Visiting dsource I'm disappointed by the large number of half-finished and not-started projects on the projects page.

I pick on interesting project and look at the source tree - no files or years out of date.

I think the unfinished, out-of-date and not-started projects should be moved to their own page - lets see the wood for the trees...

mc

== Quote from Martin Carney (marcarn@hotmail.com)'s article
> Visiting dsource I'm disappointed by the large number of half-finished and
not-started projects on the projects page.
> I pick on interesting project and look at the source tree - no files or years
out of date.
> I think the unfinished, out-of-date and not-started projects should be moved to
their own page - lets see the wood for the trees...
> mc

Or, an even simpler idea:  Since these things are difficult to define and require human intervention, sort each project category by last checkin.  The most active projects will be on the top, and the least active on the bottom.

On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 3:56 AM, dsimcha <dsimcha@yahoo.com> wrote:
> == Quote from Martin Carney (marcarn@hotmail.com)'s article
>> Visiting dsource I'm disappointed by the large number of half-finished and
> not-started projects on the projects page.
>> I pick on interesting project and look at the source tree - no files or years
> out of date.
>> I think the unfinished, out-of-date and not-started projects should be moved to
> their own page - lets see the wood for the trees...
>> mc
>
> Or, an even simpler idea:  Since these things are difficult to define and require human intervention, sort each project category by last checkin.  The most active projects will be on the top, and the least active on the bottom.

Getting a different ordering every time you look at the projects list would be annoying.  But you could make an automatically  pruned list that just omits any project that hasn't had an update in 6mos or so. The good thing is that DMD keeps changing so much that if a project hasn't been updated in that long, it probably doesn't compile.   So the argument "it's not dead, just stable!" doesn't hold.

Anyway I think Brad was working on this at one point.  There were a bunch of ideas thrown around at least.

My vote would be to get something simple up like you suggest.  Keep the full list somewhere, but put a prominent link at the top pointing to another page that just lists the projects with activity in the last 6 months.  Likewise on the "active" list put a link to the full list.

--bb

Bill Baxter wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 3:56 AM, dsimcha <dsimcha@yahoo.com> wrote:
<snip>
>> Or, an even simpler idea:  Since these things are difficult to define and require
>> human intervention, sort each project category by last checkin.  The most active
>> projects will be on the top, and the least active on the bottom.
> 
> Getting a different ordering every time you look at the projects list
> would be annoying.  But you could make an automatically  pruned list
> that just omits any project that hasn't had an update in 6mos or so.
<snip>

As long as that automatically pruned list isn't the default.  Otherwise, there would probably be lots of new projects started when it would be better to revive an existing project.

Speaking of which, has anybody tried asking Brad for commit permission on an abandoned project in order to revive it?

Stewart.

On Sun, 18 Jan 2009 23:11:15 +0100, Stewart Gordon <smjg_1998@yahoo.com> wrote:

> As long as that automatically pruned list isn't the default.  Otherwise, there would probably be lots of new projects started when it would be better to revive an existing project.

Then have the list divided into two parts: on the top, the active projects,
on the bottom (and explicitly marked as such), projects that have not been
updated in a while.
Simen

Hello Bill,
> Getting a different ordering every time you look at the projects list
> would be annoying.  But you could make an automatically  pruned list
> that just omits any project that hasn't had an update in 6mos or so.

Yah, some sort of bucket sort would be better (active in the last week, month, 6 months, year, etc.)

On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 7:23 AM, Simen Kjaeraas <simen.kjaras@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 18 Jan 2009 23:11:15 +0100, Stewart Gordon <smjg_1998@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> As long as that automatically pruned list isn't the default.  Otherwise, there would probably be lots of new projects started when it would be better to revive an existing project.
>
> Then have the list divided into two parts: on the top, the active projects,
> on the bottom (and explicitly marked as such), projects that have not been
> updated in a while.
> Simen
>

Sounds reasonable to me.

--bb

Martin Carney wrote:
> Visiting dsource I'm disappointed by the large number of half-finished and not-started projects on the projects page.
> 
> I pick on interesting project and look at the source tree - no files or years out of date.
> 
> I think the unfinished, out-of-date and not-started projects should be moved to their own page - lets see the wood for the trees...
> 
> mc

I think there needs to be a feature so the project mods can mark their project as active or inactive. Those mods who aren't around, should be labeled as Potentially Inactive. Then they can be sorted by status, and no projects would appear inactive unless the project author specified.

~ Clay

== Quote from Stewart Gordon (smjg_1998@yahoo.com)'s article
...
> Speaking of which, has anybody tried asking Brad for commit permission on an abandoned project in order to revive it?
>
> Stewart.

I received commit permission on an abandoned project. (And then I abandoned the project, too--oops! At least I announced the abandonment on the project wiki, so people didn't have to dig into the source to see how fresh it was.)

I think Brad's usual policy is to try to contact the original maintainer and then after a week or so to just grant commit permission to the new person if he doesn't hear an objection from the old maintainer. I haven't heard of any problems with malicious project hijacking, so I think the system works.

On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 11:11 PM, Stewart Gordon <smjg_1998@yahoo.com>wrote:

> ...
> Speaking of which, has anybody tried asking Brad for commit permission on
> an abandoned project in order to revive it?
>
> Stewart.
>

I took over the MinWin project a long time ago, since its author, Ben
Hinkle, had disappeared from the community, I tried reviving it for about
half a year, with some success, but eventually I got tired of doing it
alone, with little to no testers/users.
So it's pretty dead now again...

-Tomas