[pmwiki-users] [O-T] A & Q (Was: Fwd: Why is the pmwiki ML so heinously active?)

George J. De Bruin gdb at soundchasers.com
Sun Aug 7 16:44:37 CDT 2005


That's funny -- I didn't get conrfuzzled by it at
all...  Of course, I have work with people that
have no clue about email ettiquette so I deal with
it all the time. :)

As to the actual subject: I too noticed the
up-swing in traffic on the list.  In fact, I just
grabbed the gzip's of all the messages from
Jan-July of this year to be able to search for
answers since I haven't been keeping up with the
mail as it flows into my folder here.

(And -- I've decided that I'm getting near the
time where I want to try doing some things that I
haven't done before, including a major overhaul of
my site.)

Answering the question: The traffic is a good sign
of project that has a large audience, user base,
and cross-audience appeal.  Seeing how many users
come in stating that they are new to pmWiki and
asking questions can tell us several things:

- The project is active, and there is likely a
point to the increased activity.  (In this case
PM's desire to get 2.0 out the door
already...<grin>)

- There may be some issues in users being able to
find what they want using the system.  This in and
of itself has added to the traffic as the FAQ and
search heuristics are discussed.

- There is a community that has really grown
around this project, and the investment level in
the project is extremely significant.  It's
obvious that it's not just PM that is driving this
project (even though he maintains the final say in
everything in the core), but there are a lot of
people looking to help expand the system and make
it the best available.

Personally, I am very please to see my pmwiki mail
folder blow up to over 500 messages in a week. 
That just tells me that whever I need to find an
answer, I know that I will have resources to turn
to in order to find them.

Although, a couple of considerations might be
worth thinking about:

(1) How about adding a mailing list search to the
pmwiki website.  For those looking for answers
that haven't been formally documented this might
help them a lot.

(2) Possibly might want to consider having an
updates mailing list (a one-way list, no
discussion).  It could take the RSS updates from
the site and mails them to the user once a week or
so.  That might be more beneficial to some users
that aren't really looking for help - just trying
to keep up to date with the changes that are
happening.


> It's funny how Pm's response (see below) turned
out to be a good example
> of why you should put the answer *after* the
question. I started reading
> it and just plain got confused. :-)
> 
> /Christian
> 
> On Thu, 4 Aug 2005, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> 
> > I received the following message off-list and
answered it; but 
> > I'm curious to hear others' opinions.  
> > 
> > My opinion is that an active list is normal
for a popular and 
> > flexible package, that we're hoping to improve
the traffic by having 
> > better online docs, and that we're extra-busy
lately as we push 
> > to get PMWiki out of beta status.  I'm eager
to hear of any 
> > other views, though.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > 
> > Pm
> > 
> > 
> > ----- Forwarded message -----
> > 
> > Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 10:14:09 -0700 (PDT)
> > To: pmichaud at pobox.com
> > Subject: Why is the pmwiki ML so heinously
active?
> > 
> > I've been subscribed to the PmWiki ML for a
few weeks
> > now and it's the most active ML I'm subscribed
to.
> > 
> > Do you think that's a symptom of something
wrong
> > with the PmWiki wiki, or is it just natural
for a
> > popular software package to have such a busy
list?
> > 
> > ----- End forwarded message -----
> > 
> 
> -- 
> Christian Ridderstr�m, +46-8-768 39 44        
      http://www.md.kth.se/~chr
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> pmwiki-users mailing list
> pmwiki-users at pmichaud.com
>
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