and a page with a handful of
clients and a line of yellow/grey stars.

Your average IM user is going to take one look at jabber.org, and go some
place else.  Users don't care about server code, or developers, or the
Jabber council, they just want to see pictures/screenshots of some clients,
read some reviews, and download a client.

And for those advocating some sort of "Official" client, I would have to
strongly disagree.  All that is going to do is create bad feeling among the
other client developers, and we will end up with more dead client projects.
What we need is an end user friendly site that reviews and rates clients, so
that people can make an informed choice, and client developers can see how
their software rates compared to the competition.  (Yes, like the
Jabbercentral of old)

[Yes - I am having a bad day]

Michael.