Should there be more forums added to the community

After reading a couple of threads here in the lounge ->

ASP thread - http://forums.devshed.com/showthrea...&threadid=45402
XUL thread - http://forums.devshed.com/showthrea...69&pagenumber=2

I think it is a good idea to start a poll to see what the rest of the community thinks. Post replies to this thread with the ups and downs of adding a couple of new forums....

Also, no matter how many yes's we get on this poll, it does not ensure that we will get more forums added to the roster. This is just a starting point to see if it is worth adding more forums....

I think definitley an ASP forum is in order. There is a very large community of ASP developers out there, and I've been curious to discuss the language myself.

Actually such a forum might want to encompass all of .NET --> ASP.NET, VB.NET, C#.NET, etc., the same way the java forum does.

then why dont you just name it .NET forum instead of ASP forum.

You may wish to call it the "Gecko Forum" if you add the mozilla one because in the end it's the Gecko engin you're coding for, Mozilla was just a side project on top of gecko to actully let you use the engin that turned out quite well.

Ok, just call it the XUL forum....

I don't see how adding both of these forums could hurt. I can understand if the devshed website as a whole doesn't emphesise the closed-source community, but I think if it accommodated it, it would probably bring in more traffice, keep more traffic, and just be all around more complete.

I think they're both probably good ideas. Sure, ASP isn't open source, but a number of the forums here aren't either (as others have pointed out). Just because the platform is closed source doesn't mean MY code has to be.

To nitpick, though, how big is the demand for either of these? How many of the users actually use ASP here? If we can't answer questions people aren't going to ask questions. Also, I know the XML forum is growing, but it gets maybe two questions a week (on a good week). How many people are actually working with XUL?

I think they're both good ideas, I just don't know how much they'd get used .

Give the forum(s) a shot and see if there will be any traffic. If not, just wipe them...
Though this might not apply to Devshed's policy, of which I know too little.

//NoXcuz

I think that's an excellent idea.

Check this out - it looks like I have already voted, but I don't remember votings, so I guess I didn't vote, but the thing shows results as if I had voted. Uh... too many words with 'vote' for one sentence. Anyway - yeah lets give them a chance.

Looks like the votes are in and the new forums are here.
Devshed is on the ball!

Heh. I like how .NET is a "special" forum

Yes - had to put a blind fold on those ones....

Hey guys. Overall, this is some great stuff .

One note I would like to add in regard to .NET and whether it's against the open-source ethos to have it here:

.NET and open source are already interacting quite heavily: there are Perl, PHP, and Python bindings to .NET (and many others...), and there are already two open source implementations of a .NET CLR -- one for FreeBSD (rotor), and one for Linux (Mono). Also, as noticed recently on Slashdot, the C# language is getting full ISO certification as a standard soon. This means that even though Microsoft keeps its source closed, anyone can create an implementation of C#, just as anyone can create an implementation of C. I personally think Microsoft is really stretching out of its traditional comfort zone here.

So to say we shouldn't discuss .NET or C# on an open source-centric website is akin to burying one's head in the sand.

Also a note on XUL:

I think XUL will eventually catch on the way PHP caught on. It represents a perfectly targeted solution for cross-platform distributed apps. Also, however, we should remember that XUL is only part of the Mozilla cross-platform architecture. (it's actually quite breathtaking...) XUL deals explicitly with the markup language used to create and manipulate GUI elements. It doesn't deal directly with the programming logic to populate data elements, interactivity, etc... That is left up to the programming language desired by the developer. Javascript is of course the easiest way to get started, but with XPCOM , we can use other programming languages, even creating bindings for our favorite language, if they don't exist. So along with XUL, we have quite a breadth of open architecture to draw on. This is why I recommend we consider renaming the new XUL forum back to Mozilla/XUL. In other words, no one is going to deal with XUL by itself. It will usually be connected to the rest of the Mozilla architecture in some way.

Where's the .NET forum? When I click on the link I get a VBulletin message saying:


Did it get taken down already? jpenn's post is only five days old.