[jdev] Proposal : Community site

[Bart van Bragt]

Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> I know some people already did parts of this. It would be great if all
> their work could be put together on the same website.

I've been planning this for, eehm, ages now :) The main problem has been 
time and having too many other fun projects. That has improved a 
(little) bit now. The plan is that I'm going to setup a site with a nice 
CMS and then people can help me build that site by contributing 
content/graphics/code.

IMO we should start with information for Joe Average with some nice 
pictures and a 'Get Jabbered in 3 easy steps' kind of thing. Besides 
that we need some easy to understand documentation about Jabber, what is 
Jabber, what is XMPP, why should I use Jabber and not MSN, what is a 
transport, etc, etc, etc.

Part of this 3 steps thing would be choosing a Jabber server and 
choosing a Jabber client so for that we'll need some kind of database 
with servers/clients that includes information about stability, 
userfriendlyness, completeness, etc and ideally it should include some 
links to reviews and/or client documentation. Documentation for the 
clients is something for the client authors (or their community) IMO. 
Those developers are (at least in theory) better in keeping that 
documentation up to date.

When the end user part is up to date we can start adding information for 
developers. What is Jabber, what does it look like, where are the 
standards, what is the JSF, how does filetransfer work, what JEPs do I 
need, what libraries can I use, what existing projects need help, etc.


IMO the two biggest problems with Jabber are:
- It's _really_ hard for a new user to get started.
- There is (almost) no reason for Joe Average to switch to Jabber.

IMO we can at least fix point one with this community site. Point two is 
a different matter and IMO all we need is a killer app :) That's another 
Bart mantra: "Jabber needs web integration" :D

I've been working behind the scenes on this community site, there are 
some hurdles to take before I can really get started but expect to see 
something Soon(tm).

Bart