[JDEV] Public Serverlist page

[Justin Karneges]

On Saturday 25 October 2003 11:18 am, Jesper Krogh wrote:
> I gmane.network.jabber.devel, skrev Justin Karneges:
> >  It only tells you about the components each server has, and nothing
> > about userbase, availability, throughput, etc, of said server.  Nor does
> > it give any details about who is running the server or even a way to
> > reach the admin,
>
> We could develop a script to get this information, that shouldn't be
> hard.
>
> Why is userbase important?
> Availablity is very important.

'Userbase' indicates how popular the server is, which could translate to how 
likely it will remain running.

I want to see servers with expansive web fronts.  Forums, Account 
registration, Server details, Whitepages, etc.  It would probably be too 
restrictive for us to require these facilities in public servers today, as 
all of this is generally a lot of work to put together.  But you can see what 
I'm getting at.  I don't like today's faceless servers.  A public server 
needs a face.  The rumor is that Jabber has more users than ICQ, but at least 
ICQ had a decent face.

I'm not even sure I like the jabberview idea.  It is not user friendly.  Most 
users don't even know what a port is.  A bare server list is totally 
confusing to the average user.  Try showing that to your mom and expecting 
her to know what to do.

Instead we should probably have a JSF server review section, where the major 
servers are reviewed and scored (I'm talking about a simple paragraph of 
text), with links to their respective homepages (and if such a server has no 
web front, how embarassing for them).

I also think the current situation of clients being in the forefront is 
backwards.  The servers should be in the forefront, and they should be 
recommending clients.  Ideally they would have a web front end for 
registration and direct downloads to specific recommended clients.  This 
would completely solve all of our problems regarding server choice.  The web 
front of a particular server would act as the marketing face, and would be 
trying to persuade the user to join the server via nice text and pretty 
pictures.  Then server competition happens on google instead of in client 
dialog boxes.

I think we're a ways off from all of this, we can take baby steps if we need 
to.

-Justin